National Information Literacy Awareness Month — October
News Posted: October 1st, 2012__________________________________________________________________________________________
To raise awareness of Information Literacy goals that support 21st Century learning, the National Forum on Information Literacy (NFIL) is working to gain gubernatorial support for public policy proclamations. Governors in ten states have issued Information Literacy Awareness Proclamations (MA, MO, MT, NY, IL, TX, OR, RI, AK and IN) that support educational and workplace communities. An additional twenty-four states and one U.S. territory have committed to draft and seek gubernatorial information literacy proclamations (AL, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, ID, KS, KY, LA, MD, NE, NH, NJ, NM, OH, OK, PA, SC, UT, VA, WY and the Virgin Islands).
NFIL began this initiative with a recommendation to President Barack Obama, who proclaimed the first National Information Literacy Awareness month in October, 2009. Dr. Caroline Stern of Ferris State University, a former Michigan Association of Governing Boards’ Teacher of the Year recipient and a UNESCO information literacy expert and trainer notes that “In becoming masters of information, learners and workers must incorporate information literacy practice within their individual skill sets.” In both educational and workplace settings information literacy competencies related to effectively selecting, evaluating and making use of information sources are needed to provide informed solutions. As such, information literacy concepts are in demand nationally by employers to sustain business and competitive advantage.
During Information Literacy Awareness Month — 2012, we encourage you to contact us about the ways you can incorporate information literacy concepts and skills into your courses. For additional information about services, you can consult the Information Literacy (Infolit) web site at http://infolit.ucf.edu or contact us at infolit@ucf.edu
The UCF libraries provide several ways to integrate information literacy concepts and skills into your courses, including:
- Assigning one or more of the fourteen online information literacy modules (http://infolit.ucf.edu/faculty) in your face-to-face or webcourse
- Scheduling a library instruction session (http://library.ucf.edu/Reference/Instruction/)
- Including an embedded librarian in your webcourses (contact Elizabeth Killingsworth)
- Informing students about the availability of library research consultations
(1-hour consultation) (http://library.ucf.edu/Reference/ResearchConsultations/Default.asp)
Sources:
Purdue Libraries (2012, May). Picking up momentum – information literacy state proclamation initiative. Retrieved from http://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/2012/05/01/picking-up-momentum-information-literacy-state-proclamation-initiative
Weiner, S. A. (2012, September). 2012 Information literacy campaign. Retrieved from http://infolit.org/2012-il-campaign
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