Information *Fluency*

Michael Lorenzen’s Information Literacy Land of Confusion blog led me to the resources of the 21st Century Information Fluency Project, “Developed to instruct patrons in the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to understand information fluency. Focuses on teaching people how to locate, evaluate, and integrate digital information.”


Notice that qualifier: digital information. For most librarians, info is info, no matter what format is used to produce it.

Still, I do like their distinction between information LITERACY and information FLUENCY:

“Information Literacy can be defined as “the ability to locate, evaluate and use information.”
21st Century Information Fluency is a sub-set of Information Literacy that might best be described as a combination of aspects of Information Literacy and Technology Literacy that people need to locate, evaluate and use digital information resources efficiently and effectively. We call it “fluency” rather than “literacy” to emphasize that the abilities involved are more than basic abilities. But we know that there is a spectrum of abilities ranging from basic literacy to the more advanced levels we call fluency.”

FWIW, I also think it’s important to clarify the distinction between

• Info-Lit as a concept (embracing that wide spectrum of skills and abilities), and some of the
• Info-Inquiry/Processing Models that are frameworks for developing or scaffolding the skills required to demonstrate information fluency.

Annette Lamb has an excellent overview of the variety of models available.
Too many folks seem to think that Information Literacy and the Big6 (for example) are synonyms.  They’re not: each of the processing models are really just arbitrary sets of ‘steps’ used to teach/demonstrate the skills utilized by an information-fluent person. It’s important to understand — and acknowledge — the difference between the basic concepts and the various processes !

Update on November 30, 2005 by Alice

Mea culpa — revise/upload FLIP it! pages to this new “home on the web” keeps slipping further and further down on my To Do list. So here’s my new vow: On/before Dec 5, 2005, FLIP it! will be HERE.

Comments

[Deb]

I love your FLIP IT framework but am unable to use the link from this site to your old site. Is there a different address to that site? Thanks - Deb

[Sandra]

Yes, I had the same problem when I tried to access the old site. And I too like the FLIP IT framework.