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Information Services and Digital Literacy: In search of the boundaries of knowing

Isto Huvila, Uppsala University, Sweden

Chandos Information Professional Series

 - presents a new approach for understanding how information services help and hinder people in becoming informed
 - provides an overview of how to conceptualize information services and digital literacy
 - provides a model for developing new types of library and information service
 - explores fundamental questions of information service and digital literacy
 - goes beyond the emancipatory paradigm, where services are changed to resemble social media, and and the conservationist, where traditional services is emphasized

Despite new technologies, people do not always find information with ease. Do people still need help in finding the information they need, and if so, why? What can be made easier with new tools and techniques?

Information Services and Digital Literacy is about the role of information services and digital literacies in the age of the social web. This title provides an alternative perspective for understanding information services and digital literacy, and argues that a central problem in the age of the social web and the culture of participation is that we do not know the premises of how we know, and how ways of interacting with information affect our actions and their outcomes. Information seeking is always a question of crossing and expanding boundaries between our earlier experiences and the unknown. We may not yet be well enough acquainted with the landscape of digital information to understand how we know, where the boundaries to our knowledge lie, how to cross them, and what consequences our actions may have.

Readership: Researchers, practitioners and students in Library and Information Studies.

£47.50 / US$80.00 / €55.00

An e-book version of this title is available to purchase as part of a Collection or Pick n Mix. Visit Chandos Publishing Online

About the author

Isto Huvila is a research fellow at the Department of Archival Studies, Library and Information Science and Museums and Cultural Heritage Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden. His work spans a broad range of topics, including information work; information management; knowledge organisation; information service; and information literacy in the context of the social web.

Contents

Introduction

Knowing what we know
 - The economy of ordinary knowledge
 - Boundaries of knowing
 - Conclusions

Information services and digital literacy
 - Information services
 - Digital literacy
 - Conclusions

Technologies of abundance
 - Networking
 - Personal information technology
 - Usability
 - Convergence
 - The consequences of technology
 - Conclusions

The culture of participation
 - Communal and individualist participation: ‘talko’ work and ‘broadcast yourselfism’
 - Commercialism and freedom
 - Roles and rules of participation
 - Economy of participation and non-participation
 - Conclusions

The ‘new’ user
 - Learned or born
 - Behaving differently with information
 - Reading differently
 - Users and non-users
 - Identity
 - The making of a ‘new’ user
 - Conclusions

Information
 - The form of information
 - The emergence of information
 - Qualitative and computational viewpoints
 - A pig in a poke?
 - Abundance and scarcity
 - Conclusions

Information services and digital literacy as boundary objects
 - The pieces that do not fit
 - Across the boundaries