Mission Critical? The Presence of Information Literacy in Academic Library Mission Statements

We now live in an era of "fake news" and it has become more important than ever for people to have the skills and knowledge to apply critical thinking to the information they interact with. On college campuses, librarians have traditionally been the champions and conveyers of information l...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Library philosophy and practice 2018-02, p.1-5
Main Author: Perret, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic libraries
Aims and objectives
False information
Information literacy
Librarians
Library and information science
Mission statements
Social aspects
User training
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Summary:We now live in an era of "fake news" and it has become more important than ever for people to have the skills and knowledge to apply critical thinking to the information they interact with. On college campuses, librarians have traditionally been the champions and conveyers of information literacy. At the same time it seems that mission and vision statements have risen to primacy as guiding documents for academic institutions. So, it seemed appropriate to investigate whether the latter reflected the former. That is, does information literacy, at least as a concept, appear in academic library vision and mission statements? While it may seem that library vision and mission statements have risen to prominence in the last few years, they were being discussed in the literature as early as 2002. Teaching information literacy is arguably one of the most important responsibilities of the 21st century academic library, so it is disheartening to see that it is only mentioned as a primary activity in the mission and vision statements of 24% of the institutions examined.
ISSN:1522-0222
1522-0222