In defense of information literacy across the disciplines

Abstract

Information literacy, coined in the 1970s, covers a wide range of skills needed to navigate the information landscape to find relevant and useful information to solve problems. The teaching of information literacy is inconsistent across state standards, and West Virginia students entering college are often ill-equipped to find credible, useful information. Information literacy’s core skills include identifying individual information needs, finding relevant sources to solve those needs, and evaluating those sources for credibility. In the pre-Internet, mass media age, it was necessary primarily to evaluate and consider the bias of sources when assessing credibility. Then, mass disinformation/misinformation became a critical issue for information literacy, particularly in the mid 2010s. In the last two years, the now wide scale availability of generative AI tools now requires an even more substantial toolbox for information literacy. Unfortunately, discussions around equipping users with the appropriate skills have become increasingly siloed, with parallel developments in news literacy, digital literacy, media literacy, AI literacy, and reappropriation of science literacy to effectively encompass the same skill set. Here, I show the cross-disciplinary nature and value of information literacy, arguing for its superseding nature against these other literacies, and give recommendations for greater integration of information literacy instruction across college curriculum. Solutions for ILI implementation are readily found in the library and information science literature, and professional staff and faculty are in many institutions prepared or trainable to deliver ILI in both generalized and discipline-specific contexts to empower users to be more information literate and capable of navigating increasingly complex information landscapes.