ProgramInformation literacy and Web 2.0: is it just hype?Peter Godwin

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Information literacy and Web 2.0:is it just hype?

Peter GodwinUniversity of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Web 2.0 provides an exciting set of toolsfor librarians to help their students become more information-literate.

Design/methodology/approach – Recently, information overload and Web 2.0 have led librariansto adopt practices labelled as Library 2.0. Information literacy can be the key to affecting the learningattitudes and characteristics adopted by the users, caricatured as the “Web generation”. Web 2.0 toolsprovide new, interactive ways to engage them. The literature is reviewed to provide examples oflibrarians using Web 2.0 tools to improve the information literacy of their users.

Findings – Librarians are embracing Web 2.0 as it becomes more mainstream and experimentingwith the tools to supplement their information literacy interventions. Many of these are being wellreceived but their quantity and measures of their impact on learning have yet to be assessed.

Originality/value – The link between information literacy and Web 2.0 is novel, encouragesconstructive learning and enables respected educational methods (e.g. reflection) to be used in differentways.

Keywords Information literacy, Worldwide web, Higher education

Paper type Case study

1. IntroductionThe prophets of doom are predicting the end of librarianship as it has been known.Printed journals are being dumped, the “punters” are just “Googling”, and the e-book isthreatening to burst through at any moment. Will there be a role for librarians in fiveyears time? In my opinion, I think it will be a different one with information literacy(IL) at its core. The so-called Google generation’s technical ability is easily overstatedand they are no more able to search and evaluate effectively than their forebears.Librarians cannot simply use their tried and trusted methods from the days of usereducation, and will need to employ more engaging and active methods to reach theirpatrons. Web 2.0, by its emphasis on the user and participatory character, fostersinnovatory approaches which should be more fun. Recently there has been someevangelising and examples of good practice. As we shall see this is going beyond hype,but these are early days and it is impossible to quantify the activity. It is clear that theWeb 2.0 “mantra” has arrived, is irreversible, and that experimentation is happeningand will spread unpredictably. That is the nature of Web 2.0.

2. From Web 2.0 to Library 2.0The experimental user-focussed participatory approach, enabled by the web as aplatform has become known as Web 2.0. This has been seen as important in many

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This paper is an updated version of a presentation made at the Bridging Worlds Conferenceorganised by the National Library Board of Singapore in October 2008.

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Received 10 February 2009Revised 7 April 2009Accepted 25 April 2009

Program: electronic library andinformation systemsVol. 43 No. 3, 2009pp. 264-274q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0033-0337DOI 10.1108/00330330910978563

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fields and has spawned a whole group of 2.0s (e.g. Business 2.0, Education 2.0)including Library 2.0. Since 2006 we can detect keen interest from all sectors oflibrarians, judging by the number of conferences, (e.g. the Australian Computers inEducation Conference, Canberra 29 September-2 October 2008 included a track one-learning including information literacy, Web 2.0 and school libraries (www.acce.edu.au/)), workshops, and articles (such as the literature review of social software andlibraries (Secker, 2008)). In particular the ground-breaking Learning 2.0 programme,devised by Helene Blowers of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, with its “23 things”(or small exercises) encouraging all her public library to become familiar with Web 2.0tools, has been made available freely on the web. Abram (2008a) said of thisprogramme in his blog: “I believe that this has been one of the most transformationaland viral activities to happen globally to libraries in decades. Her efforts have reallymade a difference.” He then cites a long list of articles and libraries which have adaptedthe methodology. Meredith Farkas’ “Five weeks to a social library” programme is alsoavailable under creative commons licence on the web and been heavily used (www.sociallibraries.com/course/). With the growing interest and controversy around Web2.0 the tide has come in and few librarians are seeking to emulate King Canute.

