Information Literacy: An International State of the Art

G. Conclusions

Participation in the information literacy movement at global level and further views for recommended actions

UNESCO has strongly entered the information literacy arena. Thus, UNESCO, the US National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, and the National Forum on Information Literacy decided to arrange a 'Meeting of Experts', to be held in early 2002 in Prague, for undertaking and planning a larger and more ambitious worldwide 'International Leadership Conference on Information Literacy'. Spain was there, along with the representatives of the other European countries invited to the meeting, including Finland, France, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and the UK.

Spain also participated in the European project «TUNE: Training of Library Users in a New Europe» (http://www.tune.eu.com), which brought together the Municipal Library of Helsingborg (Sweden), the Municipal Library of Randers (Denmark) and the Regional Library of Castilla-La Mancha (Toledo, Spain). The project also included the Regional Public Library 'Oton Zupancic' (Ljubljana, Slovenia). It received funding from the European Commission's 'Culture 2000» program. For more information, see:
Carrato Mena, M. A. «Proyecto TUNE: La Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha se une a bibliotecas de Suecia y Dinamarca en un proyecto europeo» Subdirección General de Coordinación Bibliotecaria. In:

http://www.bcl.jcyl.es/correo/plantilla_seccion.php?id_articulo=1186&id_seccion=1&RsCorreoNum=80. [Workshop/Hands-on experience]

All in all, libraries in Spain, both at university and secondary school level, have registered considerable advances in their user training services. We may already speak of a palpable growth in the dissemination and awareness of the INFOLIT paradigm in the Spanish library sciences community. At the same time, this positive trend is also visible in the higher education arena, among teachers and researchers in the area of Information Sciences and Documentation. What is now needed is to seek out forms of cooperation between librarians and faculty with a view to offering quality didactic paths in INFOLIT for the university student community, bearing in mind that INFOLIT embodies a transversal competence that is vital to the education of all aspiring professionals and all citizens of the Information and Knowledge Society. Hands-on cooperation between library staff and faculty expert in information sciences is a crucial element in this process. For this, it is essential to ensure the proper organization of activities, setting learning objectives and identifying the user groups' needs (on the basis of awareness of the different communities of practice), and carefully planning the aspects of timing, structuring of content and creation of teaching resources. In conclusion, in countries like Spain there is still much more to be done in terms of developing INFOLIT initiatives, via the designing of tools, programs and implementing measures - such as e-learning portals, tutorials, thematic dossiers, educational platforms, repositories, learning laboratories, etc – with particular emphasis on those which bring together the academy and the library. The work to be done to strengthen this approach, on the basis of interdisciplinary teams, represents a challenge that is now wide open.