Tom Goad, a business consultant with a military and management teaching background, led a discussion of information literacy in workplace settings. His new book, Information Literacy and Workplace Performance, has received much attention for expanding conceptions of information literacy into spheres other than K-12 and higher education.

Tom started the discussion by asking, “How applicable is information literacy in your workplace?”

He then discussed the “built to last” concept in business cultures and his experience with applications based on military projects at the Office of Naval Research, including materials used in weather balloons (Teflon) and “spinoff” applications from greaseless bearings (such as Saran Wrap). He identified these as early examples from his experience of information literacy at work in finding practical, creative solutions to problems.

Tom first became interested in information literacy in the late 1980s because of a family friend, Christina Doyle, who has researched and written about information literacy.

He pointed out that, at present, “information literacy” is hardly a household phrase or familiar concept in the business world. He began researching his book, Information Literacy and Workplace Performance, and discovered that he would face a challenge in “packaging” the book for the world of work because of the references he found in his research were for K-12 and higher education. In writing the book, Tom was especially interested in demonstrating that information literacy applies to all spheres of life, but especially to the workplace.

In conducting research for the book, Tom discovered many commonalities in discussions of certain skills related to information literacy. He developed from this inventory sixteen “facets” of information literacy that apply to the business environment. He also realized, in writing the book, that a good business practice is very similar to being information literate.

Tom identified the following “skill clusters” that all are subsumed under, or relate to, information literacy:

• Communication (traditional and electronic, formal and informal)
• Thinking and Action Taking (application/use of information)
• Creativity/Innovation and Risk-taking (Peter Drucker’s new book, Managingin the Next Society, addresses these skills)
• Computer literacy (10 to 15 years from now, computer literacy will be taken for granted—Drucker)
• Subject matter literacy (“knowledge is effective only if specialized”—Drucker)
• ”Learning to learn”: (Howard Gardner’s “multiple intelligences”)

Tom pointed out how crucial information literacy is for small businesses, and that the skill clusters given here, communication, creativity and risk-taking, and computer literacy, are all important to small business profitability and success.

The Small Business Administration reports that 52% of private workplace workers are employed by small business; that 96% of exporters are small businesses; that 52% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) originates with small business; and that 96% of all companies have fewer than 500 employees.

Training deficits are glaring in small businesses because they lack the budgets and resources for training, whereas large companies have the resources to support training.

Tom is writing a new book on information literacy and small business; he is especially interested in demonstrating the connections between entrepreneurship and information literacy. In his view, the two are obviously intertwined. He points out the need for “success stories” showing how small businesses become profitable because of information literacy skills.

• Do small businesses and nonprofits have the same challenges and problems?
• Are there generational differences in information literacy? Are we assuming that younger students will become more information literate because of their computer skills? The Forum has worked with other groups on the NCATE standards for years to ensure that public school teachers have sound “content knowledge”, which is a crucial element of information literacy. Teachers appropriately prepared in specific subject areas as well as in information literacy will be better prepared to educate students in abilities that transcend computer skills. The Small Business Development Center in Michigan discovered that many of their student employees and interns, given a research assignment or project development task, wanted to use only online resources.
• Business people need quick guides/tips for learning to apply information literacy abilities in very practical ways in their workplaces.
• The small business community also has a great need for technology expertise among their employees.
• The U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute intends to add training on information literacy to its program, and needs volunteers for this goal.
• Small businesses may be disadvantaged because of the distinction between the “disorganized web”, which they can use only ineffectively, and digital libraries, to which they usually lack access.
• AAHE is concerned about the “engaged campus” concept. What are the pedagogies, issues, curricular structures, that “front load” student for the workplace? What can be done to forge connections between small business and higher education?

Ken Kay of InfoTech Strategies presented an overview of varying conceptions of 21st century skills, especially those relating to information seeking and technology. This initiative grew out of the CEO Forum on Education/Private Partnerships, and a resulting report focused on K-12 education concerning the need to embed 21st century skills in the curriculum.

Ken addressed the need to define 21st century skills so that assessment is possible; there is also a need for an accurate “snapshot” of 21st century skills.

