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Ilene F. Rockman is the manager of the Information Competence Initiative for the Office of the Chancellor of the twenty-three campuses of the California State University System.

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<b>Praise for <i>Integrating Information Literacy into the Higher Education Curriculum</i></b> <p>"This book should be read and acted upon by all higher educators who are trying to improve the academic performance, success, satisfaction, retention, and ultimate graduation rate of first-year students."<br />—<b>John N. Gardner</b>, executive director, Policy Center on the First Year of College, and distinguished professor of educational leadership, Brevard College</p> <p>"This book offers practical advice and proven strategies for university faculty and librarians who want college students to become information literate."<br />—<b>Lorie Roth</b>, assistant vice chancellor, the California State University System</p> <p>"A very practical guide for higher education leaders, faculty, and librarians to guide them in integrating information literacy throughout the curriculum so that students will graduate with appropriate information skills for productive work in the information society."<br />—<b>Hannelore B. Rader</b>, dean, University Libraries, University of Louisville</p> <p>"With this work Ilene Rockman and associates have done a major service for educators needing pragmatic guidance in ensuring twenty-first century students achieve information mastery. Necessary reading!"<br />—<b>Cheryl LaGuardia</b>, head of instructional services, the Harvard College Library, Widener Library, research services, Harvard University</p> "The contributors to this book got it exactly right: it takes a whole campus to produce an information-literate graduate."<br /> –<b>George D. Kuh</b>, chancellor’s professor, and director, Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University <p>The American Library Association's Presidential Committee defines information literacy as "the ability to know when information is needed and to be able to know, locate, and effectively use that information for lifelong learning and problem solving." Increasingly, educators are expressing concern that students are not developing the ability to critically analyze the messages they receive from television, the Internet, and other media sources. Students also lack the abilities needed to effectively utilize the myriad information sources available to them.</p> <p>Research has shown that in order to develop information literacy skills, students must be given repeated opportunities throughout their college years to acquire and exercise these skills in their daily lives. Integrating Information Literacy into the Higher Education Curriculum is filled with information and practical examples from a wide variety of institutions that show how information literacy programs and partnerships can transform the higher education teaching and learning environments. The contributors to this important resource are experts in the field and include such leaders as Pam Baker, Amelie Brown, Lynn Cameron, Renée R. Curry, Susan Carol Curzon, Trudi E. Jacobson, Bonnie Gratch Lindauer, Ilene F. Rockman, and Patrick Sullivan. The Foreword is by Patricia Senn Breivik.</p> <p>The contributors address various practices of information literacy that have proven successful at two- and four-year institutions and cover topics such as</p> <ul> <li>Developing faculty-librarian partnerships</li> <li>Integrating information literacy into the curriculum</li> <li>Designing freshman-level tutorials to promote information literacy</li> <li>Meeting information literacy needs in a research setting</li> <li>Infusing information literacy into an interdisciplinary major</li> <li>Creating an assessment instrument for measuring information literacy</li> <li>Assessing information literacy</li> </ul> <p>Educators and administrators will find <i>Integrating Information Literacy into the Higher Education Curriculum</i> to be a valuable resource for integrating information competence strategies into the academic structure and helping all their students to become skilled at finding, evaluating, analyzing, integrating, managing, and conveying information effectively.</p>

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"The contributors to this book got it exactly right: it takes a whole campus to produce an information-literate graduate."
-George D. Kuh, chancellor's professor, and director, Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University

The American Library Association's Presidential Committee defines information literacy as "the ability to know when information is needed and to be able to know, locate, and effectively use that information for lifelong learning and problem solving." Increasingly, educators are expressing concern that students are not developing the ability to critically analyze the messages they receive from television, the Internet, and other media sources. Students also lack the abilities needed to effectively utilize the myriad information sources available to them.

