Politically and Socially Empowering Information Literacy

What are the politically and socially empowering dimensions of information literacy? In what way can information literacy be perceived as an oppressive force? Do we need to reclaim information literacy as an empowering force? Andrew Whitworth, University of Manchester, turns to political theory to explore these issues further in a new article:

"The politically and socially empowering dimensions of information literacy” by Andrew Whitworth, University of Manchester -

Her article focuses on supporting students for a successful transition from secondary to higher education in a Sub-Saharan Africa context and argues for developing information literacy capability from an early age as key to facilitating research skills later on.  She shares some online resources that can be useful for supporting secondary school-age students where there may not be formal IL training and highlights the challenge that there is a lack of locally-developed online resou

I’m delighted to announce that a series of four articles focusing on preparing children and young students for the transition through to higher education and lifelong learning on Chat Literacy is now complete.

The articles focus on supporting young learners’ information literacy through ICTs and on the potential role of librarians at different stages: pre-school; elementary; secondary and the transition to high school and beyond.

The series has been written by Hui-Yun Sung, Assistant Professor at the Graduate Institute of Library and Information Science, National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan.  Hui-Yun was one of the expert participants during last years’ Chat Literacy e-discussion on 'our conceptions of information literacy in an intern

Hello,

I have just blogged on the similarities and differences of KB and KM.

Please find the blogpost here. 

As a Latin American I have always been wary of the risk of mis-representation in research on developing nations which is carried out from a developed-nation perspective. On the one hand I believe we always function from specific positions that enable us or disable us, empower us or disempower us; on the other hand I believe it is possible to at least try to recognise all that we can’t possibly know given those positions. In other words this is to say that this is a post that was very difficult to write for me. I attempted to back up any claims with the consulted research and to offer a balanced, yet accessible perspective. It is a blog post, not a research paper, so what I can and cann

Josiline Phiri is the Faculty Librarian based at University of Zimbabwe.  She is just back in Zimbabwe after a three month secondment to Belgium to participate in an international training programme at the University of Antwerp called Lib@web - management of electronic information and digital libraries.  Part of the programme involved a number of library visits to the academic universities in Flanders. Information literacy was a key aspect of discussions. 

Read Josiline's article in full on the Chat Literacy Network at: “Information Literacy in Flanders: A reflection of the lib@web experience”.

Future directions for IL: key trends, priorities and implications

It is forty years since Paul Zurkowski introduced “information literacy” as a term in a paper written in 1974 to support the development of a National Program on Library and Information Services in the USA.  Peter Underwood takes Zurkowski’s vision as a starting point for an article for Chat Literacy in which he outlines his thoughts on information literacy in 2013.  You can read Peter Underwood’s article in full at “Future directions for information literacy: key trends, priorities and implications”(to add a comment yourself you will need to join/log in to