Development of information literacy: Changing attitudes and new roles of the libraries in the 21st
century.
Varga Katalin Dr.
<>
Pécsi Tudományegyetem
Information literacy is one of the most important key competencies of the 21st century knowledge societies. As long as we do not recognize that it is much more than just knowing to use the digital technology, it will never fulfill its real mission. People in the information age need special weapons to be able to win in the war against information overload, and manipulation. The information literate person knows how to learn, how knowledge is organized, and how to find, organize and use information.
Information literacy is not a new topic, especially in the field of library and information science, but in Eastern-European countries it is not really manifest in public education and higher education programs. Education policy makers are dealing only with the problems of digital literacy, and do not want to take into consideration, that it is necessary to have much broader information competencies in order to survive in the 21st century.
The Institute of Library and Information Science at the University of Pécs since 2006 is focusing its research on information literacy. Our students can take different courses about information literacy, possibilities and methods of its instruction, critical thinking education, or professional information retrieval methods. Several theses were written in the last five-six years about the topic. Our goal is to educate young people, who not only are information literate, but also are able to educate other people to acquire information literacy competencies.
At the moment we are in the fase of integrating our results, and creating a new model and indicators for the public and higher education institutes and libraries of Hungary. Based on the collected data and the international experiences we plan to create an information literacy education model and a set of indicators and standards for Hungary. We are sure that having clear standards and strategies could help in struggle against digital divide.