However, real change takes time and we should not mistake enthusiasm and payinglip service for real commitment. Librarians should regard really simple syndication(RSS), blogs, YouTube, social networks, tagging and wikis as mainstream. They have,according to Stephen Abram, “to pass the chasm of the early adopters and into thespace of the early majority” (McLean, 2008). If Web 2.0 is about participation, howmany librarians are doing this? It would be illuminating to know how many areputting presentations on Slideshare. As Charles Arthur said in 2006 “It’s an emergingrule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one willcreate content, ten will ‘interact’ with it (commenting or offering improvements) andthe other 89 will just view it” (Arthur, 2006). Wikipedia is often accused of beingdominated by geeks or eccentrics. The potential for participation is vast but evidenceshows that with students, the popularity and exposure of services like Facebook andYouTube contrast sharply with Flickr and del.icio.us (Horwath and Williamson, 2008).However, as we shall see, the latter are both useful to most students and also forpromoting and encouraging them to be more information literate. Facebook has gainedmost attention and the dangers of exposing personal details and movements onFacebook continue to be well documented (Solove, 2008). At present, the take-up ofFacebook has spread well beyond the originally intended young academic communityin the US to all ages everywhere. Latest trends show a huge growth in the over 35 agegroup (Smith, 2009).

3. Enter the “web generation”Much has been written about the so-called “web generation” and its expectations. Overthe past two years there have been more surveys and serious investigation into thehabits and attributes of web generation users. Importantly, the Centre for InformationBehaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER) at University College Londoncarried out research based on deep log analysis of user behaviour, demonstrating theway such users search by age and status (CIBER, 2008). The results do not makeencouraging reading for academic librarians. Many myths are exposed, for exampleusers:

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. find their peers more credible than authority figures;

. prefer quick information in chunks, as do all age groups;

. are impatient, but again so are all age groups, depending on their previousexperience; and

. search swiftly, with poor grasp of their information requirement, leading toinadequate search strategies and keyword formulation, and leaving no time forevaluating relevance, accuracy or authority.

Clearly the importance of the web generation as different has been overstated andincreasingly we are all exhibiting some of the characteristics of this generation.

Perhaps the most important finding is the prevalence of “bouncing” when users“power browse”, and are content with just glancing at abstracts. This may be due topoor search engine skills, but we can expect that many routes and choices for users toinformation (lots of clicking) will continue (e.g. via social network sites) as the webcontinues to join together (Nicholas et al., 2008). We can also expect users to have lessknowledge of scholarly publishing and the nature of what they find on the web(Nicholas et al., 2008). This is a serious matter as the importance of understanding thecontext of material found is becoming paramount. Despite the advances made in ICTabilities, the IL skills of these younger users are no better than those of the so-called“Baby boomers”. With the growth of self-directed learning, both on campus anddistance learning, these deficiencies have become more serious. Horwath andWilliamson (2008) describe the survey undertaken at Mohawk College, Canada whichagain concluded that the “web generation” was not the wonder generation, withsuperior intelligence and technical fluency. Also, all the web generation was notspending its time using Web 2.0 tools. Other age groups may be spending more timecreating content and sharing. Web generation students are more concerned withFacebook, YouTube and iTunes than blogs, wikis, podcasts, or RSS feeds.

Williams et al. (2008) refer to research by Gross and Latham (2007) which analysesthe level of information literacy of groups of students about to go to university, andduring their courses at Florida State University. Most significant are the lower scorersin the test analysis: their self-estimate of ability is higher than their actual scores asthey do not recognise they have a problem. This may resonate with some of thestudents we meet in UK universities and elsewhere with the growth of mass highereducation, but there is no empirical research here to prove it yet. This has led Williamset al. to conclude that our interventions in Higher Education (HE) are too late as thedamage has already been done. Users have developed poor Google-related searchinghabits which are too deeply inculcated. The prevalence of plagiarism has beensuggested as confirmation of this trend. However, the suggested development of betterIL skills in formative years, via school teachers, school librarians and parents, whilelaudable would be very hard to achieve in the UK environment. I still believe we have aduty to work with students in HE to improve their information literacy. Gross andLatham (2007) also refer to research which says that the common skills-based didacticcure for low-skilled individuals may not always be successful. This implies a search fornew ways to intervene, helping students to recognise and overcome their ILdeficiencies. Could Web 2.0 offer ways of reaching these students? I believe that manyweb generation students are disadvantaged because they think they know how to findinformation, but they don’t know what they don’t know. Librarians lecturing to them is

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not the answer. Making them aware of what is available is only a part of the equation.Carefully crafted assignments which force them to use a variety of resources, andmethods using active learning to engage them, give librarians the opportunity toemploy Web 2.0 tools.

