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The purpose of this guide is to share information relevant to information literacy at UW-Whitewater.
"Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning."
--Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (January 11, 2016)
"Information literacy empowers people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use and create information effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational and educational goals. Information-literate people are able to access information about their health, their environment, their education and work, and to make critical decisions about their lives. "
-UNESCO's webpage on Information Literacy (April 20, 2023)
In a complex and rapidly changing environment, higher education must help students to become information literate. Information literacy enables students to recognize the value of information and use it to make informed choices in their personal, professional and academic lives. An information literate student effectively accesses, evaluates, organizes, synthesizes and applies information from a variety of sources and formats in a variety of contexts. Information literacy requires an ongoing involvement in learning and in evaluating information so that life long learning is possible.
The student who is information literate is able to:
WAAL Information Literacy Committee, Fall 1998
Adopted by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in January 2016, the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education had been the impetus for great change in the field of information literacy. Below are the guiding frames on which we base our instruction program. Dispositions and knowledge practices are associated with each one.