Present:
 

Patricia Breivik, Chair, National Forum on Information Literacy
Sheila Afnan-Manns, Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies
Marilyn Arnone, Creative Media Solutions
Philip Candy, University of Ballarat, Australia
Stephanie Clark, Institute of Museum & Library Services
Nickimmy Cunningham, American Federation of Teachers
Mary Ellen Davis, Association of College & Research Libraries
Woody Horton, U.S. National Commission on Libraries & Information Science
Jeanne McConnell, Institute of Museum & Library Services
Sheila McGarr,  U.S. National Library of Education
Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, National Telecom & Information Administration
Joyce Munro, American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education
Sylvia Seidel, National Education Association
Roberta Shaffer, Special Library Association
Ruth Small, Center for Digital Literacy, Syracuse University
Drucille Stafford, National Alliance of Black School Educators
Julie Walker, American Association of School Librarians

Philip Candy, Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Ballarat, Australia presented “Community Partnerships for Lifelong Learning: Ballarat as a Learning City.”
Information literacy is gaining international prominence. On Tuesday, Sept 26. 2000, Ballarat was officially declared a “Learning City.”

Between 1850-1860, Ballarat experienced enormous growth due to discovery of gold. Since then  a number of changes have occurred (e.g., explosion of knowledge/technology, new careers, demand for learning), and the city needs to focus more on its future then on its interesting past.

Families, schools, vocational education universities, industry, the media, libraries, community groups, and government share responsibility for facilitating lifelong learning. Community partnerships are needed for learning---public, private, business, community and volunteer.

Learning cities have learning at their heart and seek multiple ways to encourage learning. There are a number of learning cities around the world. Basic building blocks of a learning city are: preschools, good schools and post-compulsory education, portable/transferable qualifications, support for families, includes all organizations as learning organizations, readily available learning guidance, Internet access, special help for unemployed/disabled/disadvantaged.

Learning cities provide local solutions to local challenges. Three main elements are economic competitiveness, personal employability/fulfillment, social. Five major stakeholders are community, industry, culture/cultural tourism, connectivity, formal education/training. All are coordinated.

There are three keys to learning community: attitude toward learning, access to information, ability to evaluate the information found.

There is general agreement that IL is necessary for lifelong learning.  In a national
study in Australia, which I headed, exploring how formal education could foster lifelong learning, one of the major sections had to do with information literacy.

Considerable discussion followed.
 

2.  Approval of May 2001 Meeting Summary

The meeting summary was approved as written.
 
 

3.  Reports from Member Organizations.
 

American Association of School Librarians-Julie Walker

AASL will hold its 10th National Conference in Indianapolis, IN on Nov. 14-18, 2001.  The theme “Coming Together as a Community of Learners” indicates the importance of information literacy as a topic at the conference.  One of the four strands of the conference, Focusing on the Learner, is particularly rich in programs on information literacy.

In June of 2001, AASL and the Public Education Network (PEN) published a monograph, The Information-Powered School, which “outlines a specific plan for school library media specialists and teachers to share the responsibilities of planning, teaching, assessing student learning and offering a truly coherent curriculum.”  At the heart of this publication, as well as Information Power, are information literacy standards for K-12 students.  Much of the content of this publication is based on actual experiences from schools that participated in the DeWitt-Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund project, Library Power.

Also in June, AASL adopted a new strategic plan which outlines a number of projects related to information literacy.  See http://www.ala.org/aasl/pdf/aasl_strategic_plan.pdf
 
 

Association of College & Research Libraries-Mary Ellen Davis

Held two additional Immersion programs during the summer 2001. These programs offer four-and-a-half days of intensive training for librarians in two tracks. Track one focuses on individual development for those who are interested in enhancing, refreshing, or extending their individual instruction skills. Track focuses on developing, integrating, and managing institutional and programmatic information literacy programs.

Sent a survey on information literacy practices in May 2001 to 2,700 vice presidents of academic units. Had 710 responses for a rate of 26%. The results of this survey will be published in the November issue of College & Research Libraries News and on the Web at http://www.ala.org/acrl/c&rlnew2.html.

