I had planned to write something semi-intelligent about the gamut of literacy needs we deal with these days. However, I’m just holding my head above the water of dealing with Miss4’s chicken pox and my other home responsibilities that it isn’t going to happen.
Suffice it to say that it is beginning to feel like information literacy isn’t the only thing the library is dealing with these days. When I began in the reference team back in 2001, I think we mostly dealt with information literacy type questions. Now, we face so much more. I can remember the arguments ..er.. frank discussions about whether we should be answering questions about Word or not. Now, the question is “can we have a training session on Word tips and tricks please, to help us at the desk?” I’m not saying this is good or bad, it’s just how things have changed.
I know that the population at MPOW have very low reading, writing and comprehension rates in some courses. There are ways this is being addressed.
It does concern me that young people are coming to us with such low rates of literacy.
It also concerns me when newsletters, reports and other communications from my son’s school come home with spelling mistakes, the incorrect use of words like loose, lose, there, their, they’re. Hmmm… maybe the two are related?
Since Miss4 is ranting about itchiness I shall leave you to discuss this topic amongst yourselves.
Hi Penny, if you are at a university library then yes, i would say you do need to offer some sort of digital literacy to do with the software run on public/student access computers. is this not the case? If we were a swimming pool would we not offer learn to swim classes, or improve your technique classes?
I think that the library profession is strongly linked with IT and that all librarians should have basic skills and understanding and reference librarians should have higher level of skills to be able to assist patrons.
Librarianship is changing and we need to change to stay relevant to our users and core mission.
Oh I agree entirely 🙂 There have been others who did not 🙂 But yes, things have changed and it is now a necessary thing. Having said that, I wouldn’t expect librarians to have knowledge of specialised computing programs used by, say, our engineering students. But, the generic software build on our library PCs – yes we need to know and teach this. I do sometimes struggle with the isolation of information literacy from digital literacy and other academic literacies.. I wonder if we as a profession are being patch protective? In my mind they are so inter-related that I wonder if it is just better to look at them as a whole.