Information Literacy in the digital era

Marsha Lustigman began with Library 2.0: are you ready for the class of 2020?

We must reach outside of the library walls to the web, where our students ‘live’

What is Library 2.0?

• It is user centered (they create and contribute)


• Its is multi-media


• It is socially rich


• It is communally innovative

We need to move from content providers to content creators.

Our challenges:

Marsha asked: are we teachers, techies, or technocrats? And what about the books? and copyright (are we enablers or gatekeepers?) information literacy.

She mentioned LibraryThing.com which is a more intuitive tool for library lists and catalogs. Some libraries are beginning to use it as their OPAC.

Karen Ulric continued the discussion of Web 2.0
Blogs
A chronological list of posts. One person can use it as journal, there can be group blogs, such as classroom or book club discussions.

You can manage your blogs through a blog reader such as bloglines.com which brings together all the blogs you want to read. The information is brought to you - you don't have to go to each page to read them.

You can also customize a homepage for yourself through Google and pull in information from lots of different resources.

Wikis
community driven websites - many people can edit or add to the website. You can control who is able to edit the pages.
An example is AviChai's wiki for Jewish School Libraries.

Other tools
flickr - a photo site
Youtube - online videos
LibraryThing - do-it-yourself books lists
del.icio.us - tagging site -links to others' tags

She recommend the TRAILS site for information literacy testing and resources.

Heidi Estrin concluded with a discussion of podcasts.
These are similar to blogs, with audio files attached. She mentioned that podcasts are like radio shows on the internet. This format is great for obscure topics, because you don't have to worry about drawing a huge audience.

Her handout is available at: http://ajlhandout.wordpress.com/

You can also add video images.

You can listen to podcasts by either streaming the file or downloading the mp3 file and listening to the program from your own computer or you can subscribe to the podcast through a feedreader (in Google, or iTunes or other)

Podcasts can be used to record live programs to make them available to people who couldn't attend; they can be used for PR; involving patrons in book reviewing, etc.

As with any of the new technological toys and tools, make sure you have the content!

There a few options for setting up a podcast. You can use gcast (see the sidebar). If you have a microphone on your computer, you can record at your computer too. You'll also need some editing software. One example of a free software is Audacity. A third option is to use a digital voice record and download the file. This can be connected to the phone. Skype (voice-over IP) can also be use to talk to anyone who has Skype or use Skype to call a regular land-line. (Make sure the other person has given permission to be recorded!)

To put in a plug for my own session - I will be also be talking about wikis and blogs tomorrow afternoon and will focus on how to set them up.