JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - Naspaa

Information Literacy inPublic Affairs CurriculumRita OrmsbyBaruch College, The City University of New YorkDaniel W. WilliamsBaruch College, The City University of New YorkAbstractIn this article, a librarian and a professor who work at the same university tracethe development of information literacy standards. These standards were appliedretrospectively to a graduate course that the professor teaches; the librarianwas one of his students at that time. The article offers suggestions for guidingstudents on how to use and evaluate information resources, in order to completea term-long research project. It also addresses librarians’ efforts in educating bothstudents and other faculty on information literacy.“Literacy” and Academic TrainingIn the past few decades, advocates of disciplines and practices that includescience, math, business, geography, finance, computers, technology, culture,multiculturalism, health, media, law, management, and economics are mostlymetaphoric when using the term “literacy.” The term “innumeracy,” for example,was coined as the numerical equivalent of illiteracy (apparently so math and languagecould be equal contenders in the battle for educational dollars). While researchingthis paper, we found a growing menu of metaphoric catchphrases such as “parentalliteracy” (Kambhampati & Pal, 2001, p.97), “deposit insurance literacy” (Smith& Walika, 1993, p.36), “family literacy” (McCaleb, 1998, p.48), and the “literacyof thoughtfulness” (The Futurist, 1991; Holt, 2005). These expanded concepts of“literacy” first surfaced in the mid-1950s world of economics (Jones & Lee, 1956).Well-established within this traditional turn-of-phrase is the term“information literacy,” which is defined as “the ability to effectively access andevaluate information for a given need. It includes an integrated set of skills(research strategy and evaluation) and knowledge of tools and resources” (BreivikJPAE 16(2): 279–306Journal of Public Affairs Education 279