Bridges or barriers. I raved about the work done to integrate information skills and information technology across the curriculum, in classrooms, anywhere that learning happened. Now that the Ministry has taken a tentative but wonderfully enlightened step forward in supporting information studies courses which extend the opportunity to classroom teachers to learn about integrating information and information skills into their curriculum programmes, I receive calls and letters daily asking about the 'school library' course, or even the librarianship course. It might be timely to unpack the relationship between information skills and school libraries. Anyone who knows me and my work would understand that, as a librarian, I think school libraries are a vital link in the education chain.
Information is pervasive.
It is all around us. It is in your head, your home, your community. Information skills are the skills needed to make effective use of information however and wherever it is found, however and wherever it is stored, in whichever medium - print, person, electronic. In work and in life, People remain the most significant source of information. So teaching students to use a library, while it is an important dimension of information literacy, is NOT synonymous with getting them to learn to use information.