Research has shown that in order to develop information literacy skills, students must be given repeated opportunities throughout their college years to acquire and exercise these skills in their daily lives. Integrating Information Literacy into the Higher Education Curriculum is filled with information and practical examples from a wide variety of institutions that show how information literacy programs and partnerships can transform the higher education teaching and learning environments. The contributors to this important resource are experts in the field and include such leaders as Pam Baker, Amelie Brown, Lynn Cameron, Renée R. Curry, Susan Carol Curzon, Trudi E. Jacobson, Bonnie Gratch Lindauer, Ilene F. Rockman, and Patrick Sullivan. The Foreword is by Patricia Senn Breivik.

The contributors address various practices of information literacy that have proven successful at two- and four-year institutions and cover topics such as

• Developing faculty-librarian partnerships
• Integrating information literacy into the curriculum
• Designing freshman-level tutorials to promote information literacy
• Meeting information literacy needs in a research setting
• Infusing information literacy into an interdisciplinary major
• Creating an assessment instrument for measuring information literacy
• Assessing information literacy

Educators and administrators will find Integrating Information Literacy into the Higher Education Curriculum to be a valuable resource for integrating information competence strategies into the academic structure and helping all their students to become skilled at finding, evaluating, analyzing, integrating, managing, and conveying information effectively.

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Integrating Information Literacy into the Higher Education Curriculum

Jossey-Bass

Introduction

Ilene F. Rockman

Information literacy is no longer just a library issue. It is the critical campuswide issue for the twenty-first century, of keen importance to all educational stakeholders, including administrators, faculty, librarians, media and information technologists, assessment coordinators, faculty development directors, service learning specialists, student affairs personnel, and career development professionals. Broadly defined, information literacy is a set of abilities that allow a person to recognize when information is needed and to effectively and efficiently act on that need.

Why is information literacy important? The increasingly complex world in which we live now contains an abundance of information choices-print, electronic, image, spatial, sound, visual, and numeric. The issue is no longer one of not having enough information; it is just the opposite-too much information, in various formats and not all of equal value. In a time of more than 17 million Internet sites, three billion Web pages, and more than a million items in a typical medium-sized academic library, the ability to act confidently (and not be paralyzed by information overload) is critical to academic success and personal self-directed learning.

Lorie Roth aptly describes the current information environment and the pitfalls facing college and university students: "With the explosion of information generated and stored, the unregulated sprawl of the Internet, the shift from a print- to an image-based culture, the development of sound and video archives, and the ease of seemingly infinite reproduction of words and pictures through electronic media, the pitfalls for college students have multiplied geometrically. There is so much information, so much of it of doubtful quality, so accessible through so many different platforms" (Roth, 1999, p. 42).

Individuals who are knowledgeable about finding, evaluating, analyzing, integrating, managing, and conveying information to others efficiently and effectively are held in high esteem. These are the students, workers, and citizens who are most successful at solving problems, providing solutions, and producing new ideas and directions for the future. They are lifelong learners.

Today's students, then, can benefit throughout their lives from learning a process for becoming information literate-that is, acquiring the skills required to intelligently and systematically find, interpret, select, evaluate, organize, and use information for a specific purpose.

Within the college or university environment, it is also important for students to be able to build upon the foundation of information literacy knowledge by successfully transferring this learning from course to course, understanding the critical and empowering role of information in a free and democratic society, and demonstrating ethical behavior and academic integrity as consumers, as well as producers, of information.

Ernest Boyer recognized that facilitating that empowering role of information is an important goal of education. In 1994, he stated that "information is, in fact, our most precious resource. In such a world, education should empower everyone, not the few. But for information to become knowledge, and ultimately, one hopes, wisdom, it must be organized. And, in this new climate, the public interest challenge, beyond access and equity is, I believe, sorting and selection. The challenge of educators is to help students make sense of a world described by some as 'information overload'" (Boyer, 1997, p. 140).

It was also noted several years later by the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University that "undergraduate education should be designed as a continuum that prepares students for continued learning and professional work through developing their talents to formulate questions and seek answers" (Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University, 2001, p. 18). Information literacy is a key component for doing so.

