The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, the Naval Academy's regional accrediting body, has also underscored the importance of information literacy in its requirements. It should encourage the use of a wide range of non-classroom resources for teaching and learning. It is essential to have an active and continuing program of library orientation and instruction in accessing information, developed collaboratively and supported actively by faculty, librarians, academic deans, and other information providers. With the growing prevalence of electronic information and data, information literacy is increasingly dependent upon computer literacy. Yet these two sets of skills and understandings are not the same.
Computer literacy has many benefits that result from our enhanced technical competence.
Indeed, the attractiveness and omnipresence of all sorts of information on the World Wide Web poses the danger, already being observed by faculty at the Naval Academy and elsewhere, that students will uncritically use whatever information is most convenient rather than authoritative, high-quality sources. Information Literacy at the Naval Academy . In 1995 the Middle States visiting team recommended that the Library extend its instruction program, systematically, to incorporate teaching midshipmen how to find information efficiently and effectively on the Internet. Responding affirmatively to this recommendation required a significant investment of computer equipment. Working together, the Computer Services Division and the Library outfitted two electronic classrooms in Nimitz with computer workstations and other equipment.