HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

OF INFORMATION

LITERACY

Presented by: Mary Jesette E. Penaojas

Presented to: Mrs Sheryl C. Farquerabao

Just as the development of libraries and the information industry are tied to historical, social, and economic developments in society, so is the history of teaching people about information. It will show how general social developments, particularly in the United States lead to corresponding developments in education, library services, the information industry, and both the bibliographic instruction and the information literacy instruction movements, especially in academic libraries and school library media centers.

Three Waves of Western History

Western history can be divided into three periods, the agricultural, pre-industrial, and pre-modern period of the first wave; the industrial and modern period of the second wave, and the current information-based, post-industrial, post-modern period of the third wave.

Pre-industrial societies existed everywhere until roughly 1760. Arnold Toynebee coined the term “Industrial Revolution” to describe economic developments in England in the period 1760-1840. The second wave, modern, industrial society was very slow in coming.

From the First Wave to the Second: 1865-1945

Libraries were rarer than schools and were also for the elite, for the most part. Collections of books and manuscripts could be found at monasteries, universities, and private homes of the affluent.

Most librarians at that time were monks, professors, teachers, and other interested people who would maintain collections, either in addition to other duties, or as an avocation.

The closest thing to public libraries were subscription

libraries organized in England, in other English-speaking countries, and in the U.S. (mostly on the eastern seaboard). People had to subscribe and pay, in order to use these libraries. There is some evidence that some information instruction activities occurred in German universities in the 1700s, but this type of activity would have been extremely rare, at that time for all of the reasons described above.

State universities for “the masses” were established during this time of industrialization as land-grant colleges and normal schools Land-grant colleges were founded to train farmers and these colleges and universities later added business, engineering, liberal arts, and other programs. Research, teaching, and service, including community outreach have always been important purposes of these institutions. Some land-grant colleges would become the “flagship” for state – supported colleges in their states. 

Normal schools and teachers’ colleges were established to train public school teachers. A number of them would later evolve into general regional state colleges and universities.

While the U.S. was industrializing at a rapid pace between the Civil War and World War I, and extending secondary and college education to the masses in the form of high schools, land grant colleges, and normal schools, modern U.S. libraries also rapidly developed, In 1876 alone, the American Library Association (ALA) was created by Melvil Dewey, Justin Winsor, and William Frederick Poole, Library Journal was first published , and Samuel Green’s pivotal article on reference services was published in one of the first issues of this journal. In addition, Dewey also published his Dewey Decimal Classification, that year.

While the first public libraries supported by taxes and free to the public would start in Boston and New Hampshire in the mid-nineteenth century, more public libraries would be created during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, first in the northeast and midwest, and later in the south west Public libraries also created both reference services and children’s services during this timeAs this was happening libraries were first trained locally as apprentices

As the modern industrialized period was a mass society built upon standards, schools, universities, and libraries all became very bureaucratic institutions, Libraries, in particular were centralized and hierarchical.They trained and hired professional librarians to provide new reference services from a centralized desk. As the main source of information for a mass society, libraries had standardized collections as a result of the development of Wilson catalogs and several other lists and review media.

They had standard classification with the use of the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress Classification Systems, and standard cataloging with the creation and use of cataloging rules.

Instruction in Academic Libraries Before 1960

However, instruction in the use of information was slow to develop until the late twentieth century. A number of universities offered courses on library use in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These courses combined the history of books and libraries with basic library research strategies and the critical evaluation of materials.

However, in the early twentieth century, the quantity and quality of these courses declined. Full courses on evaluating library materials changed to more shallow instruction on library research techniques. By the 1920s, any kind of library instruction was rare.

There would be developments in the years between 1920-1960 that would be important to both the history and the future of teaching about information, but these developments had little effect on most libraries, at that time.

Most of this period is regarded as a relatively stagnant one for teaching in higher education.

