Rethinking information literacy in a Globalized world

Abstract

As a profession, librarians have an important and unique role to play in higher education in producing information literate students equipped to be successful in a complex, twenty-first century global society. It is our contention that our guiding professional information literacy definitions and standards need to be reconsidered in order to remain relevant within the global learning context. Our preliminary conclusion is that the predominantly skills-based approach facilitated by the current ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, is not sufficient to facilitate teaching of twenty-first century "deep information literacy," which we feel encompasses additional content-based engagement with the social, cultural, economic and political contexts of information access, retrieval, use, and creation. Within the global education context, the ways we may engage with such an expanded notion of information literacy and the challenges associated with this, are discussed.