What Is Information Literacy?

It is not uncommon to think of information literacy as the fusion or integration of library literacy, computer literacy, media literacy, technological literacy, critical thinking, ethics, and communication skills (Work Group on Information Competence, 1995).

The Information Competency Standards for Higher Education, produced by the Association of College and Research Libraries, notes that information literacy forms the basis for lifelong learning, is common to all disciplines, to all learning environments, and to all levels of education. It enables learners to master content, become self-directed learners, and assume greater control over their own learning. An information-literate individual is able to

Determine the extent of information needed

Access the needed information effectively and efficiently

Evaluate information and its sources critically

Incorporate selected information into his or her knowledge base

Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose

Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally (http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/ACRL/ Standards_and_Guidelines/Information_Literacy_Competency_ Standards_for_Higher_Education.htm).

Evolution of Information Literacy

Is information literacy a new concept? In actuality, we can trace the origins of information literacy back to hundreds of years ago. Some accounts state that it originated with early library instruction courses in the nineteenth century (Grassian and Kaplowitz, 2001, p. 14), while others trace it to the beginning of the twentieth century (Evans, 1914). In 1956, Patricia Knapp posited the notion that library instruction should be a central component of a student's college experiences, stating that "Competence in library use, like competence in reading, is clearly not a skill to be acquired once and for all at any one given level in any one given course. It is, rather, a complex of knowledge, skills, and attitudes which must be developed over a period of time through repeated and varied experiences in the use of library resources" (Knapp, 1956, p. 224).

Faculty-librarian partnerships have been a salient component of such information literacy programs for the past several decades. In the 1970s, such collaborations included partnerships to develop competence in the use of the library for research purposes (Farber, 1974); partnerships to integrate library instruction into discipline courses (Dittmar, 1977); and partnerships to develop a yearlong integrated group of core courses for first-year students, including a library research course, to assist in the retention of underrepresented students (Rockman, 1978).

We can also look to 1989, the year of the American Library Association's Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, chaired by Patricia Senn Breivik, as a turning point in the visibility and advancement of information literacy just at a time when online information resources were becoming prevalent on most college and university campuses. The committee issued a final report that identified information literacy "as a survival skill in the information age," noting that "information literate people are those who have learned how to learn. They are people prepared for lifelong learning, because they can always find the information needed for any task or decision at hand." In addition, the report asserted that "people who are information literate-who know how to acquire knowledge and use it-are America's most valuable resource" (American Library Association, Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, 1989).

The following year, 1990, Breivik founded the National Forum on Information Literacy, a coalition of over ninety business, education, technology, media, and other organizations, to raise awareness of and share new developments in information literacy among K-12 and higher education, government offices, the business and workforce communities, and international constituencies. The forum meets several times a year in Washington, D.C., and pursues activities that examine the role of information in society. The forum supports, initiates, and monitors information literacy projects both in the United States and abroad; actively encourages the creation and adoption of information literacy guidelines; and works with teacher education programs to ensure that those new to the profession are able to incorporate information literacy into their teaching. All of these activities are committed to empowering individuals with the skills they need to function successfully in the Information Age (National Forum on Information Literacy, n.d.).

Several years later, in 1995, the California State University (CSU), the largest system of higher education in North America, with twenty-three campuses, over 400,000 students, and 44,000 faculty and staff members, created its Information Competence Initiative (http://www.calstate.edu/LS/infocomp.shtml) under the leadership of Susan Curzon of California State University, Northridge. The initiative was designed to help faculty and students think differently about how information is located, managed, evaluated, and used. Efforts resulted in the development of an information literacy presence on each of the twenty-three CSU campuses, the development of course-integrated and Web-based interactive instructional tutorials on information literacy. and summer faculty development workshops to help professors rethink and revise their assignment and curricular offerings. In addition, the initiative facilitated outreach efforts to high schools and community colleges to assist students in their transition to the university and help them succeed academically in their classes, support for a campus online information competence graduation requirement, the creation of various information literacy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, the integration of information competence principles into the learning outcomes of academic disciplines, and the assessment of student information competence skills and abilities.