4. Information literacy is the keyHow can students meet the challenges posed by their courses and lifelong learning?This has led some to require a plethora of literacies of which IL is only one (Martin andMadigan, 2006).This has been the librarian’s major problem: how to define what it isthat we are concerned with and what to call it. I do not propose to go into a long debateover labels, because IL still seems to be the best widely used term to describe the kindof literacy which the twenty-first-century citizen requires: recognising appropriateinformation, collaborating, synthesising and adapting it wisely and ethically. DavidWarlick, of the Landmark Project (http://landmark-project.com/) and coming from aschool educational perspective, is also proposing a twenty-first-century literacy toanswer questions like what students need to know, when most of recorded knowledgeis a mouse-click away; how they distinguish good and bad knowledge; deciding what itdoes to the value of information when everyone is a producer and how we promote thenew tools and assist their ethical use (Warlick, 2008). If IL is a key to success in lifelonglearning and coping in the future, this does not equate with librarians still telling theirusers about library buildings and databases. Our twenty-first-century students will notbe best served by these approaches. Modern IL requires that students be acquaintedwith the whole range of sources available from Google, Google Scholar, Intute, officialweb sites (e.g. UK Statistics Authority), full-text journal databases, subject databasesto books, encyclopaedias etc. However, librarians will still need to adjust their methodsof delivery to accommodate their future clientele.

5. Connecting using Web 2.0Growth of interest in the connection between IL and Web 2.0 began to be topical in2006. At that time it was less clear whether the connection would be to wider literacies.Also how exactly it would affect the IL agenda needed to be explored. Questions raisedat the time included:

(1) Was it about librarians’ own knowledge and abilities?

(2) Was it about simply connecting with the new type of user?

(3) Was it about content which we could use as teachers?

(4) Was it about content for users to employ in their study?

(5) Was it about providing new ways for us to employ to reach our users and howwould academic staff fit into this equation?

(6) Was it simply to reach the so-called Web generation or all users ?

In fact it proved to be all of these things and only subsequently can we begin to seeexactly where the emphasis should lie. We have already seen that there is plenty ofevidence for librarians taking the 2.0 mantra on board, but the initiatives which followmay have more to do with promotion than pedagogy. A key consideration in using thetools will prove to be relationships and partnerships with academic staff, learning andteaching or curriculum planners and IT trainers. Sarah Faye Cohen (2008) has written

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persuasively, saying “Librarians must use their skills as instructors and act aspartners in the academic environment. 2.0 offers many opportunities for sharing,learning, and communicating”.

The exploration of this was taken up in the edited book Information Literacy meetsLibrary 2.0 (Godwin and Parker, 2008). By now many librarians have shown interest inWeb 2.0 tools and what this could mean for services in their library, but to what extenthave they used these new skills in connection with IL? Information from some of thetrendsetters are contained in the book, but how far is this general? Librarians need toexperiment: there is no one size which fits all subject areas or institutions. Evidence ofthis comes in a recent post from Kim Ranger (Grand Valley State University, Michigan)(Ranger, 2008) reflecting on how she had followed up a Workshop for Instruction inLibrary Use (WILU) Conference presentation by Cameron Hoffman (one of the book’scontributors). She had tried out a wiki, Flickr (which had been less successful) andblogs. Similarly, an e-mail survey undertaken in 2008 by a colleague at the Universityof Bedfordshire in the UK found that of the 22 responses, all but one were from HE: halfhad used Web 2.0 in their programmes and ten were contemplating doing so, with RSSfeeds, blogs and wikis the most commonly used.

We can also deduce from conference papers that activity is taking place. Ewing andPrescott (2008) of St Cloud State University, Minnesota, surveyed their students andfound high use of YouTube and Facebook, but low use of podcasts and Flickr and noneof RSS. Therefore they set out to introduce the tools to students within their curricula.From these sources I have chosen to draw a picture of how Web 2.0 assists our ILinterventions based on useful and important facets of our pedagogy rather than via thetools themselves. This will help to emphasise that the 2.0s are more about helping tochange behaviour than about technology.

