BackTalk: Let's Talk Libraries, Not "Information Literacy"

Does "information" really describe what librarians handle? Yes and no. Philosophically speaking, to recognize that something has a form means that you are "informed." Recognizing the "forms" publications come in is a job librarians do better than anyone else: we pay a great deal more attention to the containers of publications, or their formats, than anyone else. We insist on the differences between and among books, magazines, journals, indexes, abstracts, and bibliographies, not to mention all those new electronic entities. These distinctions are of great importance to us but of little consequence to patrons.

In architecture, according to Louis Sullivan, "form follows function." In librarianship, according to some librarians, function follows format. Alas, our bibliographic world isn't this tidy, and I'm glad it isn't. If it were, being a librarian would be a big-time bore. It is not as if each publication format were a Platonic Form. Yes, words in a book may have a purpose and effect different from words in a magazine or journal. Sometimes the difference is a big deal, sometimes it is trivial. Publication formats just provide a convenient way for librarians to divvy up the so-called world of information.

Because we sometimes overemphasize the significance of formats, we lead some of our users to think we don't know or care about the content within. Sometimes this focus on packages rather than content makes librarians appear to be like soldiers marching lock-step "in formation." Unwittingly, by placing so much emphasis on the rules of cataloging and classification, we fix an image of librarians as human bookends keeping all those books in order. Our authority records are like sergeants keeping platoons in line.

I'm not advocating we break ranks. Nor am I naïve enough to think the word information will be replaced by the more appealing knowledge. Knowledge, after all, is one of the hoped-for products of the information gathered in all those forms we think our users need to be literate about. We are making our job harder by insisting librarians teach information literacy.

What the more idealistic among us really want our users to do is think. Thinking critically is all the better. Maybe meaning matters more than format. Maybe librarians should want patrons to discriminate first between the useful and the not useful and, second, between books and periodicals, or between formats that are in print or web-based. This should not be described as information literacy since it stretches the usual meaning of literacy. Reading literacy suggests the ability first to decode letters and words and, later, clauses and sentences. It doesn't imply understanding or mastery. Similarly, a computer-literate person simply knows how to use a computer, not necessarily how to use one well.

Do we really want our users to be as shrewdly aware of information formats as we librarians are? It is a mistake to mount a campaign to demonstrate that the public lacks still another form of "literacy." People may become just as ashamed of being illiterate in information as they are of being illiterate in other ways. Many people are computer-phobic already. We surely don't want to make them afraid of information as well.

Information competency has been proposed as more palatable phrasing. But some people are still going to bristle at the implication they are information-incompetent or information-noncompetent. As a result, some librarians have suggested information fluency because fluency spins better. But I bet the public will equate being information fluent with being well informed. Yet that's not quite what we mean. Some well-informed people just know lots of facts. They may not know how to think with those facts.

I propose something more basic, honest, and modest. Let's just say we want to teach people how to use libraries. This is not sexy. It doesn't billow the sails the way information literacy does. But why should we use windy phrases at all? I know that many librarians want to call themselves anything but librarians. Someone once observed that librarians were the only professionals to name themselves after the buildings they work in. After all, you don't hear physicians calling themselves hospitalers. But since I know I am not an information specialist, I'd just as soon settle for the old-fashioned word librarian.

We want our users to evaluate, compare, contrast, infer, analyze, discuss, and even treasure what libraries make available. We don't give this impression when we say we are engaged in information literacy. I, for one, am not. I do like to talk to people about using libraries, though. It doesn't matter two hoots to me if they are information literate or not.