Entering our second year of a grant from IMLS, "Assessing Student Learning Outcomes in Information Literacy Programs: Training Academic Librarians." The purpose of this grant is to develop tools to assess student learning outcomes and to train librarians in the use of these tools. Twenty-three institutions are participating.

Seeking proposals for ACRL's 11th National Conference, "Learning to Make a Difference"  April 10-13, 2003, in Charlotte, NC. The call for proposals is on the Web at http://www.ala.org/acrl/charlotte/cfp.html.  Proposals are due May 31, 2002.
 
 

Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA)
Information Literacy Forum-Prue Mercer

The ALIA group has been renamed and slightly restructured as a result of
the new ALIA group structure starting on 1 July this year.  It is now known
as the ALIA Information Literacy Forum and has almost 300 members.  It is
based in Melbourne but is a national group with committee members in
Adelaide and Brisbane. The committee has representatives from the school,
public, state as well as vocational and higher education sectors.  The
group is in the process of rebuilding its web site, has an electronic
discussion list and sends out a regular newsletter.  We are revising our
key policy  document - Statement on Information Literacy for All
Australians - adopted last March.  Recently it held an online forum
focussing on the issue of the skills of librarians to teach information
literacy.

A major activity has been establishing a process to assess the feasibility
of a national coalition to advocate for information literacy among the
education, government and corporate sectors.  We have obtained  a small
amount of funds to support this and formed a "mini" coalition with the
National Library of Australia and a key government agency the National
Office for the Information Economy.  This agency has a remit to address
issues on the "digital divide" among other functions.  The funds have
enabled us to employ the respected Australian Council for Educational
Research (ACER) to conduct the feasibility study and report.   Work has
commenced on a survey  and compiling lists of likely organisations as well
as looking at successful models like the US Forum.  We hope to have a
preliminary report in November.
Future activities will be the fifth national information literacy
conference in Adelaide 30 November to 1 December as well as the ongoing
development of the training organization Australian and New Zealand
Institute for Information Literacy by the University of South Australia.
 
 

Center for Digital Literacy-Ruth Small

The Center for Digital Literacy at Syracuse University, incorporating information, technology, and media literacies, is slated to be launched in January 2002. CDL, sponsored by the Schools of Information Studies and Education, is an interdisciplinary research and development center studying the role and impact of digital literacy in education, the workplace, and in the community and building partnerships through development projects with business, education, and community organizations.
 
 

Creative Media Solutions-Marilyn Arnone

CMS reported on the progress of S.O.S. for Information Literacy, a web-based multimedia resource for enhancing information skills instruction. The project features videos and other media of educators demonstrating teaching strategies that motivate learning of information literacy skills, lesson plans and other related teaching materials. S.O.S. received start-up funding from the U.S. Department of Education. While it did not receive continued development funding, resources have been allocated by several companies for continued interim development while other funding avenues are pursued. Other projects discussed included an information literacy book series for primary grade students (in development) and a Young Researcher video series.
 

ERIC

Eric Clearinghouse on Information & Technology will soon have a newsletter featuring an article by the National Forum on Information Literacy Chair, an article by Ruth Small on her S.O.S. Information Literacy project and half a dozen abstracts of recent literature on information literacy.  The latter will have 2001 publication dates and, where possible and will include links to the full text.  These are only a sampling of what is available in the ERIC database.  Also, an ERIC Digest will be published next year on information literacy in higher education academic libraries.
 
 

Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grants-Jeanne McConnell

Seven National Leadership Grants for Education and Training projects, totaling $1,830,846, were announced in July.  Some of the awards will provide funding to meet critical needs for school library media specialists; support training for librarians, teachers, and library staff in information technologies; and establish a program to attract Hispanic Americans and Native Americans to the field of library and information science.

An additional 27 National Leadership Grants for Libraries were announced on September 25, bringing the total awards for library projects in 2001 to:
 
 

Category	No. of Awards	Amount Awarded
Education and Training	2	$715,000
Announced in July	7	$1,830,846
Research and Demonstration	7	$1,381,727
Preservation or Digitization	18	$ 3,512,877
TOTAL	34	$ 7,440,450

The Research and Demonstration awards will fund projects, among others, to research and document current conditions and challenges in preservation programs; and to train librarians to build interactive multimedia Web sites for library user education. Preservation or Digitization awards covered projects as varied as a Web-based interactive state atlas accessible to all levels of users; to digitizing photographs, manuscript sheet music, audio portions of music and other items from the materials of jazz great Eubie Blake.