The National Education Association, AOL, and Time Warner are all supportive of this initiative.

The goal is to unveil at the National Education Association Conference a self-assessment tool for 21st century skills.

Several challenges have presented themselves:

• problems with terminology: information literacy, technology literacy, media literacy, I.T. literacy. Various groups promoting these “literacies” want to use their term as the primary or umbrella term
• ”core subjects” advocates vs. 21st century skills advocates: are these in opposition? Do they have to be? Or can they support each other or be mutually reinforcing?
• bifurcation between standards developed in K-12 and higher education

Ken pointed out the need for knowledge underlying skills to be addressed in the 21st century skills project. The project will promote the standards available from all interested groups that support 21st century skills development.

How can the Forum help the InfoTech Project team with the 21st Century Skills project? Members of the Forum can suggest ideas to Jennifer Greeson, Director of Communications for the InfoTech Strategies Group, by emailing her at: greeson@ITStrategies.com.

Ken also invited the Forum to send representatives to major stakeholder conferences including March 10-11 in Tucson when a “national definitional summit” concerning all the conceptions surrounding information and technology literacy will be considered. (Julie Walker attended the first of the stakeholders’ meeting on behalf of the Forum.)

The meeting summary for May was approved as read.

Joyce gave a brief report on the Educational and Training National Leadership Grant Program.

This is an exciting time for the Center for Digital Literacy (CDL) and the School of Information Studies (IST) at Syracuse University. Last spring the Center and the School entered into a special partnership with the Robin Hood Foundation and the New York City Board of Education to have an impact on the youngest children from the highest poverty areas in New York City through their elementary school libraries.

While the Robin Hood Foundation orchestrates the rebuilding of libraries in the highest need elementary schools in New York, the New York City Board of Education is funding and IST is providing the professional preparation of school librarians who will staff these libraries through a master of library science degree program with school library media certification. On August 2nd, 31 teachers, representing the diverse populations they serve, boarded a bus and made the trip to Syracuse to begin their coursework in IST’s PLUS (Preparing Librarians for Urban Schools) program. All subsequent courses will be delivered either online or in New York City by an international faculty, including Dr. Jacqueline Mancall from Drexel University, Dr. Delia Neuman from the University of Maryland, and Dr. Jennifer Branch from the University of Alberta, Canada. The PLUS students will culminate their two-year academic program with a trip back to Syracuse to participate in commencement ceremonies.

CDL has recently been the recipient of two major grants. The first was a research grant, awarded by the John Ben Snow Foundation, to study the impact of their academic program on the PLUS participants and their subsequent impact on their schools and communities in order to develop a model for effective interventions by pre-service and in-service educators in high-risk urban schools.

This grant also funds the acquisition of 250 copies of The Strangest Dinosaur That Never Was, a read-aloud storybook that teaches information literacy skills to young children. This book and its accompanying teaching guide, to be distributed free-of-charge to all PLUS participants, were written by Marilyn Arnone, CDL’s Associate Director of Educational Media and produced by Creative Media Solutions.

The second grant, awarded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), funds the full development of S.O.S. for Information Literacy, a comprehensive, Web-based, multimedia teaching performance tool to help both pre-professional and practitioner library media specialists develop pedagogically-sound skills and creative methods for effectively teaching information literacy skills to young children. (NFIL members may remember the S.O.S. prototype presented at a meeting two years ago.) Marilyn and Ruth have several additional grant proposals in progress to fund other exciting CDL projects that they hope to be able to announce at future NFIL meetings.

Tricia discussed the Communications and Society Program. The 2003 agendas for this program are under development; topics include telecommunication policy, media/journalism issues, and information literacy.

Julie discussed AASL’s Information Power, which set forth guidelines in 1998 for information literacy curricular integration for school media specialists. Julie noted that various standards relating to information literacy converged in 1997-98.

AASL’s national conference in 2003 will have the theme, “Information Matters.”

AASL’s Fall Forum meeting involves both AASL and NBPTS (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards) and addresses collaboration on information literacy issues.

