via ACRLog
I was a bit surprised by the numbers, but I am also aware that these are stats form 2006. Call me a pessimist, but I don’t think the numbers may have changed in the past two years. Here is an excerpt from the ACRLog introduction:
For all the time this profession has put into promoting the information literacy concept, I was surprised that data from the National Center for Educational Statistic’s report Academic Libraries 2006 showed an underwhelming lack of penetration into or acceptance by academic institutions. Table 13 has data for the percentage of academic institutions reporting information literacy activities. There are five indicators of information literacy activity. They are:
1. defined information literacy or information literate student
2. incorporated information literacy into institution’s mission
3. incorporated information literacy into institution’s strategic plan
4. has institution-wide committee to implement strategic plan for information literacy
5. strategic plan formally recognizes the library’s role in information literacy instructionFirst, here at the corresponding percentages for each of those five items:
1. 48.4
2. 34.3
3. 30.4
4. 17.6
5. 24.8
We have been going through some assessments at Buffalo State College to measure information literacy, and the more I try to come up with ways to “score” information literacy, the more I think its futile to give a numerical value to this particular skill set. I wish there was a Jung/Myers/Briggs-like assessment for information literacy skills. I did a quick search, and even found a research paper discussing how personality types affect information seeking behavior (Five personality dimensions and their influence on information behaviour). Perhaps instead of looking to measure how well a person can do a specific information literacy skill, or ability to find a particular source, we need to measure what kind of information literacy skills we are good at, and also realize our weaker information literacy skills.
