Navigating Information Literacy: Your Information Society Survival Toolkit, 2nd ed.

Citation

Smith, A.G. (2009), "Navigating Information Literacy: Your Information Society Survival Toolkit, 2nd ed.", The Electronic Library, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 882-883. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470910998641

Navigating Information Literacy is oriented to tertiary students and covers information sources, personal information organisation, intellectual property, plagiarism, referencing, the evaluation of information, academic writing, and social software.

The book has an attractive A4 layout, with many diagrams, illustrations, and screenshots. The clearly structured chapters start by identifying the learning outcomes and key terms; and end with a summary and critical thinking questions. There are also “infobits” scattered through the text: short FAQs like “who created the first portals?”.

In the section on general reference works, the resources referred to are up to date, although some might argue with the statement “print‐based encyclopaedias are not used very much these days”. Wikipedia is mentioned, which is realistic given that most students (and teachers) use it. The general warning to verify information found in Wikipedia could be made more specific, for example by pointing out that the page history is a clue to newly introduced or controversial information. Along with conventional maps and atlases, online maps are discussed, using Mapquest as an example. Google Scholar is mentioned in the search engine section.

The discussion on constructing a search query uses a topical example of choosing a cell phone, but does not mention relevance ranking, which is an important concept to understand for effective use of web search engines. The chapter on searching databases covers all the search features in detail, and tucks in the end a brief discussion of search strategies: some might prefer to take the reverse approach.

The chapter on organising information on your personal computer has some useful tips on searching your hard drive, but does not mention reference managers such as EndNote.

The chapter on intellectual property has useful general advice on copyright, but does not mention that copyright legislation varies from country to country, so that much advice on the web is from a US perspective and might not apply in other countries. There is a thorough and practical discussion of plagiarism, and clear, well‐illustrated examples of Harvard referencing.

The chapter on evaluating information has good practical advice, for example on analysing the URL of a web‐based resource. There is useful information on analysing an assignment topic, for example through mind maps, and carrying out a literature search.

There is a full index, but no references or suggestions for further reading.

The authors are all teachers in the Department of Information Science at University of Pretoria, and this shows in the books strong information studies focus. Some undergraduates might find the initial discussion of the nature of information literacy a little challenging, but more information literate users will find this a useful discussion, referring as it does to standard models of information literacy such as the Big 6 model and the Australian and New Zealand information literacy framework. Undergraduates may find it daunting to be presented with several different models in the first chapter.

Navigating Information Literacy is a good basis for an undergraduate course in information skills, but could also be useful in a library studies course dealing with information literacy.