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Information Literacy or Literate Information?

By Joseph McDonald, MLS, Ph.D., erudite@gci.net.

Presented at Symposium for Academic Librarians 2004 at Eastern Michigan University, Friday, April 30, 2004.

Abstract

Information literacy, as presented by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), is proposed as a “second curriculum” in undergraduate instruction. This paper is based on the results of a recently concluded 15-year longitudinal study of highly effective teachers conducted by Ken Bain, which argue that library based information literacy duplicates in poor fashion what effective teachers, with well-developed curricula, already accomplish with their students. Furthermore, information literacy does not produce well-educated students in any classic sense of the word. The best-sustained criticism of information literacy to date is rooted in postmodernist assumptions. However, information literacy is based on modernist assumptions and is intended for use by teachers and students who continue to base education on Enlightenment values. Information literacy instruction seeks to prepare students to make choices among a very large array of educational resources, which variety is thought to be essential to good education. However, based on recent research on choices and decision-making, students may have too many choices and the abundance of choice is likely to produce stress and anxiety. Fewer resources, when chosen by teachers for deep and nuanced pedagogical purposes, may produce better academic libraries.

Information Literacy or Literate Information?

Is information literacy something to be deliberately sought or is it the result, one of the end products, of accumulated learning, critical reasoning, and making good judgments? Just as happiness, the Declaration of Independence notwithstanding, is the result of doing “good” and “right“ things, rather than something to be sought for its own sake; so, perhaps, information literacy is what happens, what results from “good” and “right” intellectual habits, developed, for our purposes here, after four or five years of undergraduate education. Does college-level education require information literacy and its ally, resource-based learning, or is information literacy the end result of all college learning experiences, which are accomplished in such a way that the expression literate information best describes what students take with them at the end of their undergraduate experience? Are good students those who can be said to possess literate information, or are they merely information literate?

Two recent books raise, by implication, some provocative questions about the need and place for library-based information literacy in the undergraduate curriculum. These are by Ken Bain and Barry Schwartz. Bain is director at the Center for Teaching Excellence in New York University and Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action in Swarthmore College. Their ideas have helped form a significant part of this paper. Neither deals directly with information literacy; both, however, raise questions that have important implications for the practice of information literacy. Some of the ideas discussed here have also been presented in McDonald and Micikas (1994).

Bain reports the results of a 15-year-long longitudinal study of 100 teachers whom he and his associates designated “highly effective” and “outstanding” Their definition of such “turned out to be a fairly simple matter. All the professors we chose to put under our pedagogical microscope had achieved remarkable success in helping their students learn in ways that made a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how those students think, act, and feel” (2004, p. 5).

Bain discusses at length the pattern or climate of evidence he adduced for the study and summarizes this evidence under two tests. One, were the students highly satisfied with the teaching and inspired to continue learning? Two, what did students learn, in and out of the strict disciplinary boundaries of the course? A review of the evidence and the methodology used in the study is beyond the scope of this paper. However, the research is a high-order longitudinal investigation into educational praxis and for the purposes of this paper, and in my view is an acceptable research based description of teaching excellence.

Schwartz’s work is a thoughtful popularization (de-scholarization is a more accurate description) and synthesis of his own and many others’ research in the social sciences. When read in the context of the sweeping statements often made in library and educational literature concerning the vast number of information choices now available to the student seeker, it provides a balancing perspective. How much choice among information resources and technology does an undergraduate student need to learn well? Are a few good things, carefully chosen by the instructor, acceptable for pedagogical purposes? Schwartz argues the benefits for satisficing choices. Can or should educational resource choices also be satisficing ones, with a consequent reduction in student confusion, the need for staff support, resource purchase expense, and wide ranging library-based information literacy? Does requiring students to learn to use a wide range of information, ideas, and concepts, a mark of the excellent teacher, necessarily mean a multiplicity of information-bearing resources? A well-designed and written textbook is a carefully selected value added mini-library that, in fact, exposes students to a wide range of information, ideas, and concepts. However, librarians tend to want textbooks and reserve collections to go away. Excellent teachers appear to understand the necessity and usefulness of both done well. Perhaps we librarians need to reconsider the place and role of the textbook and the reserve collection as desirable limiters on the size and expense of largely unused print and virtual collections.

