How do you understand information literacy, and how do you see it shaping the work of reference and instruction librarians? What are some critical, ethical, and/or political dimensions of information literacy?
Information literacy has little to do with how familiar a user is with the mechanics of Catalyst or how quickly one can find specific resources. This kind of rote pathfinding may necessarily incur skills relevant to improving information literacy, but it is not, by itself, proof of information literacy.
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) stresses the process of “reflective discovery of information” as the realm where information literacy enacts itself. The ACRL Framework of Information Literacy in Higher Education expands on the reflective component by tying information literacy to the understanding of how knowledge (i.e. information) is produced, disseminated. Put in the words of Emily Drabinski and Eamon Tewell, this means confronting the “sociopolitical dimensions of information…” and engaging in “critique[ing] the ways in which systems of power shape the creation, distribution, and reception of information.”
As a principle, I have no trouble understanding it at all. The objectives are clear and to someone who has had considerable exposure to the standpoints of the subaltern, to the (hurtful) biases of dominant narratives and hegemonic ideals, and to the essential value of knowing one’s social location. Seeing it from my perspective, information literacy can be boiled down to its essence that simply unveils the fact that no information is neutral: not in creation, not in promotion, not in discovery, and certainly not in usage. Knowing this allows for productive tensions when evaluating information. Such as it is, then, information literacy is a skill integral to forwarding of social justice causes by way of disrobing and dismantling oppressive information and information structures.
Where I falter is in understanding how it is that one becomes sufficiently literate. Does one have to understand not just the labor that went into the production of a work but also the practices that led it to be accessible to the reader? Does it mean library users should interrogate, in ways that go beyond just thinking about it, the ways “relevancy” is attuned, the avaricious greed of publishers, the limits of subject headings, the meaning of metadata, and so on and so on. I don’t know.
At this point in my confusion, I would turn to reference instruction librarians who are, as I see them, guides towards information and information literacy. The reference work, such as that done in help chats or in-person reference desk shifts, is necessarily inflected by a need to contextualize the resources they share with students and other library users. Similar things, I expect, could be said for the actual search process. Communicating the history, context, and construction of authority may come in small snippets or perhaps can be prompted directly by a library user. Unfortunately, the shifts where I tag along at the reference desk have been quiet, and the extent to which information literacy can be taught and extolled is limited when all people come for are scissors and tissues.
There are also the lecturing/instructor sessions that reference librarians engage in. These sessions can be, as was the case for the Zotero one that I shadowed, fairly mechanic and tutorial like as opposed to involving critical thinking. But they can also be grounds for the pedagogical elements of information literacy to take roots. In the current era of where “decolonizing the curriculum” is in vogue, questions about the construction of knowledge canons or the worths of particular works can be brought up seamlessly in conversations about library services or the researching process.
Still, for students, researchers, and other library users, the extent to which they interact with information varies greatly. This makes the encounters with the ethical/political dimensions of information literacy far from universal. Paywalls are good examples of this. Being on campus, library users may never encounter them if they stay internal to the resources the college provides, and so the ethical quandaries of publicly funded research being gatekept for others may never cross their minds. Neither would their experiences arouse questions about the ethics of pirating or the political consequences of devaluing open-access movements. This is not to say that these hypothetical students would never forward their information literacy. Perhaps their exposure to standard sites would nurture an instinct for what kind of information is reputable – though perhaps not with the critical questions of why information is seen as reputable.
Some disciplines are in the midst of reckoning with their so-called canons, and so some students may already be primed to think about the construction of authority and the valuation of information before they even engage with library services.
Other dimensions of information literacy contend with the encoding of information’s metadata or in the sorting of information, which allows the library to be physical grounds for this kind of discovery. Perhaps students would encounter oddly placed (that is oddly catalogued) books or articles and begin to interrogate assumptions of neutrality or objectivity within library systems. Or they might see that there are gaps in what the library offers and question why certain histories, stories, or informations are not present.
In the end, information literacy necessitates a kind of consciousness raising that can be facilitated by reference instruction librarians or be self-started by dissonances library users encounter and interrogate. How far that is taken, and how much of it becomes subconscious are perennially open questions. Information literacy is an active, self-reflexive aptitude that is not always active. It is an active pursuit that is worth taking on.