information literacy

information literacy

Reading – for engagement, inspiration, discovery, and more!

Reading – for engagement, inspiration, discovery, and more!

  Many departments on campus are partnering with the library to make READ posters.  These posters, conceived in 1985 by the American Library Association, promote the value and excitement of reading and other forms of literacy. Celebrity authors and media personalities are featured. At IU East, we’re featuring our own stars – staff and faculty who posed with their favorite books, sharing a variety of interests! The Campus Library staff have diverse interests and expertise, and are eager to assist you. Information literacy is the ability to evaluate and apply information to your needs.  Critical thinking skills enable you to analyze and problem-solve any situation.  Media literacy  helps you understand when you’re being manipulated, and also helps you identify when … Continued
Media Savvy

Media Savvy

Media Literacy Week is coming up, starting November 6th, and it is perfectly timed as you think about sources and what you want to include in your upcoming papers and projects. Media literacy is vital to anyone, teaching you how to understand and critique the many messages news, entertainment, advertising, and more send to you, and protecting you from manipulation by those who would influence your opinion or behavior (or, at least, minimizing that influence).   The National Association for Media Literacy Education defines media literacy as “the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, COMMUNICATE and CREATE using all forms of communication”. It’s worth taking time to think about each of those abilities as you move forward in the semester. Access You … Continued
Authority, accuracy, transparency and more: tips for being media literate

Authority, accuracy, transparency and more: tips for being media literate

Misinformation, either accidentally or intentionally, is prevalent online and it’s up to you to decipher fact from fiction. The ability to analyze, assess, evaluate, create and act on media is called media literacy. Similar to books and websites, media can be “read” for its content and educational value. Any work of media – a YouTube video, a news article, an alternative health website – can be viewed critically, using a set of criteria that can help you decide whether or not to trust it. For example, let’s say you’re researching why leaves change color in the fall. You stumble across an article on a naturopathic site which claims that leaves change as a result of pollution. The article has an … Continued
Support for Information Literacy

Support for Information Literacy

The 2016 American Library Association’s annual conference recently concluded, and a troubling issue came out of it. The Association of College and Research Libraries voted to rescind a previous resolution passed in 2000, the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. And while the ACRL plans to continue to support information literacy in some way going forward – such as networking librarians to share their experiences, lesson plans, rubrics, and assessment tools – there is now no longer a universal policy supporting the inclusion of information literacy components in college courses. And that has caused concern among academic librarians. You might wonder where that leaves you – will IU East still offer in-class library instruction in the same way? Do … Continued