B. Lamar Johnsonorganized an instruction program

at Stephens College, a small Missouri women’s college in the years 1931-1950. He prefigured the bibliographic instruction movement of the 1970s and 1980s by offering orientations, instruction in the use of basic reference tools, point-of-use instruction, individualized instruction, course-related instruction, and full courses.

Louis Shores

Louis Shores’ “library college” idea did not begin or end with him. He believed that libraries should be the center of colleges, that students should be educated by doing independent studies in libraries, and that the professors should be “librarian-teachers”. Some of these ideas go all the way back to Dewey and Winsor, and they would also directly influence people and programs in the 1960s. 

The Bibliographic Instruction (BI) Movement in Academic Libraries: 1960-1989

Most of the 1960s would not be much livelier in the development of instructional services for college students than the decades preceding it.

However, there were two programs influenced by Shores’ “library college” concept, that would be major catalysts to the development of a full-scale bibliographic instruction movement in academic libraries in the 1970s.

The BI movement of the 1970s was a “bottom-up” grass-roots movement lead by young and new librarians with little or no power in their own institutions. Hardesty and Tucker (37) also mention young faculty with Ph.Ds unable to get teaching positions or to get tenure during the difficult early 1970s. A number of them also became librarians, with strong backgrounds in their original fields, who really wanted to teach. In any case, young librarians trying to start instructional programs in information use had to convince their often skeptical bosses and administrators, first. This would prove to be an “up-hill battle”. 

From the Second Wave to the Third: 1945-1981 and Beyond

Just as the movement from a pre-modern, agricultural, first wave society to a modern industrial society lead to the birth of modern U.S. twentieth century libraries, and just as the social ferment of the 1960s lead to the establishment of the bibliographic instruction movement, another major paradigm shift and another generational shift would lead to the information literacy movement. Between 1945-1981, the U.S.A. was gradually changing from a modern industrial society to a post-modern information-based one.

Computers were doing for the country and to the country what automobiles and highways had earlier done. While automobiles redrew our physical landscape, affecting where people lived, worked, shopped, etc. computers did the same thing to us, mentally.The implications of this for education, library services, and teaching about information have been staggering, and sometimes, shattering.Everything about these fields is now being questioned.

Libraries have been automating and using technology for decades, but many things have suddenly changed. At first, libraries would use a new technology, like the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)’s cataloging system to do old, traditional jobs quicker and better. Then they would use this new technology to do new tasks. In the case of OCLC, they used the databases to do Interlibrary Loan and to answer reference questions.

But now, new technologies, like the Internet are completely redesigning the nature and purpose of work.

This represents a the U.S. one hundred years ago! Libraries are also now competing with an aggressive information industry and their survival is no longer assured.

Librarians must figure out where they fit in the near and far future and then be proactive.

Everything about modern twentieth century librarianship is being questioned at this time.major paradigm shift comparable to the industrialization in

The shift from printed information to electronic information has changed collection development policies and methods, reference services, and modes of instruction. In the case of collection development, a boasting twentieth century librarian may have said to a colleague from another library, “My collection is bigger than yours!” Now she would be more likely to say, “My library is more connected than yours!” In addition, hierarchies have been flattened in many libraries, with librarians now operating in teams. There is also a blurring of distinction between paraprofessionals and professionals and librarians and technical people.

From Bibliographic Instruction to Information Literacy: 1980 –

In some ways, information literacy continues and even completes library or bibliographic instruction. In other ways, it represents a different direction. Both movements exist to teach people how to find information. Practitioners in both movements are concerned with core competencies of information users, learning theories, conceptual frameworks, active learning, and critical thinking. Practitioners of both approaches use a variety of direct and indirect teaching methods. A number of librarians have personally made the shift from one movement to another.

In some ways, information literacy completes and fulfills the potential and work of bibliographic instruction. It has more of a theoretical base, it promotes life-long learning, it deals with information wherever it is, and it emphasizes determining information needs and evaluating and using information as well as finding it. While traditional BI was somewhat book and library-based, information literacy is tied more to electronic information and computers.