Information literacy is becoming an ever-increasing issue as Universities across the nation are encountering more and more dilemmas. In today’s college world, students are finding it much simpler to refer to sources such as Google or Wikipedia for research papers. Not only are they accessible by one click of a button, but they give immediate results. This, however, has been plaguing professors and college teachers everywhere. More Universities are implementing plans that involve “Computer Literacy” classes; classes that review and show students how to use resources provided by the campus such as online databases. Cal State was one of the first campuses to institute a program such as this, and claim that the results are worthwhile. Now, as time has moved on, more universities are setting requirements for “literacy competency”; settings prerequisites such as maintaining at least a C in a library class. Stanley Wilder, with the University of Rochester has a differing view; he believes that with technology improving as rapidly as it is, soon databases and library resources will be just as easy to use as Google. As a result, he finds these programs a waste. There are many different viewpoints on this controversial subject, but one thing is known: students don’t have the proper knowledge on these databases to perform the tasks asked of them.
I believe that it’s great that these programs are becoming more prevalent in Universities these days. For my Eng 201 class, our teacher actually setup a class for such instruction. We went to the library and a Librarian showed us how to work the catalog and databases and I believe it helped me find information much easier in the future. I agree somewhat with Stanley Wilder in the fact that technology should be creating revenues that allow students to find information in a much easier and quicker manner; however, these technologies are not in place at Universities at this time. Taking this into consideration, I support the movement for information literacy and also hope that in the near future it will be much easier for students to locate and use resources available to them.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
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2 comments:
Hello RJM,
My point about information literacy is not so much that search complexity is going away, but that library instruction should be teaching something more substantive. By substantive, I mean making students more sophisticated users of the discipline-specific literatures they use.
Stanley,
Now of UNC-Charlotte
"Others, like Stanley Wilder, associate dean of the River Campus libraries at the University of Rochester, criticize their colleagues for treating information literacy as if it should be a separate academic discipline.
"It's kind of a path to irrelevancy because information seeking is going to become simpler," he said. "It's becoming simpler every day.""
This is an excerpt from the reading, “Information Navigation 101” by Andrea Foster which we were assigned to read for my Library 103 class. I was summarizing what I read from this text. It sounds as though your argument may be with what Andrea Foster has to say about your stance on the subject. I now have an improved understanding of what you mean.
Thanks for your time,
Ryan
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