Information literacy is a perennial concern of librarians. As both the amount and formats of information proliferate, these concerns escalate. Changes in technology make information more findable and discoverable on the one hand but harder to evaluate on the other. Editors Godwin and Parker, both UK‐based librarians, have gathered an impressive group of international experts to provide fresh insights and first hand accounts of the new landscape of information literacy.
The book's 22 chapters are divided into three sections. The first section reviews recent developments in information literacy. Editor Godwin wrote the first three chapters in this six chapter section and admirably covers how the phrases Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 generated interest among information professionals and focussed attention on information literacy. However, they have lately receded in importance. His ideas are strengthened by Phil Bradley and Karen Blakeman, industry observers who write about the increasing emphasis on social media in search; Susie Andretta, an editor and U.K. university lecturer who introduces the concept of transliteracy; and Australian faculty members Hilary Hughes and Christine Bruce who discuss how Web 2.0 and information literacy initiatives affect learning objectives.
The second part of the book contains 11 case studies, four from the UK, three from Australia, and two each from the US and Canada. This international perspective is very welcome and proves that the issues and the technologies are global in scope. The case studies also reinforce a central point of the book – that social media and mobile devices are profoundly changing our views on what constitutes information literacy. Almost all the case studies are presented in the context of higher education at both the undergraduate and graduate level. The outlier comes from the perspective of a school librarian.
The case studies also support the “beyond library 2.0” portion of the book's title. What was new and revolutionary a few years ago is now ingrained into library services. Expectations are that collaboration, information sharing, and empowerment will be the norm. To teach information literacy, librarians are using social media, games, QR codes, visual techniques, and virtual teams.
I became very intrigued with the notion of using games to teach both traditional and online searching after reading Susan Boyle's chapter on using games to teach information literacy. Her use of playing cards and matching pairs to teach the basics of Boolean logic and the “bin or basket” game to help students distinguish good quality from bad quality resources sparked lots of ideas in my mind.
The third part of the book explains what the new literacies mean to information professionals. The five chapters explore the possibilities for enhancing the perceptions of libraries and the professionals who work there. The first chapter in this section, by Helen Leech, Surrey Library Service, details the woes of U.K. public libraries under the current government's Big Society programmes but sees hope in the ability of public libraries to use social media (something previously prohibited). What is needed, according to Leech, is a coherent national policy. The next chapter, by Judy O'Connell, e‐learning lecturer at Australia's Charles Sturt University, is about the future of school libraries (even though it has the misleading title of “Change has arrived at an iSchool library near you”, which implied to me a graduate level school of library and information science).
The final three chapters of the book are again by Peter Godwin and look to the future of information literacy and libraries themselves. The recognition that information literacy is expanding beyond text into web‐based, digital, visual, audio‐video, numeric, and subject‐specific information forms a major tenet of this book. It's not only about teaching students to become information literate but also about bringing librarians up to speed with new literacies.
I did find the uneven tone across the various chapters to be somewhat off‐putting. Some chapters were literature reviews with extensive bibliographies while others, more practical and conversational, had few references. The audience for this book is likely to be librarians and information professionals in the higher education sector, with some interest from those in public and school libraries. There is almost nothing here to help those in the corporate, special library sector. The publisher suggests that policy makers will want to read it but I suspect it is more reasonable to assume that librarians, after reading the book, will advocate the ideas found here to the policy makers.
Godwin comments that he found editing this book to be a “journey of discovery”. That is a good metaphor and is what readers will find as well. Much of value is in this book and it will stimulate your thinking about the many emerging varieties of information literacies.