6. Active learning and collaborationWeb 2.0 can help us to engage our users by employing more active techniques. Let usbegin with Wikipedia, it “is both a powerful information source and an instrument todeliver all kinds if IL messages” (Godwin, 2008, p.168). For example it can be used toshow how data is built up, by checking the “history” facility in Wikipedia. Anne-MarieDeitering describes exactly this in her experiences with a first year composition courseat Oregon State University (Deitering, 2008), basing an assignment on how informationis created. The promotion of Sarah Palin to US Vice-Presidential candidacy in 2008 is agood example for tracking this. Wikipedia can help students understand howinformation is created and to value it. Students will use Wikipedia as a starting pointfor finding basic information and it is neither possible nor desirable to stop this. Canwe get unbiased information about John McCain? Perhaps the Wikipedia article, in itsattempt at neutrality, is a good example of where to start, but it certainly is not the onlysource. It is in informing students about the different types of sources that Wikipediacan be so useful. Library Instruction Wiki includes an example of a librarian who asksstudents to put information about herself on Wikipedia and edit it. Brockhouse andGroom (2007) from the University of Washington Bothell tell of how a student class puttheir assignments onto Wikipedia helping them to “ do better work and deal withissues of voice, knowledge, and community”. Wikipedia still contains an entry withdozens of university and college projects. It would be interesting to know how manyare currently using it!

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Facebook is useful to help students understand privacy and ethical issues as theycreate their own profiles, utilise other persons’ material and run the risk of exposingtheir personality on the open web. (Educause Learning Initiative, 2006).

Keywords are one of the hardest concepts for students to understand. Hoffman andPolkinghorn (2008) discuss the use of tags in Flickr to help students understandkeywords, subject searching, and make comparisons between tags and controlledvocabulary as used in Library of Congress subject headings. Del.icio.us can be used forbookmarking web sites and then sharing with a group by using agreed course tags. Inaddition to Wikipedia, wikis in general can be employed to assist IL. Beestrum andOrenic (2008) tell of how these were employed in English teaching at the DominicanUniversity in Illinois in the USA. Using PBwiki students were given some initialacclimatising exercises to get used to a wiki, and then worked in groups to concentrateon specific questions using a database, brainstorming topics and search terms andwriting annotations of items found as a group activity. Games have been developedand trialled for IL delivery, particularly in some American universities. Markey et al.(2008) have recently written about “Defense of Hidgeon; the plague years”, a web-basedgame for teaching incoming students IL skills and concepts at the University ofMichigan. Experience showed that despite monetary prizes offered initially, voluntaryparticipation only increased to 65 per cent when participation was linked to finalgrading; also “game play must be targeted with specific, limited objectives”. Much waslearned from the experiment and I believe any new game produced there has a muchhigher chance of student engagement and success (Markey et al., 2008).

Is Second Life (SL) Web 2.0? Strangely I would class it as a help in active learning.This is because the user has an avatar and can then fly and be anonymous and free inways that are impossible in First Life. Lyn Parker (2008) provides an introduction to SLand her experiences using it at the University of Sheffield in the UK. The jury is stillout over how useful the reference facilities in SL will be, but some of the workundertaken here must impinge on IL and be attractive to some users. Referenceinterviews have been included in this paper because the passing on of IL skills is still akey part of the reference interview. Brockhouse and Groom (2007) describe their recentexperiences of using SL for reference at McMaster University in Canada; take-up wasnot large, but was appreciated. The future addition of a voice facility may make theservice more personal as at the Enquiry Desk. Jo Parker describes the new IL unit fromthe Open University (UK) TU120 Beyond Google course (Parker, J., 2008). Thisintroduces students to the main Web 2.0 tools and encourages or requires them to usethem. Finally Sheila Webber describes her experience of using SL to develop inquiryskills with first year students at the University of Sheffield in the UK. Studentsundertook critical incident interviews with SL residents, and this formed a successfulblend with other parts of the course (Webber, 2008).

7. ConvenienceRSS is about convenience and is at the heart of Web 2.0. It is the tool that allows theregular update of chosen information to the user. Fryer and Secker (2008) show thebenefits of how RSS feeds have been used at the London School of Economics and theramifications for user training so that students understand how to make best use ofthem. Our users expect us to be where they are, and Web 2.0 tools can help us toreactivate our services at a distance, especially for information literacy. We have to

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start thinking of all non-face-to-face usages as distant users. As more and more of thecurriculum is delivered electronically this gives opportunities for embedding material.This can be done at module or even lesson level via virtual learning environments(VLEs). Blackboard has wiki and blog facilities, albeit they are “clunky”, and theCoursefeed facility from Blackboard into Facebook enables users to access theircourses and this may be extremely useful for students. The attraction of Facebook isthat it enables the librarian to be where the users are. There are debates about whetherthey want us there, but with adequate promotion users may choose to access ourservices from Facebook. We must remember that one of the prime reasons studentsignore our facilities is that they cannot find them easily enough. We have set up aFacebook site at the University of Bedfordshire Library and promote it at inductionsessions so that those interested can become fans. It enables access to our subjectpages, thereby creating an easy way for students to reach the subject advice andresources that we offer. Facebook offers the chance for people to indicate what they arecurrently doing. This has broadened into “microblogging” services like Twitter, withsome libraries taking out an account and using it to connect with their clientele.

Instant messaging for accessing reference services has been trialled at somelibraries. Hvass and Myer (2008) tell of their experience of using Meebo at theUniversity of Teesside in the UK. The importance of heavy marketing was stressed, forthe service was only available for four hours between Monday and Friday. Take-upwas small, but highly appreciated by those who used it. Services, like del.icio.us andthe Furl social bookmarking sites, enable easier and more convenient bookmarkingthat can be done from any PC with results shared among all users. The del.icio.uscollection of tags has even been preferred to Google as a search engine, because allresults have been selected by at least one person and popularity is indicated by thenumber who tagged them. Services like CiteULike enable easy tagging and sharing ofbibliographic information. The convenience of podcasting has made it popular as ameans of getting across limited amounts of instructional information which the usercan access on subscription anywhere anytime. Zimmer and Ziph (2007) explain howthe podcast series at Kresge Business Administration Library of the University ofMichigan in the US was developed. User feedback was very positive but, interestingly,video podcast or vodcasts were preferred.

8. Visual learningOur users, and I believe particularly the web generation, are characteristically visual. Ifwe are to make an impact now and in the future we have to make our services andinterventions more graphic. For example, Croydon College in the UK found that theAquaBrowser search platform and enriched catalogues increased online usagedramatically. Other library systems are following similar paths, as we all try to getnearer to an Amazon-type interface. Boolify is a tool which helps to explain Booleansearching, and allows a search to be built up visually. It may be more successful forteaching about Boolean than Venn diagrams, because it is interactive. YouTubealready contains many instructional videos which we can use in our teaching. SusanAriew describes her experiences creating YouTube IL instructional videos at theUniversity of South Florida (Ariew, 2008); her video on databases was used withgroups in 2006 as an icebreaker for IL instruction, and the later Chronicles of Libraria,although less instructional, received a lot of attention from librarians elsewhere. There

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are also clips and some historical material in many subject areas which can be used inteaching. Patal (2008) referred to the 50 greatest arts videos on YouTube. The use ofFlickr for class activities at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota (Ewing and Prescott,2008) shows how Flickr can be used for groups of students taking pictures of thelibrary and tagging the images.

9. Reflective learningReflection is currently very important in higher education courses, especially throughemphasis on reflective practice in health courses. The concept of reflection does notcome easily to many students, and therefore Web 2.0 tools that can help will be valued.The use of blogs is well established in schools (Richardson, 2006) and many of his ideascan apply equally to HE. Librarians are beginning to use blogs, usually in collaborationwith academic staff, to reflect on materials found or more generally on the progress ofprojects. I suggest that blogs can provide another means for establishing a continuouslink between a student group and the librarian reflecting on information collection forassignments. Too often the librarian sees a group and then loses contact. Payne (2008)describes her experiences of using a blog in a first year Information Skills module withbusiness academics and students at the University of Northampton in the UK.Interestingly, although most were aged 18-21, many had difficulty using bloggersoftware and many still saved their posting until the end of the module.