Joan discussed the planned International Conference on Information Literacy, to be held in Prague in March 2003. Funding is still being obtained for the conference.

The papers are already submitted for the conference and are commissioned papers, for the most part. The papers received are of excellent quality. The conference will feature five national case studies and “topic clusters” centering on such themes as economic development, education, and human resources.

The NCSS has ensured that standard relating to information technology use are included in its curricular guidelines.

The NCSS has also partnered with Texas Instruments in developing lesson plans for hand held devices. At NCSS’s national conference in fall 2002, Texas Instruments will hold a workshop.

Amy discussed her work with the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program, which is concerned with “born digital” products—that is, information products that are produced in digital format originally with no earlier counterparts in other formats. Knowledge of these products and their development is crucial in understanding how information is experienced by current generations of students and others.

Library staff at the NLE have recently been relocated; staff are currently doing “staff instruction”.

Barbara mentioned several events and initiatives in which AAHE is involved, including:

1. Subject Centers in Great Britain, October 16-18, 2002, which focuses on discipline-specific teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning
2. Kellogg Foundation Grant, recently awarded, which establishes four regional centers to develop coalitions among K-12, higher education, libraries, and business; goal is to foster “civic engagement” and community building
3. Partnerships with Educause/NLII: electronic portfolios project, which involves bringing together student, faculty, and institutional portfolios, and using that combined information to improve the teaching and learning process
4. AAHE National Conference in March 2003, “Good Work in Challenging Times,” which will focus on providing quality education in difficult budget times. The conference will feature panel/concurrent sessions, discussion roundtables, And poster sessions, and will also provide a kind of “track” structure through “communities of practice” in which participants will choose to be involved over the several days of the conference. There is a great opportunity for embedding information literacy in some of the events at the conference; deadline for submitting proposals is November 12, 2002.

Megan is substituting for Steve Gilbert of the TLT Group for this meeting of the Forum.

The TLT Group is developing a series of online workshops and other events relating to information literacy, in conjunction with ACRL.

Twenty-five grants will be awarded in the current cycle through the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP). Particular focus will be on digital technologies that can be used in solving problems in local communities, and demonstration projects that can be replicated.

Information about the TOP Program can be found at: http://WWW.NTIA.DOC.GOV/TOP

Walter has had a long career in information technology development and is a guest at this meeting of the Forum.

Stanley has worked with public schools for 25 years to use technologies as tools within the curriculum. He has worked with science projects and science fairs in individual schools in the Washington DC area to built up interest in the science—information literacy connection, with some degree of success.

Stanley referred members of the Forum to articles written by Walter Beam and himself in the Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems, vol. 15. no. 2 (Spring 2001). Several of these articles discuss information literacy in the workplace.

Judith discussed several ARL projects, focusing on the Learning Outcomes Working Group (part of ARL’s New Measure Initiative):

1. SAILS PROJECT: The Project for the Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS) is an initiative of Kent State University. Its purpose is to create an instrument to measure information literacy that is standardized, easily administered, has been proven valid and reliable, assesses at the institutional level, can be administered at any type of institution, and provides for both external and internal benchmarking. It is based on the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.

   The project has just received a three-year $252,418 grant from the IMLS for a 2002 National Leadership Grants for Libraries in the Research & Demonstration category to convert SAILS to a Computer Adaptive Test format .http://www.library.kent.edu/sails/workinggroups.doc At the ARL May 2002 meeting, the Statistics and Measurement Committee endorsed this project as one of the ARL New Measures Initiatives and positioned it as an activity within the Learning Outcomes Working Group agenda. ARL members will be taking part in testing the instrument later this year.