Applications for National Leadership Grants for Library and Museum Collaborations were received April 1.  Forty-three applications, requesting a total of $9,416,915, were received.  Awards were announced September 25 as follows:
 
 

Category	No. of Awards	Amount Awarded
Library and Museum Collaborations	15	$3,675,861

The Library and Museum Collaboration awards focused on an innovative partnership in Florida to provide a literature-based science program enrolled in over 50 Head Start classrooms to develop a foundation for the children’s future academic success by promoting literacy in general and science literacy in particular; an innovative collaborative effort in Iowa to utilize emerging information technologies and the unique resources of local museums and libraries to create learning spaces that are an integral part of the core learning of students; and a two-year project in Springfield, MO, to use state-of-the-art technology and equipment to increase literacy among children and adults.

Another initiative focuses on the 21st Century Learner this year IMLS will place a special emphasis on projects that help museums and libraries take a leadership role in the education of lifelong learners in the 21st century.  Sponsorship of the 21st Century Learner Conference, November 7-9, 2001, will offer an invitation to explore the potential for fostering community partnerships for Life Long Learning.
 

More information about other IMLS programs, grants and conferences can be found on the Web site at: http://www.imls.gov.
 

International Association of School Librarianship-Penny Moore

The IASL conference in Auckland was a stunning success at the time but it is the after-effect that is actually more important. The national School Library Association (SLANZA) got an enormous boost in numbers, energy, respect etc and we now have reports of the regional groups setting up professional development seminars.
National Library is being very active and has finally got the ear of the Ministry of Education on information literacy and I have been invited to join both organizations in discussing where to from here.  Auckland College of Education is extending its school librarianship teaching base and librarianship educators have finally noticed that school oriented courses are needed.
 

Best of all, from my viewpoint, the Ministry is running two proof of concept projects - online professional development in information literacy - which, if successful, will be available to all school staff free of charge.  I'm running one of those programs with a colleague at Wellington College of Education and naturally have wrapped it in research.  Today I have been interviewing teachers about the effects of project participation on them and the learning outcomes of their students.  Only 12 teachers are involved in the development stage but the positive stories are highly affirmative from new entrants through to classes of 15 year olds!  The next stage will see these teachers and a set of "information literacy naive" teachers test the web site, content, professional development effects and students' learning outcomes.  The whole thing is based on cognitive apprenticeship and experts revealing their thinking at all stages of instructional design, teaching and evaluation.  I do have some concerns about the evaluation base of the project - database of learning activities and time frame are constricted - but we should get some sound evidence for improving the resource.

If this program is successful - it could be attractive as a model for several places around the world.  To give you a snap shot of results in one school: after just two learning activities focusing on information literacy, 5 year olds are pushing the teachers hard!  They are demanding to know what text says, expecting books to be informative, but willing and excited about getting information from other sources when necessary (milk cartons, yogurt pots!).  There is evidence that these new entrants have already made the connection between learning to read so that they can read to learn.  The teachers (only one of whom is officially "in" the project) are having to rethink what and how they will teach in future.  Their perceptions of what the children are capable of are being challenged and as a result of this project, together with attendance at the IASL conference, they want to run a school wide information literacy initiative that spreads out into their community as well as to a cluster of schools that they lead.   (Parents and even grandparents are already being caught up in the children's enthusiasm for finding and doing something with information)

This is an opportunity for a longitudinal study of creating an information literate school community, changing professional development needs of teachers, resource development, teaching techniques and most important of all, we can track learning performances using school records for 2001 as the baseline.  The school has sought my assistance in shaping a proposal that spans the professional development and research activity and we're hoping that we can convince the Ministry to fund it - so send some positive vibes this way please!   Whether the Ministry fund it or not, the school is pretty determined that we will work together next year in some way.
 
