Yesterday I has the opportunity to present at the 2007 UB Libraries Information Summit. Lots of interesting ideas were explored around the topics of the Millennial Generation and Web 2.0.
In my 10+ years of teaching about the web, I have always stressed the importance of information literacy – the ability to evaluate the credibility of information on the web. Good web design helps bring credibility to a site. Users don’t have confidence in a site with misspelled words, broken links, poor visual design, and lacking in information about the author and date the content was created or updated. The growth of the read/write web has compounded the problem. More people than an ever are publishing on the web.
The question I raised at the summit was whose responsibility is it to train our students on information literacy? This will be a vital skill for students in both their academic career and as they move out into the real world. The consensus was that it should be everyone’s responsibility from librarians to faculty to staff. That being said, often when it is everyone’s responsibility it becomes no ones responsibility so someone should be designated the point person on campus to coordinate this effort.
Here are some recent articles on the topic from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative: