ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ July/August 2001 / 689 C o l l e g e & R e s e a r c h L i b r a r i e s w sne Information literacy in the Information Age What I learned on sabbatical by Topsy N. Smalley People generally acknowledge that the on­slaught of the Information Age has had a major impact on how things get done in the world of work. A sabbatical leave during spring semester 2000 enabled me to explore this in some depth. My objectives w ere to assess the informa­ tion literacy needs of different types of w ork­ ers, gather data from job sites, and develop new instructional module prototypes for our information literacy program, incorporating w hat I had learned. Once into the project, additional interests emerged. I discovered it w ould help to know more about w hat the high schools w ere d o ­ ing in relation to information literacy. And, since my college is a lower-division institu­ tion, I w anted to learn w hat levels of infor­ mation literacy skills are expected of students at the junior/senior level in four-year institu­ tions. Gathering information Initially, various resource people at my col­ lege (e.g., the director of Tech Prep, the dean of Instruction for Career Education, and the Business Division chair) helped arrange con­ tacts with local businesses and organizations. I conducted interviews and observed a vari­ ety of w orkplace situations; talked with u p ­ per-division juniors and seniors at four-year schools; hung out in chatrooms with college students, hum an resources folks, and people in a variety of occupations (e.g., dental hy- gienists and nurses, since those are two oc­ cupational programs associated with my col­ lege); p o ste d q u estio n s o n g en eral an d specialized Internet bulletin boards; and read a lot. To bring it dow n to a more personal level and make the learning more real, I w ent to a local temporary em ployment agency and got a job as a file clerk at a fairly large local com­ p any (650 em ployees).1 The job added an important dimension, as I could closely ob­ serve the information skills expected of work­ ers during ordinary w ork cycles. At the job, I helped out with pre-employ­ ment testing, processed résumés and paper­ w ork for one of the com pany’s recruiters, photocopied for the people w ho did man­ ager training, assembled materials in note­ books for em ployee orientations, and, of course, tended to the stacks of filing (this was not a paperless company). Through all of this (and from my other interviews and job observations), I developed a sense about such things as how and why people get rew arded (e.g., bonuses, raises, and comments in perform ance appraisals); how w hat you learn contributes to w hat you get paid; and how w orkers use search en­ gines and other Internet tools to find out what they need to know. A b o u t th e a u th o r Topsy N. Smalley is instruction librarian at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, e-mail:tosmalle@cabríllo.cc.ca.us mailto:tosmalle@cabrillo.cc.ca.us 690 / C&RL N e w s ■ Ju ly /A u g u st 2001 W orkplaces w a n t good learners; it's w h a t you know, or can learn to do, th a t is valu ab le to the organ izatio n . Other fin d in gs I came to realize that: 1) Workplaces want good learners; it’s what you know, or can learn to do, that is valuable to the organization.2 2) Employees are knowledge workers. As one worker e-mailed me: “At the organiza­ tional level, companies have to start extract­ ing and managing vast amounts of informa­ tion. Knowledge is a hot commodity. Com­ panies— but, actually, that means the employ­ ees— have to know how to put knowledge to work. At my company, they are beginning to refer to what the employees know as the company’s knowledge assets. ” 3) Employees know that they need good information and problem-solving skills. As two workers said: “We are expected to do research on our own, and to come up with quality, relevant information that we can then use to prob- lem-solve. When people talk about having good information-access skills they aren’t just talking theoretical!” “It’s critical in today’s world to know how to find and use information, to navigate on the Internet, to use search engines. If you don’t have those skills, I think it would be very difficult to even be an entity-level clerk anywhere.” 4) In the workplace, and as a junior/se- nior at a four-year college/university, it is now pretty much assumed you can get around electronically.3 5) Management of information resources is critical (as in being able to return to what you were looking at yesterday so you can refer to it in today’s meeting and use it tomorrow). D istributed access to inform ation and w h a t it m eans If you go back to the typical workplace of five or six years ago (i.e., ancient history), information typically flowed up to the top of the organization. The worker bees at the bot­ tom of the pyramid may have handled the data as they ran the mainframes, but the in­ formation produced was funneled to the man­ agement team at the top, where it was used to make decisions. That’s all different now. In many work­ places, each employee has this little box called a computer on his or her desk. The box has many different functions, but one thing is true of all the boxes— they are all connected to the