Introduction

You may be using this book for any one of a variety of reasons. It may have been assigned by a professor, in whole or in part. You may be using it to enhance your research techniques for your classes. Or you may see the importance of being savvy about information use and production and have decided to learn more on your own. After all, our world is defined by our easy access to information. In fact, as is often said, we are drowning in information.

Some is valuable. Some is worthless. And some is just fun, in its proper context. As you know, information comes in many different formats and sometimes, depending on the content, information in one format can be in any of these categories. For example, a tweet could be valuable (maybe an expert on a topic has just announced something groundbreaking), worthless (“Going shopping. Looking for socks that don’t fall down.”), or fun (I’ll let you decide what that message might be). So, it seems that information content, context, and quality matter more than what kind of package or format the information takes. You will have a chance to read more about this later in the book. And accessing information is just one component; there is also your role as an information producer. We’ll get to that, too.

You will learn a number of ways to enhance your abilities to work with the information that surrounds you. So let’s start at the beginning. This book is entitled The Information Literacy User’s Guide. If you are information literate, you are adept at working with information. But a user’s guide can still be of assistance, since there are so many components to information. While you will find elements in this book that you are totally up to speed on, there will be others that you have less familiarity with. Hence, the value of a user’s guide.

This book is arranged using a model called the SCONUL Seven Pillars of Information Literacy (http://www.sconul.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/coremodel.pdf). The model was developed in the United Kingdom, and revised in 2011, to reflect today’s information world. As you would expect, its visual representation shows pillars, each one labeled with a one-word access point to the larger concept of information literacy. The seven pillars, with short explanatory descriptions, are:

• Identify (understanding your information need)
• Scope (knowing what is available)
• Plan (developing research strategies)
• Gather (finding what you need)
• Evaluate (assessing your research process and findings)
• Manage (organizing information effectively and ethically)
• Present (sharing what you’ve learned)

Each of the seven areas incorporates both abilities and understandings. The abilities include what an individual can do. The understandings cover both attitude and behaviors. For example, someone might be aware that they should carefully evaluate the information they find and know how to go about it, yet not care enough to actually do it. Abilities and understandings work together to enable information literacy. Near the beginning of each chapter, you will find pertinent abilities and understandings lists taken from the Seven Pillars model.

This introductory chapter is intended to be short, and will end with an important recommendation: As you learn from this textbook, remember to reflect on your new knowledge, skills, and attitudes. What are you doing differently? Did you find particular new approaches to locating or sharing information that work better? Why? Are you evaluating information more consistently? Differently? Do you feel more comfortable as an information producer? If you continue to ask yourself questions like these, and follow through based on your responses, your proficiency with information will last far beyond your memory of reading this textbook.