 

NORDINFO

Nordinfo celebrated its 25th anniversary at its conference in Helsinki on October 29-30.  Focusing on the issue of information policy, it included a presentation by the National Forum on Information Literacy Chair on information literacy.  In addition, Nordinfo President D. Sigrun Klara Hannesdottir establishing an information literacy planning committee made up of two representatives from each Nordinfo country.  The new committee met all day on the 28th and  reported that initial efforts will focus on three initiatives:  (1) holding a conference on Creating Knowledge in Denmark next year, (2) adapting the ACRL standards for use by members, and (3) creating a website.
 
 

The Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies-Sheila Afnan-Manns

The Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies is the outcome of a $1 million gift from Pacific Bell to UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS). The gift underwrites a two-year project that is exploring the meaning of literacy in the 21st century with a focus on three critical areas: Educating the User in critical 21st century literacy skills; Improving the Information System to facilitate use; and Addressing Policy Issues that lie at the intersection of the digital divide and 21st century literacies.
 
 

Educating the User includes several projects:

* The Teacher Education Program project is working to integrate 21st century literacy concepts and skills into UCLA's Graduate School of Education coursework this fall and winter.  The Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative will report the outcomes of this endeavor next spring and make them available to other departments of education.
* The Blue Web'nTM project is working to build a 21st century literacies component on Pacific Bell's Knowledge Network Explorer educational web site (http://www.kn.pacbell.com).  The Blue Web'n site offers links and references to quality K-12th grade web sites and is accessed by thousands of teachers every year.  Content is currently under development with the goal of "going live" early next year.
* The Public Library Training project is develop content and instructional methods aimed at librarians working in public libraries to train them in 21st century literacy skills to better serve patrons.  Content is under development this fall with trainings tentatively planned beginning January 2001.

Improving the Information System is examining design issues that inhibit efficient and effective use of an information system to inform better system development that will match the literacy levels, technological capabilities, and other characteristics of the user.  The project hopes to collaborate with the California Digital Library or another partner possessing a robust information delivery system to develop an adaptive system prototype on which usability tests of different user profiles could be tested.

The Addressing the Policy Issues is collaborating with various constituents (educators, policy makers, community groups) to build consensus on the multiple areas in which the digital divide manifests itself (e.g., access to technology, users skills once access is achieved, appropriate content) and then, over the course of several meetings, discuss successes and failures in bridging these aspects as well as develop various indicators as to what might constitute success/achievement and how this translates into outcome assessment tools.
 
 

4.  International Leadership Conference on Information Literacy --- Woody Horton

Meetings were held on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week at NCLIS to discuss conference to be held in 2002-3. Thirteen to fourteen people attended, including representatives from UNESCO and the World Bank. Earlier, Woody and Bob Willard met with UNESCO to discuss sponsorship. UNESCO approved the idea. Senior people from Information, Communication & Technology and Education departments had a lifelong learning background and endorsed the idea, as did the Director General.

At these meetings, it was decided that a larger conference should be preceded by a smaller conference of leaders next spring in order to exchange papers/ideas on information literacy and lay the groundwork to maximize success of the larger conference. The group identified the need for about 35 people to participate for three days with international representation.  The conference must be meaningful to developing countries as well as industrialized ones. The State Department, USAID, and Education will be approached for funding. U.S. had withdrawn from UNESCO but may rejoin. This conference is not conditional on this. Forum members can help by suggesting names for this initial conference of experts. She will contact people she knows to get international representation. There will be two papers presented on business and information literacy. One on barriers and factors affecting access. Many other topics (e.g., national policies on information literacy, how information literacy impacts non-profit, non-government community, expanded definition of information literacy to digital literacy and knowledge management) will be addressed. Intent is to cluster 4-5 papers with a facilitator to pull out similarities, discuss issues, etc. Forum members need to get message out, particularly members in other countries.

Question: What is wider plan for dissemination of expert papers?
Response: We hope UNESCO will support dissemination. We expect to have papers posted on the Web.

May be held either in Paris, Monaco, or Prague ( The latter to coincide with International Conference on Service Learning.) in Spring 2002. Beyond Forum, UNESCO and NCLIS, other organizations will want to provide support. A Web site will be up at NCLIS Tuesday of next week.   Members should send Patricia information on names of heads of international organizations in order to identify possible international participants.
 

5.  Next Meeting Dates

 January 25, 2002, Washington D.C.
 May 17, 2002, Washington D.C.