In 2000, the Association of College and Research Libraries issued a landmark document, Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, which included performance indicators and learning outcomes that could be used to assess student progress (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2000). This document has had widespread influence on colleges and universities across the nation, as well as internationally, with translations into Spanish and Greek. A year after its publication, it was endorsed by the American Association for Higher Education.

Information literacy is not a concept limited to the United States. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has an organizational section devoted to information literacy, which brings together librarians from around the world. The topic is of keen interest to educators in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America, Mexico, Asia, and Africa (Rader, 1996; Bruce, Candy, and Klaus, 2000). In 2002, the First International Conference on Information Technology and Information Literacy was held, further increasing the visibility of information literacy in higher education around the world (http://www.iteu.gla.ac.uk/elit/itilit2002/index.html).

Information Literacy, Computer Literacy, and Information Technology

Computer ownership does not guarantee information literacy; students can use information technology to manipulate data and create documents without demonstrating information literacy skills. One cannot discount the enormous impact that technology has had in transforming the educational landscape in the past several decades and in making information easier to access, but technology alone does not make one information literate.

Shapiro and Hughes (1996) recognize and point out the differences between information literacy and computer use, noting, "Information and computer literacy, in the conventional sense, are functionally valuable technical skills. But information literacy should in fact be conceived more broadly as a new liberal art that extends from knowing how to use computers and access information to critical reflection on the nature of information itself, its technical infrastructure, and its social, cultural and even philosophical context and impact-as essential to the mental framework of the educated information-age citizen as the trivium of basic liberal arts (grammar, logic and rhetoric) was to the educated person in medieval society."

The National Research Council also discussed information literacy and information technology in the 1999 document Being Fluent with Information Technology. The report states:

Information literacy focuses on content and communication: it encompasses authoring, information finding and organization, research, and information analysis, assessment, and evaluation. Content can take many forms: text, images, video, computer simulations, and multimedia interactive works. Content can also serve many purposes: news, art, entertainment, education, research and scholarship, advertising, politics, commerce, and documents and records that structure activities of everyday business and personal life. Information literacy subsumes but goes far beyond the traditional textual literacy that has been considered part of a basic education (the ability to read, write, and critically analyze various forms of primarily textual literary works or personal and business documents). By contrast, FITness focuses on a set of intellectual capabilities, conceptual knowledge, and contemporary skills associated with information technology. ... Both information literacy and FITness are essential for individuals to use information technology effectively. [National Research Council, 1999, pp. 48-50]

Several prominent individuals from the worlds of finance and commerce have also recognized the value of information literacy. Anthony Comper, president of the Bank of Montreal, told the 1999 graduating class at the University of Toronto that information literacy is essential to future success: "Whatever else you bring to the 21st century workplace, however great your technical skills and however attractive your attitude and however deep your commitment to excellence, the bottom line is that to be successful, you need to acquire a high level of information literacy. What we need in the knowledge industries are people who know how to absorb and analyze and integrate and create and effectively convey information-and who know how to use information to bring real value to everything they undertake." ("Information Literacy Key to Success ...," 1999).

Taizo Nishimura, former president, now retired, of the Toshiba Corporation adds, "Information literacy is the ability to solve problems, taking advantage of information technology and networks. Information literacy is not a new concept, rather a traditional one in terms of problem solving" (Nishimura, 1999).

Terry Crane, former vice president for education products at America Online, states, "Young people need a baseline of communication, analytical, and technical skills. We are no longer teaching about technology, but about information literacy-which is a process of turning information into meaning, understanding, and new ideas. Students need the thinking, reasoning, and civic abilities that enable them to succeed in-and ultimately lead-a contemporary democratic economy, workforce, and society" (Sanford, 2000).

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