2. CSEQ: Working Group members are investigating how ARL might best make use of the data that is collected as part of the College Student Experiences Questionnaire. That instrument asks eight questions about use of the library. Since the instrument is used by a number of institutions (however, not all institutions, so it would have its limitations), it might be possible to make use of the data for benchmarking purposes. Alternatively, libraries could ask their institutions to add a selective set of common questions to that instrument.
3. BONNIE GRATCH-LINDAUER REPORT ON ACCREDITATION: A report by Bonnie Gratch-Lindauer for the third phase of ARL's E-metrics project was a content analysis of the standards and supplemental documentation of the six U.S. regional accrediting commissions of higher education. It identified the overall trends in accreditation and how they affected libraries by comparing how user and institutional outcomes are represented in the standards. Ms. Gratch-Lindauer provided some observations and recommendations for libraries based on her analysis. Working Group members are looking at that report for ideas on how to approach learning outcomes as a collective community.
4. DEVELOPMENT OF LEARNING OUTCOMES WEB SITE: ARL will be developing a Web site based on the work of the Learning Outcomes Working Group that will provide background information as well as links to organizations and national groups working in this area.
5. ARL LEARNING OUTCOMES WHITE PAPER: A subset of working group members are preparing a general white paper on learning outcomes that we plan to publish and make available on the Web site. It will include an extensive bibliography of sources of information.

1. The “Best Practices in Information Literacy” Conference held at ALA Annual in Atlanta, summer 2002; this invitational conference dealt in a very in-depth way with characteristics of best practices programming in information literacy programming in academic libraries. Several drafts of the “Best Practices” document have been written and a final (or penultimate) draft is now available on the ACRL web site.
2. The IMLS Grant (Assessing Student Learning Outcomes in Information Literacy Programs)—designed to train librarians in developing baseline data that support the merits of information literacy programs.
3. The Institute for Information Literacy’s Immersion Programs, designed to train librarians in information literacy instruction, programming, and leadership skills. Two national Immersion Programs were held in Colorado Springs in summer 2002. In 2003, a national program will be held at the University of Rhode Island, and a regional program at Coe College in Iowa.
4. ACRL’s Academic Library Trends and Statistics will soon be published and will offer some data on information literacy.

Greta is very interested in learning about other Forum members’ perspectives on information literacy as the Public Library Association is having more discussions of the topic.

The ALIA Information Literacy Forum held a Round Table last year to gauge the level of interest in forming a national coalition similar to the National Forum in the United States.

The Round Table led to a national coalition project between ALIA, the National Library of Australia and the National Office of the Information Economy. Together we formed a steering committee to manage a research project to assess the feasibility of an Australian information literacy coalition.

The questions we wanted to explore were to do with viability, identifying relevant and interested organisations, particularly beyond the library and education sectors, and possible organisation structures.

We employed The Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER) to do this research. The research, which includes a survey of national and international projects, is of value in itself. Over 90 organisations were surveyed, and 20 interviewed in detail.

Our action plan to advance the coalition was accepted by the ALIA Board at its May 2002 meeting and we will soon be releasing the report widely as well as moving to the next stage of the process. This will involve working with a broad-based group (including organisations such as the Australian Computer Society, the Australian College of Education, the National Centre for Vocational Educational Research, the Internet Society and Adult Learning Australia) to identify a network and activities to develop a strategy across the whole of society. A workshop with these groups is being organised for 13 November this year. The strategy will advocate for information literacy as a critical skill for cultural, social and economic inclusion and lifelong learning.

Two members of the initial steering committee have reflected their commitment to information literacy in their submissions to a current federal government inquiry into the role of libraries in the online environment http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/ecita_ctte/online_libraries/. The National Library of Australia and the National Office of the Information Economy’s submissions http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/ecita_ctte/online_libraries/submissions/sublist.htm both cite their work with the Coalition and emphasize the importance of information literacy.

In August the Forum held an online debate on the topic of assessment and information literacy. The debate was conducted through an online discussion list across two weeks and was led by paper from Mandy Lupton at Australian National University, Canberra.

Contributors to the debate came from Canada and New Zealand as well as Australia, and included Dr Ralph Catts whose current research is focusing on showing that IL students get higher grades among other issues. The debate is available at http://www.alia.org.au/groups/infolit/debate.topics/.

Prue Mercer, President of the Forum, and Sharan Harvey, Committee member, gave a presentation to the Queensland Public Libraries Association Conference in May about the relevance of information literacy for public libraries and their patrons.