This paper is not a definitive or exhaustive statement on information literacy in undergraduate education. Rather, its purpose is to raise some questions, in the context of a symposium of Michigan academic librarians, that could lead to a thorough review and examination of an increasingly ubiquitous library-based set of pedagogical practices, which, in my view, collide with those already in place by good teachers. Furthermore, in keeping with the theme of the conference where this paper was read, pursuing information literacy instruction does little to secure or assure the future of the profession of academic library practice. Although professional survival is not the most creditworthy motive for enhancing or changing professional practice, the chances for the survival of the academic library profession are better served by activities that do not compete with established classroom activities. More importantly, in my view, undergraduate learning can be helped significantly by recasting academic librarianship as part of a formal college-wide effort to support and encourage learning skills such as writing. Carmen Schmersahl notes:

We can more profitably teach our students to use library research if, rather than separating the activity out as relevant only for the writing of the research paper, we teach research as part of the recursive generative process of writing and so encourage students to see that doing research, whether in the library, the laboratory, or the ‘real world,’ is also a recursive process of discovery (Schmersahl, 1987, p. 232).

However, it is beyond the purposes of this paper to discuss the survival of academic librarianship.

I will consider three propositions:

• Highly effective teachers, by their practices and the expectations they have of students create information, i.e., knowledge literate students and lifelong learners.
• Information literacy as a second curriculum is too vague and too empty of meaning to be a significant set of learning experiences in higher education. It also duplicates what good teachers already do.
• The term generic information literacy is a misnomer. The so-called generic information literacy skills can only be developed in context with something, and that something is the discipline or knowledge area and its intellectual processes, including reading and writing.

Furthermore, I will examine these propositions by looking at three aspects of the question, about information literacy or literate information:

• What do highly effective teachers expect of their students and how do they conduct class?
• What is information literacy?
• An inspection of both aspects together with a brief consideration of the closely related issue of choice.

What do highly effective teachers expect of their students and how do they conduct class?

Effective teachers are about the business of creating conditions in which students realize their potential to learn. Effective teaching is not primarily transmitting knowledge nor is it teaching as telling. It is not just a matter of technique. It is struggling with the meaning of learning within the various disciplines and how best to cultivate and recognize it.

There are three interrelated parts to what teachers expect of students. Teachers look for and appreciate the individual values of each student. Teachers also have great faith in each student’s ability to achieve (which includes rejecting professorial power over them) and are persistent in attacking stereotypes of students who, allegedly, cannot learn. Effective teachers set high standards and evince strong trust in their students’ ability to meet these standards.

Highly effective teachers tend to use what Ken Bain calls a “promising syllabus” in their courses. These syllabi have three major parts. The first part lays out the promises and opportunities in the course. In the second part, the teacher tells the student what he or she will do to claim these promises and opportunities. And, in the last part, the syllabus explains how the student and the teacher will, together, understand the nature and progress of learning in that particular course.

Bain goes on to state:

The best teachers believe that learning involves both personal and intellectual development and that neither the ability to think nor the qualities of being a mature human are immutable. People can change, and those changes--not just the accumulation of information--represent true learning (Bain, 2004, p. 83).

After analyzing the beliefs and of practices highly effective teachers, Bain concludes:

What begins to emerge is a model of education in which learners do more than accumulate information; they undergo deep-seated changes, transformations that affect both the habits of the heart and mind and the capacity for continued growth. “Everything you learn,” Ralph Lynn [a model highly effective teacher] often said, “influences who you are and what you can do”.

Thus the best teachers develop rich notions about what it means to get an education, ideas that are deeply integrated with their beliefs about the capacity of humans to learn, grow, and change. Those notions and convictions promise great achievements for students and those promises powerfully influence students’ actions. Thy also provide professors with a deep understanding of both the nature of learning and the conditions in which it is likely to flourish. That comprehension enables them to fashion the best learning environments, to shape and remold, to make good decisions about very aspect of teaching, and to respond to problems creatively and effectively (Bain, 2004, pp. 84-85).