10. The futureWhat does the future hold for use of the Web 2.0 tools in IL? Will they be replaced bysomething like Web 3.0? I think the future lies with the use of smaller gadgets.McIntosh (2008) suggests that teachers should be taking note of the potential ofmobiles in the classroom as a bridge across the digital divide. Already there are twoand a half times more people in the world using mobiles than are using the internet. AsStephen Abram (2008b) says this “depends on understanding the potential in personaldevices – laptops, smartphones, PDA –to dominate as the device”. When this happensusers will have what they need in their pocket. Library 2.0 librarians seek to be wheretheir users are, whether that is Facebook or a VLE. As everything gets smaller we canexpect that we shall follow into these devices, which are ideal for presenting the smallamounts of information which they prefer anyway. This implies that we shall bemaking more podcasts and vodcasts as we seek to meet our users’ “anywhere anytime”mentality. Despite the limitations of the small screen, mobiles are natural to the webgeneration. Walton (2008) describes the use of iPods for library guides at Illinois StateUniversity. At present the costs of surfing the web via mobile devices are problematicfor everyone, but we can predict that this will change. A glimpse of what is to come canbe seen with Wikipanion, the iPhone version of Wikipedia.

11. ConclusionsWe must go beyond telling students about the library and simply trying to fix theirskill gaps. Part of our problem comes from a wrong approach within HE wherelibrarians still concentrate on their databases rather than working together withacademics to produce understanding of trusted sources, critical thinking and howinformation is built up and transmitted ethically. Certainly there is a worrying trendacross all age groups which depend entirely on Google or other search engines and are

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unable to search effectively or sort the wheat from the chaff. The web could bedisabling rather than transforming them. I believe the solution can only be found incontinually seeking to change their habits, and in future all librarians should beplaying a part in this. In practice, this is most likely to be in HE, accomplished by activelearning as part of the curriculum. Library 2.0 librarians have powerful Web 2.0weapons to help accomplish this.

References

Abram, S. (2008a), “The 23 things – Learning 2.0”, Stephen’s Lighthouse (blog), available at:http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2008/02/the_23_things_l.html(accessed 8 March 2009).

Abram, S. (2008b), “Evolution to revolution to chaos? Reference in transition. Search the way youwant to search”, Searcher, Vol. 16 No. 8, available at: www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep08/Abram.shtml (accessed 8 March 2009).

Ariew, S. (2008), “Joining the YouTube conversation to teach information literacy”, in Godwin, P.and Parker, J. (Eds), Information Literacy Meets Library 2.0, Facet Publishing, London.

Arthur, C. (2006), “Newly asked questions: What is the 1% rule?”, The Guardian: Technology,20 July, available at: www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/jul/20/guardianweeklytechnologysection2 (accessed 8 March 2009).

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Brockhouse, A. and Groom, M. (2007), “Using Wikipedia to re-envision the term paper”,EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, 23 October, available at: http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/UsingWikipediatoReenvisio/45402?time ¼ 1221658967 (accessed8 March 2009).

CIBER (2008), “The information behaviour of the researcher of the future”, report prepared forthe British Library and JISC, available at: www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf (accessed8 March 2009).

Cohen, S.F. (2008), “Taking 2.0 to the faculty: why, who and how”, C&RL News, Vol. 69 No. 9,pp. 472-5, available at: www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crlnews/2008/sep/ALA_print_layout_1_514875_514875.cfm (accessed 8 March 2009).

Deitering, A.M. (2008), “Using Wikipedia to eavesdrop on the scholarly conversation”,in Godwin, P. and Parker, J. (Eds), Information Literacy meets Library 2.0, FacetPublishing, London.

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Further reading

Buckland, A. and Godfrey, K. (2008), “Gimmick or groundbreaking? Canadian academic librariesusing chat reference in multi-user virtual environments”, IFLA Conference, Quebec, Canada,10-14 August, available at: www.ifla.org/IV/ifla74/papers/158-Buckland_Godfrey-en.pdf(accessed 8 March 2009).

Daniels, K. and Huxor, E. (2008), “Information literacy and Web 2.0: developing a modern mediacurriculum using social bookmarking and social networking tools”, University ofBedfordshire Centre for Teaching and Learning project, Luton.

Corresponding authorPeter Godwin can be contacted at: peter.godwin@beds.ac.uk

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