Information Literacy: An International State of the Art

C. Significant Organizations
In 1998 the American Association of School Libraries (AASL) and the Association of Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) expanded on their work in Information Power and produced Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning (AASL, 1998). These standards detail competencies for students in kindergarten through high school.
In 1990, the National Forum on Information Literacy (NFIL) was founded as a response to the recommendations of the ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy Final Report. According to its web site, NFIL is a "coalition of over 75 education, business, and governmental organizations working to promote international and national awareness of the need for Information Literacy and encouraging activities leading to its acquisition. Forum members promote Information Literacy nationally, internationally, and within their own programs.” http://www.infolit.org/index.html In March, 1998, NFIL issued A Progress Report on Information Literacy: an Update on the American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report.

http://www.infolit.org/documents/progress.html

In 1993 the California State University System (CSU) added Information Literacy to its strategic planning document, Transforming CSU Libraries for the 21st Century: a Strategic Plan of the CSU Council of Library Directors, (CSU, 1993) and thus began the effort that led to the CSU Information Competence Initiative. The impact of the largest public university system in the United States adopting Information Literacy as a graduation requirement made many others in higher education take note. State-wide meetings were held and many small grants were awarded to CSU library faculty to develop Information Literacy resources with deliverables that could be shared with other campuses within the system. In 1995 the Information Competence Tutorials were developed at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. They were the basis for tutorials which are still in use on several CSU campuses. Similar cooperative projects were developed by other university systems. Noteworthy among these are TILT – Texas Information Literacy Tutorial (University of Texas) and Project SAILS (Kent State University and the Association of Research Libraries). These tutorials can be licensed and adapted by other organizations.
Building on all these early efforts, Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education were adopted by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL, 2000) and were jointly endorsed by American Library Association (ALA) and the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE). These standards are freely available from the ACRL web site. Links from this page lead to both historic IL documents as well as to current standards.

http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.htm

Another organization of critical value in IL is the Institute for Information Literacy Immersion. Librarians who have gone through the intensive week of training that the immersion program provides have returned to their jobs with the tools to develop or improve their programs and inspired with a new zeal to accomplish the job. (Scamman, C., Kinder, R., & Coulter, P. 2005).


D. Information Literacy in Canada
Many Canadian academic institutions rely on the ACRL standards however there appear to be some efforts to develop their own national standards and resources. Several universities integrate Information Literacy into credit courses, especially at the University of Alberta, Augustana. There is also evidence of Information Literacy appearing in mission statements in Canadian schools and universities and of Information Literacy and a major theme in library association programs and activities in Canada. (Willingham, 2006).
An excellent academic site is the Canadian University Information Literacy Initiatives page: http://apps.medialab.uwindsor.ca/crlil/wiki/UniversityInitiatives/ The Canadian Research Libraries Information Literacy Portal now exists as a wiki and will be maintained by Information Literacy librarians at academic institutions across Canada.
School libraries in Canada have also adopted Information Literacy goals however there is evidence that support and funding for school libraries are lacking and there is a movement to reform and reinvest in school libraries. (Julien, H. & Breu, 2004)
A federal government policy initiative, “Connecting Canadians” from 2003-2006, focused on providing Internet access and related Information Literacy instruction in public libraries. This function is now provided by the Community Access Program, (CAP) http://cap.ic.gc.ca/pub/index.html?iin.lang=en


E. Current Trends and Issues