A student’s personal development is, as noted, highly important. However, for the purposes of this paper we next focus on what effective teachers expect from their students with respect to their intellectual development. These expectations form themselves around two of questions. What reasoning abilities will students need to answer the questions the discipline raises? How can teachers cultivate the habits of mind that will lead to constant use of intellectual skills?

The answer to the first question lies in defining and describing the term critical thinking. Paraphrasing Arnold Arons, a physicist at the University of Washington, Bain lays out a compact and summary set of ten “reasoning abilities” and “habits of thought” that comprise critical thinking. Effective teachers see no “legitimate separation between learning the ‘facts’ and learning to reason with those facts” (Bain, 2004, p. 87).

For the second question, there is a one-word answer: practice.

Treat the course as a window through which students can begin to see what questions the discipline raises; what information, inquiries, and reasoning skills it employs answer those questions; what intellectual standards it uses to test proposed answers and to weigh conflicting claims about the ‘truth’ (Bain, 2004, p. 87).

Effective teachers ask students to take and defend positions in class. But they also provide support, constructive criticism and feedback, and many opportunities for practice. These teachers also encourage students to discuss topics when they do not know much about the issues. Only in this way can students learn how to express their views, much as piano students learn to play well by playing poorly at the beginning of their lessons and becoming progressively better.

Excellent teachers choose discussion questions and select common readings very carefully. Their reading assignments are sequenced to allow students to build analytical skills. Instead of simply listing reading requirements, they ask questions and present the assignments as ways for students to answer those questions. And, very importantly, the best teachers teach their students how to read the materials they assign. As one teacher observed in Bain, “’Students didn’t learn how to read scholarly papers in grade school . . . but they usually get little training beyond that level on how to read’” (2004, p. 89).

Finally, Bain notes, for effective teachers learning takes place when students can evaluate how they think and act outside of the classroom.

. . . Students are unlikely to engage in any meaningful learning, to re-examine their thinking in some fundamental way, unless (1) they come to care deeply about issues involved in their thinking—deeply and extensively enough that they are willing to grapple, probe, question, look for reasons, and build coherent conceptual frameworks—and (2) they have ample opportunity to apply their learning to meaningful problems. Thus they ask students to solve intellectual, artistic, practical, physical, and abstract problems that the students find intriguing, beautiful, and important . . . These teachers want their students to learn to use a wide range of information, ideas, and concepts logically and consistently to draw meaningful conclusions (Bain, 2004, p. 95).

How do highly effective teachers conduct class?

As he examined the classroom activities of effective teachers, Bain observed 7 principles underlying their work and also a number of techniques frequently used by all these teachers.

Basic to all else, is the effort to create a “natural critical learning environment,” of which Bain says:

. . . ‘Natural’ because students encounter the skills, habits, attitudes, and information they are trying to learn embedded in questions and tasks they find fascinating. . . ‘Critical,’ because students learn to think critically, to reason from evidence, to examine the quality of their reasoning using a variety of intellectual standards, to make improvements while thinking, and to ask probing and insightful questions about the thinking of other people (Bain, 2004, p. 99).

There are five essential elements in a natural critical learning environment:

• Asking an intriguing question or posing an important problem.
• Embedding the discipline’s issues in broader concerns; taking an interdisciplinary approach to problems.
• Engaging students in higher-order intellectual activity; making and defending judgments and decisions.
• Using the natural critical learning environment to help the student answer the question or solve the problem.
• Leaving the student with a question: “What’s the next question?” “What can we ask now?”

Do highly effective teachers lecture? Yes. However, they use the lecture as “a way to clarify and simplify complex material while engaging important and challenging questions, or to inspire attention to important matters, to provoke, to focus. . . We found no great teachers who relied solely on lectures . . . but we did find people whose lectures helped students learn deeply and extensively because they raised questions and won students’ attention to those issues“ (Bain, 2004, p. 107).

The second principle in conducting class as Bain observed them is to get students attention and keep it. This is more than just an effort to motivate students. It is an attempt to redirect their thinking to something the instructor would like the student to think about for a very long time. The third principle is to start with the student, not the discipline. This means beginning with something students know (or think they know) or care about. Fourth, effective teachers ask their students for a commitment to the class and to the learning.

