Informatiton Literacy in a New Light

Last night, I was reading two books: one on teaching Information Literacy, and “A Splendor of Letters” by Nicholas Basbanes. I felt a warm meeting of the two books. I began to look once again at IL, not as an information scientist, but as a humanist. In this transition, my mind began to shift from cold information to inspiring ideas. I feel that we, as librarians, often approach IL as if we were an animated instruction manual. In doing so, we run the risk of dehumanizing the treasure that we have to offer. We focus on solving information problems and don’t talk as much about enriching minds. The intellectual life, which it is our job to support, is not about data as much as it is about ideas. Ideas inspire, but data usually does not.

I think that it is time that we add a little more humanity in the way that we teach IL. I think that our goal as librarians should be more than instructing. We should play a part in whetting the intellectual appetites of our students. We should seek to inspire. What if, instead of talking about finding articles, we talked about finding ideas? What if, instead of talking about information problems, we talked about answers to life’s questions? We, in our collections, whether traditional or electronic have some of the best minds in the world. Perhaps it is time that we started bragging about them a little.