New test would measure students’ Web wisdom

July 4th, 2005 Stewart Posted in Uncategorized |

Where are the librarians? As the ETS is working on screening college applicants for what are essentially information literacy skills, we continue to see more puff pieces like this one, where students praise “the internet” and heap contempt upon “the library,” as though in college you can really extract one from the other.

In the meantime, ALA/ACRL and other library associations seem to be remarkably silent. If the testing is rigorous, it can be of value to information literacy librarians, helping them to make the case for curriculum-wide training in the use of information. I’ve never been a member of ALA, so maybe I cannot correctly judge this, but shouldn’t they be making statements to the press, working with ETS to develop the test, and turning this into a win for academic libraries?

And if they are already doing these things, then why are we so notably absent from this article?

(Found out about the article from Kept-Up Academic Librarian, a daily read for me.)

[ADDENDUM 7/6/05: An article from Inside Higher Ed mentions the involvement of Stephanie Brasley, information literacy librarian at UCLA, and has quotes from her. This is very good to see in the press, and allays some of my concerns listed above. That said, where is ALA/ACRL in all of this?]