A fifth principle is to help students learn outside of class. “The professors do in class what they think will best help and encourage their students to learn outside of class, between one meting and the next” (Bain, 2004, p. 114). Finally, excellent teachers engage students in disciplinary thinking. They “use class time to help students think about information and ideas the way scholars in the discipline do” (Bain, 2004, p. 114).

The point in summarizing what the best teachers expect of their students and how they conduct class is to give the reader a picture of what these teachers do. Library-based information literacy attempt to duplicate efforts to provide instruction, even when this is provided at points of need and using examples and materials from the discipline.

What is “Information Literacy?”

A classic definition of information literacy is one provided by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL): “Information Literacy is the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information” (2003). The document continues, which I quote at length because it expresses clearly the issues with which effective teachers are already dealing and explicitly acknowledges the official view of the ACRL:

The beginning of the 21st century has been called the Information Age because of the explosion of information output and information sources. It has become increasingly clear that students cannot learn everything they need to know in their field of study in a few years of college. Information literacy equips them with the critical skills necessary to become independent lifelong/learners. Too often we assume that as students write research papers and read textbooks they are gaining sufficient IL skills. This is not so. IL skills may be introduced but what is needed is a parallel curriculum (emphasis supplied) in IL forming a strong foundation of a college education. As the American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy . . . says, ‘Ultimately, information literate people are those who have learned how to learn. They know how to learn because they knowledge is organized, how to find information, and how to use information in such a way that others can learn from them. They are people prepared for lifelong learning, because they can always find the information needed for any task or decision at hand’ (ACRL, 2003).

Regrettably, as far as I can determine, neither the ACRL nor the ALA, has ever defined, information.

There are other approaches or ways of understanding information literacy. Shapiro and Hughes suggest information literacy is a liberal art and urge higher education specialists “to rethink our entire educational curriculum in terms of information” (1996). Again, regrettably, the authors do not define information. They maintain the librarians’ notion of information literacy is as inadequate as the old concept of computer literacy, and propose a new curriculum comprising seven dimensions:

• Tool literacy.
• Resource literacy, “This is practically identical with librarians’ conceptions of information literacy.”
• Social-structural literacy, “or knowing that and how information is socially situated and produced.”
• Research literacy, “or the ability to understand and use the IT-based tools relevant to the work of today’s researcher and scholar.”
• Publishing literacy, “or the ability to format and publish research and ideas electronically, in textual and multimedia forms.”
• Emerging technology literacy, “or the ability to ongoingly [sic] adapt to, understand, evaluate and make use of the continually emerging innovations in information technology.”
• Critical literacy, “or the ability to evaluate critically the intellectual, human and social strengths and potentials and limits, benefits and costs of information technologies” (Shapiro & Hughes, 1996).

Lest the reader miss their intent, the authors make explicit that they are really talking about a new curricular framework and refer to their curriculum as the “trivium and quadrivium of twentieth century culture.” Later they ask, “shouldn’t Turing’s machine take its place next to Watt’s machine in social science courses? Shouldn’t algorithmic simulation be studied as a driving cultural force analogous to that of the scientific method? Shouldn’t the dilemmas of existence in cyberspace and the media world be seen as analogues to those earlier generations confronted in Notes from the Underground, The Wasteland . . ?”(Shapiro & Hughes, 1996).

Another way of looking at information literacy is presented by Christine Bruce in her Seven Faces of Information Literacy. After acknowledging the existence of the generic classic definition of information literacy, she argues information literacy, at a deeper level, “could be seen as coming to experience using information in [the following seven] ways:”

• Information literacy is seen as using information technology for information retrieval and communication.
• Information literacy is seen as finding information located in information sources.
• Information literacy is seen as executing a process, “. . . the ability to confront novel situations, and to deal with those situations on the basis of being equipped with a process to for finding and using the necessary information.”
• Information literacy is seen as controlling information. “. . . Control of information is established by using filing cabinets . . . the brain or memory . . . or computers. . . Information literate people are seen as those who can bring information within their sphere of influence, so that they can retrieve and manipulate it when necessary.”
• Information literacy is seen as building up a personal knowledge base in a new area of interest. “. . . This category goes beyond that of a store of information; it involves the adoption of personal perspectives.”
• Information literacy is seen as working with knowledge and personal perspectives adopted in such a way that novel insights are gained,
• Information literacy is seen as using information wisely for the benefit of others (Bruce, 1997).

These three perspectives on information literacy are not, of course, mutually exclusive. They do illustrate, however, that the expression information literacy can be understood in a variety of ways and overlapping perspectives. Regrettably, the authors of these perspectives do not define the term information, and one is left wondering what is this information about, and which one is required to be literate?

There are a variety of objections to aspects of information literacy, regardless of the perspective taken. I have noted Shapiro and Hughes’ objection to what they call the “librarians’ understanding” of the term. However, the librarians’ understanding has been and continues to be an evolving one. Shapiro and Hughes focus on an earlier view of information literacy as bibliographic instruction. Whatever its merits, the librarians’ understanding of information literacy should now be seen as expressed in the various current ALA and ACRL documents on the subject. And, in this official professional view, information literacy is a curriculum, interweaved with an educational epistemology. When the one curriculum cum philosophy is compared to the other curriculum cum philosophy both can be viewed as facets (the ACRL view better developed and more practical than that of Shapiro and Hughes) of the same issue: how can information literacy become an integral part of or, perhaps, the entire institutional curricula?

There are two recent sustained scholarly criticisms of information literacy that merit serious attention from librarians and classroom instructors. One is presented by a librarian and the other is argued by an education and social theorist. Both sets of arguments, to a greater or lesser degree, proceed from postmodernist, post structural assumptions about learning and the place of libraries and information literacy in learning.

In the first paper, James Marcum critiques the ACRL model of information literacy (2002). Specifically, he argues the inadequacy of the models’ underlying information-processing paradigm. He takes issue with the assumed connection between information and knowledge and with the inadequacies of the cognitive sciences approach basic to the model. He also discusses the inadequate treatment of computers in the human-computer interaction aspects of the ACRL standards. He questions the appropriateness of the learning methodology of this model. He then discusses alternative literacies—visual literacy, multiple literacies, and interactive literacies—and considers the relationship between information literacy and workplace competencies. Finally, he “proposes that information literacy be refocused away from information toward learning, and beyond literacy in the direction of sociotechnical fluency“ (2002, p. 1).

The second set of arguments critical of information literacy is presented by Cushla Kapitzke, an Australian educational theorist. Her “aim here is to critique [a] universalist cognitive characterization of information as a neutral resource for learning through problem solving” (2003). Following Kapitzke’s hyper-postmodern arguments requires some understanding of post structuralism and its critique of positivism. In the end, however, she proposes replacing information literacy with hyperliteracy.

The notion of hyperliteracy would acknowledge . . . social, technological, and epistemological developments by moving beyond the exclusionary approaches of modernist frameworks (as in traditional information literacy). For example, the “information process” as it is currently understood—define a problem; locate appropriate information; select, organize, and synthesize resources; create and present a solution; evaluate the effectiveness of the task completion—is devoid of any opportunity for students to examine the social context and construction of either the information “problem” or its “solution.” Neither the constituent assumptions of the problem, its process of formulation, the subsequent solution, nor the information used in solving the problem is contextualized or problematized. This in turn precludes the availability of multiple and alternative solutions and naturalizes the information process, making it immune to discursive interrogation and transformation (Kapitzke, 2003, p. 51).

In hyperliteracy, teachers with their students add critique to their information literacy pedagogical practice. They ask questions such as, “Who posed this information problem? Why was it adopted and others precluded? How was the resultant information solution arrived at? What role did the limited resources of the . . . library play in the investigation and construction of the solution? What alternative explanations or expositions might have eventuated if resources from a more eclectic knowledge space were accessed?” (Kapitzke, 2003, p. 52).

These brief examples of information literacy and its critics point to a fundamental problem within education and one not widely recognized among librarians and other proponents of the ACRL model of information literacy. There is a deepening divide between education and library work that is based on Enlightenment principles—the modernist project—and that which is built on a postmodernist, post structural foundation. The leadership among academic librarians, though graying, remains strongly in the hands of men and women educated and trained in and from modernist perspectives and understandings. Information literacy has been developed and promoted by “modernist” librarians as even a casual reading of people such as Patricia Senn Breivik shows.