organization’s Intranet, and they are all connected to the Internet. Access to information is now distributed. The very interesting corollary to this is that responsibility for access to needed informa­ tion resources is now also distributed. The individual worker takes personal responsi­ bility for finding information needed for prob- lem-solving— and is expected to. The unit manager may walk in and say: “By our 10:00 meeting this morning, I want you guys to have been out there on the Internet finding. . . . ” W hat high schools are doing Visits to area high schools revealed two ma­ jor lessons: 1) the California Digital High School project is transforming learning envi­ ronments and 2) Information Age skills are key components to school technology plans because they are in the schools themselves. There is now an overt emphasis on informa­ tion literacy and inquiry-based learning. Se­ niors complete netfolios and other projects that demonstrate their computer and infor­ mation literacy skills. My sabbatical experience confirmed that we are living in an increasingly complex, in- formation-laden world and that Information Age skills are critical to success— not only in making a life, but also in making a living. Best of all, I have new “real-world” stories to tell students and a whole bunch of instruc­ tion ideas to try out.4 Notes 1. Texas Instruments fabrication plant in Santa Cruz, California. 2. Texas Instruments is a pay-for-knowl- edge (sometimes called pay-for-skills) com­ pany that directly rewards employees who increase their skill and knowledge levels. A (continued on page 704) 704 / C&RL N ew s ■ Ju ly /A u g u st 2001 journals only. Access: http://ods.od.nih.gov/ databases/ibids. html. • Consumerlabs. One of the difficulties with herbals is that often the product that you buy may contain very little of the active ingredient. Consumerlabs tests natural prod­ ucts to see what they actually contain; some of their results are available for nonsubscrib­ ers. Access: http://consumerlabs.com. • A Mini-Course in MEDICAL BOTANY. For those who want to learn about natural products themselves, there is “A Mini-Course in MEDICAL BOTANY” by James A. Duke, one of the gurus on the use of herbals. The site contains his actual lecture notes. Access: http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/syllabus/. Illegal drugs Illegal use of drugs may involve either the use of illegal substances, such as cocaine or heroin, or the illegal use of prescription drugs, such as barbiturates and tranquilizers. Un­ derstanding how these drugs act upon the body may help in understanding the addic­ tion. • National Institute on Drug Abuse. This is a nicely designed site with clearly marked sections for health professionals, par­ ents and teachers, and students. Research reports, statistics, directories of street names for drugs, and a host of other information can be found here. Access: http://www.nida. nih.gov/. • Drug Enforcement Administration. This Web site contains a listing of “drugs of concern,” as well as access to schedules of controlled substances and statistics, such as the number of meth lab seizures over the last decade. Access: http://www.usdoj.gov/ dea/. • Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR). Located at the University of Maryland, the CESAR site provides good basic information and nu­ merous charts and statis­ tics. Access: http:// www.cesar.umd.edu/. Drug sales statistics • Hoover’s Online. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the largest in the United States. Information about the industry itself can be found on business sites, such as Hoover’s O nline. Access: http:// www.hoovers.com. • Drug Topics. Very often students seek statistics on the use or sales of prescription drugs. Once a year, a marketing firm, IMS America, does a National Prescription Audit, sampling the number of prescriptions per drug. Some of its results can be found on the Drug Topics site, a pharmacy trade maga­ zine. Its “Pharmacy Facts and Figures” lists the top 200 brand-name and generic drugs, both by number of prescriptions and by re­ tail sales. Access: http://dt.pdr.net/dt/. Note 1. PharmInfonet (pharminfo.com) has been a primary gateway for pharmacy infor­ mation for a number of years. Unfortunately, it has evidently gone out of existence. ■ ( “Inform ation literacy . . . ” cont. from page 690) major theme that ran through my interviews and other work observations is that it is criti­ cal that employees be good learners in any fast-paced work environment. 3. The newly developed TekXam, “the nationwide standard for technical lit­ eracy,” incorporates many information literacy skills. Note the test objectives and online quiz at their Web site (http://www.tekxam. com). 4. “Information Literacy in the Informa­ tion Age: Sabbatical Project Report,” includ­ ing the instructional modules, is available on the Web at http://www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/ -tsmalley or http://www.topsy.org. ■ http://ods.od.nih.gov/ http://consumerlabs.com http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/syllabus/ http://www.nida http://www.usdoj.gov/ http://www.cesar.umd.edu/ http://www.hoovers.com http://dt.pdr.net/dt/ http://www.tekxam http://www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/ http://www.topsy.org