Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The Moral Dimension of Info Literacy

In a new Library Journal post, Barbara Fister discusses the tension between digital resources and the values important to librarians:

"When we fall into the trap of spending 50 minutes helping students learn how to find sources, as if acquiring and displaying them is the point of research, we imply that knowledge is other people’s property, procured and exchanged but not influenced by the student’s own life experience, thoughts, or beliefs. [Paulo] Freire believed that education should instead be 'the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.' . . .

"Our teaching practices should present libraries as more than the Bank of Sources, from which usable phrases can be withdrawn as needed. They should be workshops, labs, studios, or hacker spaces, where students engage with ideas and invent their own, through conversation with others interested in the same things. They should be places where students develop their own identities as they learn the critical habits that civil society requires."

Check out the full article for several complementary publications that inform her thinking.