However, students for whom information literacy is intended, teaching faculty who will accept or reject this additional curriculum, and new library professionals are increasingly those educated and trained in a postmodern context and who have little patience with Enlightenment values, Ramean logic, scientific rationalism, and all the rest of what constitutes the modernist project. And when they do consider it, they are disinclined to allow it to influence or condition their teaching and learning. What then is an academic librarian, teacher, or academic administrator to do with library based information literacy?

Effective Teachers, Information Literacy, and Too Much Choice

From one perspective, there is nothing to do, perhaps, but to accept the seeming inevitability of the onward march of information literacy and accept its presence, for the moment, as another of academia’s fads and hope the academy will soon get over its infatuation with library based information literacy. Marcum (2002) neatly summarizes the grip information literacy has in academic libraries, in various regional accrediting agencies, and among some teaching faculties. And yet, I wonder if all who express support for information literacy understand it the same way.

Information literacy, a something developed in the university, means different things to different people. For some, it is bibliographic instruction, best represented by the outstanding work of Evan Farber during his years at Earlham College. To others, it appears to mean not much more than “learning the library” Others may see it as a phenomena related mostly to the role of the computer in education and in its entirety to be left to teaching departments to manage. For example, in the fall of 2003, the Arizona State University Department of English (2003) posted this job opening:

Assistant Professor, Information Literacy

Assistant Professor. Tenure track. Primary Specialization in Information Technology and Information Literacy. Initial teaching load is 2/2 for tenure track faculty with a significant research agenda, with opportunities to teach and mentor at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Opportunities for reduced teaching loads will be based on strong enrollment in IT workshops. Duties include: teaching courses that integrate technology and information literacy skills in an English related field; assisting English Department faculty and graduate students in designing and implementing technological components in linguistics, rhetoric, writing, literature, TESL, and culture courses; making connections in research between information literacy and broader cultural concepts; being able to communicate across different disciplines. In addition to disciplinary expertise, employ expertise in information literacy and information technology. Contribute to the implementation of college-wide curricular initiatives dedicated to achieving information technology and information literacy for all undergraduate college students. Faculty recruited for this initiative will help provide leadership for the English Department to restructure degree programs and existing courses as well as to develop new courses to achieve the goals and competencies of this initiative. The English Department at ASU consists of 57 tenure track faculty, 13 lecturers, 16 instructors, 50 faculty associates, 296 graduate students, and 585 undergraduate majors.

Required qualifications: Ph.D in English or related field. Strong background in the humanities or social sciences with demonstrated experience in designing and implementing technological components in English related classes. Evidence of a strong research commitment integrating information literacy and technology with broader humanities questions.

Desired: Two or more of: (a) web resource development, (b) data base design and administration, (c) corpus linguistics' work, (d) textual data mining (Arizona State University, 2003).

Librarians, of course, need not apply. But are not librarians the experts in information literacy?

I began this paper by observing that library based information literacy, also known as the ACRL second curriculum model, at some level duplicates what excellent teachers have been doing for many years, but at other levels does not go far enough to truly replace what these teachers are doing. Marcum, Kapitzke, and others (e.g., Wisner, 2000) have proposed moving libraries and the modernist understanding of information into the post modernist, post structural camp. Whatever the merits of such a development (and, as I will argue elsewhere, this is happening already albeit in a rather haphazard, rather thoughtless sort of way, as librarians acquiesce uncritically to postmodernist assumptions and practices based thereon), at this point in history, information literacy sits squarely on modernist assumptions, as does much undergraduate teaching and learning.

The Association of College and Research Libraries (2000), Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education lists five standards with associated performance indicators and outcomes for the teaching of information literacy. These are, as reproduced from the Standards document:

• The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed.
• The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently.
• The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.
• The information literate student, individually or as a member of a group, uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.
• The information literate student understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally.

