The History Librarian

As many librarian readers may recall, there are five "pillars" of information literacy:

1. The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed.
2. The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently.
3. The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.
4. The information literate student, individually or as a member of a group, uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.
5. The information literate student understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally. (Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, Section 7, "Standards, Performance Indicators, and Outcomes").

I want to focus on no. 5, the one about the social uses of information. There are three components ("performance indicators") of this part: an understanding of the legal, ethical and socio-economic factors related to the use of information (copyright, freedom of speech, privacy/security, economic barriers to information); a willingness to follow laws, etiquette, ethics of information access and use; uses correct documentation/cites sources/gives credit where credit due. This is all well and good: everyone should be aware that there are barriers to access, that there are laws pertaining to the use of information, and we definitely want people to be aware of plagiarism and avoid it. However, lately I've been wondering if this part, for all of its prohibitionism, is missing something, something more positive and productive relating to the social uses of information.

In pitching a wiki for an undergraduate history methods course (which I have described before), I focused on the importance of collaboration and collegiality, playing off of the Prof. who has been sounding the same note with her students: no historian is an island, to paraphrase Donne. The importance of the collaborative nature of scholarship is embedded in the AHA Statement on Standards too: "Membership in this profession is defined by self-conscious identification with a community of historians who are collectively engaged in investigating and interpreting the past as a matter of disciplined learned practice;" and "Historians strive constantly to improve our collective understanding of the past through a complex process of critical dialogue—with each other, with the wider public, and with the historical record—in which we explore former lives and worlds in search of answers to the most compelling questions of our own time and place" ("Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct", Section 1 and 2). I don't think this emphasis on the importance of dialogue is unique to the historical profession: one of the platforms of higher education as a whole is dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

When I talk about citing sources to students, I always think of something a Professor from my undergrad days said:  "I don't read articles anymore, just footnotes."  Footnotes are not important simply because they document a writer's use of someone else's ideas; footnotes are a form of communication.  Scholars read a paper and want to know where the ideas come from so that they too can follow paths indicated via citations; footnotes also often communicate scholarly identity (citing certain thinkers puts one in a certain scholarly camp).  But how successful are we in communicating the importance of citations to students?  Importance not just because we want to check their papers, as it were (for punitive reasons), but because we want to show students how to communicate their learning and their successes to others.  Because we want students to know how to share what they've discovered.

The change in emphasis from negative (cite your sources so we know whether or not you're cheating) to positive (citing the sources you use is a way of participating in the scholarly community) is fairly simple and emphasizing the importance of sharing information does not have to preclude reference to plagiarism and its attendent perils.  Isn't it better to emphasize that college students are participating in a scholarly community?

The difficulty is how to assess/measure such an outcome – how do you measure collaboration?  I'm not sure, but encouraging (or even requiring, along the lines of "class participation") sharing resources via a course wiki is an interesting step in that direction.

I'm getting away from my larger point here (it's not just citations):  collaboration.  Sharing information, collaborating with others, working as part of a larger conversation among scholars and the public at large – shouldn't these be a part of an information literacy scheme?  Don't we want to help produce citizens/scholars who not only know how to use information, but share what they've discovered?