Information Literacy Instruction: Theory and Practice (2nd edition)

Citation

Sturges, P. (2010), "Information Literacy Instruction: Theory and Practice (2nd edition)", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 66 No. 3, pp. 457-458. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220411011038502

This is a heavy book, both in weight (over a kilo of alkaline paper that meets the relevant paper permanence standards) and in its approach to the topic. It is, in effect addressed to the librarian who wants to go out and put on the very best possible programme of information literacy instruction for the students entrusted to her/his care. The desire for excellence is certainly admirable, but the question as to what exactly it is that will be excellent in a particular context has to be answered first. In this case is it actually a massively thorough course of instruction that does everything that a librarian might ask of it, or might it be something much more light‐footed and responsive to expressed student needs? Probably the authors would reply that they have covered the range of needs and instructional responses, and that their book does not necessarily point towards an armoured assault on the well‐fortified stronghold of incomprehension. Be that as it may, the subliminal message conveyed by these 400 pages is that only thoroughness, comprehensiveness, persistence and the deployment of a full armoury of library knowledge and pedagogic technique will do.

The book first equips the instructor's armoury with a full range of definitions. These are fine, except for the clear sense that the authors are dealing with a concept and practice that is the property of librarians. On page 5 they actually state that ‘the primary advocates for the concept continue to be librarians’. This may or may not be true, but that is not the point. Information literacy, or something more or less the same under another name such as computer literacy, digital literacy, media literacy, civic literacy, or critical literacy, is a pervasive concept and nothing at all is gained by claiming it for librarians. In fact, something may almost certainly be lost. Chapter Two is a history of information literacy instruction which roots it firmly in the practice of library education, or bibliographic instruction (BI) as it is usually known in America. The problem is that there is a case for regarding BI as a failed project that spawned thousands of programmes that were discussed in a whole library of books, reports and articles, without achieving a commensurate effect on the target group – the users. It is a gross generalisation to say that it has been unenthusiastically and unsuccessfully taught by librarians across the globe, but gross or not, the generalisation can be defended. By insisting that the essence of information literacy is to be found in librarianship, the authors effectively shepherd the reader away from the exciting new cross‐disciplinary information literacy that is emerging. This is a great pity when what they do in Chapter Three is so much to the point.

The chapter is an account of the psychology of learning. This is arguably not merely the beating heart of information literacy instruction, but of librarianship itself. The sterile concentration on the painstaking ordering of knowledge into patterns that pleased the librarian but all too often frustrated users has probably melted away in recent years. Nevertheless, it lurks in the literature of librarianship, obscuring the reality that there is no point to the practice of librarianship if it does not empower users to handle all types and forms of information independently and effectively. If we turn to the human mind and ask how it learns, then we are preparing ourselves to serve that mind in the most appropriate ways. Grassian and Kaplowitz do their professional readers a great service in taking them carefully through the theory and, in Chapter Four, the associated practice. However, in Chapter Five on “Library Anxiety” they partially shift the focus back to the labyrinthine obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge that are often created by librarianship. True, the chapter also deals with “Mental Models and Conceptual Change”, but there is a strong sense that this is a book firmly rooted in the librarianship paradigm rather than one primarily concerned with intelligent access to information and knowledge.

Today's students may harbour anxieties about library use, but these are less significant than their unacknowledged struggle to make sense of the abundant information in the multiplicity of forms that include, but are not dominated by, print provided by libraries. The chapters that follow in Part Three “Planning and Developing Information Literacy Instruction” and Part Four “Delivering Information Literacy Instruction” are also a mixture of the simply excellent and the excellent treatment of material that it might have been better not to have introduced. What they represent are an idea (information literacy) striving to emerge from a set of practices (BI) that no longer encompass, if they ever did, the range of needs. The paradigm has changed but the book is still a product of the previous mindset, despite the distance the content must have moved from the first edition of 2001. What we need now are sources of assistance that start from twenty‐first century realities, rather than beginning in the structures of the library and seeking to adjust to a post‐library world of disaggregated knowledge. Until such sources dominate the market, this book provides a mass of useful and interesting information and ideas that the reader can mine for assistance. It is a work of considerable scholarship and the skill and care that the authors have employed in creating it are always apparent.