The reader need only compare these standards with the five essential elements of a natural critical learning environment, as discussed above, to note the redundancy of the standards with what effective teachers are already accomplishing with their students. (Bain does not once use the expression information literate to describe what effective teachers expect their students to become). Students become information literate as a result of all their college learning experiences, not by focusing on acquiring, evaluating, and using an undefined entity called information. This skill is conveyed through all subjects and this knowledge is conveyed, interpreted, and contextualized by teachers that make students information literate. But such is the quality of this learning that, in my view, is more accurate to call what the students possess at the end of their undergraduate learning as literate information. In short, information literacy is a poor substitute for sound teaching and learning and if pursued consistently and systematically will further weaken and trivialize, for many students, what is becoming an increasingly inconsequential system for undergraduate college education in the United States.

Too Much Choice?

Schwartz (2004) argues that the large number of choices in many areas of contemporary life lead to stress, anxiety, and a general state of unsettledness. Based on substantial research, he recommends people learn to make choices or decisions that satisfy the need or want in question rather than pursuing the maximally best solution, which in many instances can never be found.

Although the book is written for a general audience dealing with the everyday issues of life, (What mobile phone service to buy? What toaster to buy? Where to go on vacation?), by implication Schwartz raises questions about information material choices among college students. It also raises questions about the role librarians might play in promoting student learning malaise through offering an abundance of learning materials and resources when they are not needed in undergraduate learning.

Do undergraduates need a large collection of resources, or are they better served with a limited set of materials carefully chosen, for pedagogical purposes, by their instructors? I am not suggesting a revival of the undergraduate library, nor am I suggesting that undergraduates be kept from as wide a set of resources as may be available in any given institution. However, library-based information literacy is argued as a corollary to resource-based education. It is frequently presented as the way to help the student deal with the quantity and quality of all these resources which are, so goes the argument, required for successful learning and preparation for life.

However, like all received human truth, perhaps librarians need to be skeptical of claims concerning the large amount of information needed to satisfy learning requirements. A well designed and written textbook with appropriate supplemental material in a well organized and maintained reserve collection can satisfy the learning needs of students. Giving students the choices available in a modest library and on the Internet, even after attempting to make them information literate, seems emotionally cruel and likely does not promote the kind of deep learning effective teachers want from their students. Deep learning is not fostered by an endless variety of resources; it is developed by deep thought, discussion, and writing on worthwhile and important ideas.

But to do this, students must trust the teacher is a capable mentor of important and worthwhile ideas, and that at the end of an extended period under the tutelage of excellent and trustworthy teachers, students will see their talents developed and led to the right paths. The wise teacher with a good curriculum and appropriate resources carefully chosen for their teaching and learning benefit is the key to student learning success. A multiplicity of resources from which a student can pick and choose at will, no matter how well trained to make these choices, is a poor substitute for a highly effective teacher. Limiting choices could lead to improved learning and it is student leaning, after all, that is the fundamental reason for the existence of academic libraries.

References

Arizona State University Department of English (2003). Employment announcements: Assistant professor. Retrieved November 1, 2003 from http://www.asu.edu/english/employment.html.

Association of College and Research Libraries (2000). Information literacy competency standards for higher education. Retrieved January 21, 2004 from http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.htm.

Association of College and Research Libraries (2003). Introduction to information literacy. Retrieved April 15, 2004 from http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/acrlinfolit/infolitoverview/introtoinfolit/introinfolit.htm.

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Bruce, C. (1997). Seven faces of information literacy. Adelaide: AUSLIB Press. Retrieved March 19, 2004 from: http://sky.fit.qut.edu.au/~bruce/inflit/faces/faces1.htm.

Kapitzke, C. (2003). Information literacy: A positivist epistemology and a politics of outformation [sic]. Educational Theory, 58(1), 37-53.

Marcum, J. M. (2002). Rethinking information literacy. Library Quarterly, 72(1), 1-26.

McDonald, J. & Micikas, L. (1994). Academic libraries: The dimensions of their effectiveness. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Schmersahl, C. B. (1987). Teaching library research: Process, not product. Journal of Teaching Writing, 6, 231-238.

Shapiro, Jeremy J. & Hughes, Shelley K. (1996). Information literacy as a liberal art. Educom Review, 31(2). Retrieved March 10, 2004 from http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewArticles/31231.html.

Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. New York: HarperCollins.

Wisner, W. H. (2000). Whither the postmodern library: Libraries, technology, and education in the information age. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

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