The Associated Colleges of the South defines Information Fluency in this way:
“Using critical thinking skills and appropriate technologies, information fluency integrates the abilities to:
- Collect the information necessary to consider a problem or issue
- Employ critical thinking skills in the evaluation and analysis of the information and its sources
- Formulate logical conclusions and present those conclusions in an appropriate and effective way.”
Information fluency may be envisioned as the nexus of information literacy (i.e. the library dimension); computer literacy (i.e. the information technology dimension) and critical thinking. (Rettig 2003)
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education state that an information literate individual will be able to:
- Determine the extent of information needed
- Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
- Evaluate information and its sources critically
- Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
- Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
- Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally