INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
School Librairies in the picture: preparing pupils
and students for the future
IASL 2009 38th Annual Conference
Padua (Italy), 2-4 september 2009
Yolande Maury
Artois University/ IUFM (France)
ERTé « information culture and information curricula », Lille 3

INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 Purpose of this communication
- to contribute to the definition of information
culture;
= which kinds of knowledge are necessary to
study, live, and evolve in the information society
(particularly in the context of web 2.0 );
= what culture (information culture) is necessary
to become « member » of a « world » in which
information plays a major role;
i.e what initiation (in an anthropological sense)?
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 Outline
- context of the research
- research methods and approach
- first results
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 Context of the research
- ERTé (educational technologies research team),
formed in 2006, « Information culture and
information curricula », Lille 3, A. Béguin dir.
Objective : to propose solutions for improving
information literacy education in school and at
university.
Several research laboratories and academic institutions
Five teams (researchers, documentation professionals,
school librarians…).
- Paris team, with Christiane Etévé, National Institute
for Educational Research (INRP).
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 Research method
- a qualitative research (for an in-depth understanding);
- ethnographic observations (non participant,
objectifying) to bring out the structural elements of
information culture: description of situations (usual
practices, specially negotiations pupils-school-librarians);
- observations over time, four school librarians, in
three secondary schools in Paris, during training
sessions;
- in various contexts (levels, school subjects);
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
- focusing on the « emergence of meaning »
(Paillé, Mucchielli, 2003), ie identifying dynamics,
information culture being built;
- narrative observations (logic of situations);
= to build a knowledge (anthropology) from
« seeing » and « writing on seeing » (ethnography)
(Laplantine, 2002).
- focused interviews, to know actors’point of view
on the practices (open-ended questions);
+ informal conversations, collection of documents…
- an interdisciplinary research, borrowing from
several fields.
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 Research approach
Information culture is questioned by the idea of
« culture », defined as:
« everything a person needs to know to live
in a particular society » (G. Rocher, 1968);
a vast symbolic set, including knowledge, ideas,
thoughts, rules, common to a plurality of social
actors, at a given time, in a given place.
everything a person needs to know to control his
own world of information.
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
In this way, information culture is action:
- a behavior related to appropriation (acquisition,
learning);
- an historical production, experiencing changes,
constructed daily through the interactions of social
actors (social rules created in a collective process);
- a dynamic set, with a relative plasticity, under
constant construction, produced to meet shared
needs.
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
Information culture is considered in a dialogical way,
linking
- pupils’ experiences, their usual practices,
information culture as they live it (culture in a descriptive
sense, referring to social sciences);
- and information culture more « cultivated » that
school librarians and teachers are trying to develop
(culture in a traditional sense, referring to competencies and
knowledge, essential to the point of not leaving them to
chance).
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 First results
 Pupils’ experiences and training needs // new
media landscape
- young people arrive at school with an experience
of these new tools : empirical practices, developing
skills, but revealing misunderstandings, gaps;
“it is not enough to be the author of social practices so
that there is a real culture, it is important that these
practices may have meaning for the person who is the
author of these practices” (De Certeau, 1990).
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
- a mixture of improvisation and adaptation:
. development of creativity, inventiveness, ability to make
“small arrangements” with technology and information;
. but often, practical and functional relationship to
information: collecting information immediately useful (vs
information process on a long term);
- (apparent) ease of access to information //
increase in resources:
. tendency to impatience, illusion of power control;
. in contrast with the long time for learning, and with a
distanced and wise use of new medias;
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
- the web 2.0, with its open environment, brings “real
life” and uncertainty into school: in contrast with the
stability, the certainty of academic knowledge
. problems of disorientation, information confusion…
. problems to situate and to be oneself ;
. navigation through several worlds, formal and non formal
information systems;
new training needs, new knowledge to build, to
promote the construction of meaning (making sense of
social practices)
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 From empirical skills to information culture
Information culture being built through
negotiations pupils / school-librarians:
. promoting the construction of meaning (an
accompanied conduct) ;
. and the transition from « information practices »
to the « culture of these practices » (Tardif,
1998; Maury, 2005);
. « sense giving », with the knowledge as « tools-
to-think », proposals of meaning.
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
. from the experiences and issues of pupils:
with knowledge introduced as answers to the pupils’
needs and questions ;
. warm, living knowledge, referring to controversial
topics, objects of debate (cf. the adjectival (new)
educations);
. knowledge related to the founding questions of
information-documentation and to emerging
questions in a context of permanent change
(between permanence and change)
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 knowledge reconfigured in the context of the
web 2.0:
- document : less stable, more plastic, both a process
and a product
difficult to define, and to identify its (key and secondary)
attributes; examples and counterexamples;
everything is a document: a digital exchange, a stream,
the man himself when he is « traced » on the web (O.
Ertzscheid, 2009);
towards a functional approach (definition based on form,
format and medium less relevant)
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
- information: addressed not only in terms of
content (and end in itself), but also in terms of
exchange, service, data sharing ; liquid, it’s in
nomadic objects
in question, the distinction data-information, machine
data-social data: manipulated, copied-pasted,
transformed, information becomes raw material, it is
treated as data, demythologized;
difficult to draw the limit between information and non
information: for ex., from when the text of a pupil in a
blog, or a trace on the web is an information?
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
- media: difficult to grasp, they take various forms //
the expansion of the digital communication
defining media is not easy: the traditional
categorization (a support for an object) less relevant;
internet, « ultimate media » is simultaneously technology,
support, media, source of knowledge, it conveys sound,
image, writing (D. Cotte, 2005); the same with cell phones
blogs, wikis, social networks, presented as media,
beyond the seven mass media.
However may anything be a media ? (D.Cotte, 2005)
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
- indexing: two worlds, folksonomies and
taxonomies
necessary understanding of the two worlds and
three dimensions of indexing: social (tags), free
(keywords) and controlled (descriptors);
from tags to boolean logic, progressive access to the
concept of indexing, and better understanding of
information relationship // more search power.
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
- authorship et validation: difficult to teach
authorship in open environment // monopoly of
knowledge by experts challenged
is it sufficient to be a writer in a blog, a wiki... to be an
author? Is the traditional publishing or peer review
process necessary to declare information valid?
is the popularity of a blog a guarantee of validity for
information?
through questions of law and property, pupils are
questioned in their own posture towards information and
in the society, and in their relationship to the world;
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 Emerging knowledge
- informative survey: to channel information
automatically, with a prospective approach
authentic experiences for pupils and students, to
seek the information they want to get, not just to receive
(pull versus push) ;
for more power in information process, fostering a
flexible thinking and a potential for creativity//
personalizing the search + being tolerant to
unexpected answers and coping with frustration and
failure.
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
- digital identity: web 2.0 and virtual environments,
areas of construction of identity (socially constructed
from interactions within the social world)
making young people aware of their digital identity and
its various aspects (formal and informal data ; identity
partly imposed // powerful tools );
and of the issue of identity : risks and rights, protection
from harmful information, management of identity (profile,
pseudonym…) = reflection on their own posture;
A module « Testez votre signature numérique », Denis Weiss
http://www.tahitidocs.com/outils/traces/signature.htm
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 Tentative conclusion
- so, information culture is much more than the
ability to seek, use, create and communicate
information;
- it implies social and cultural dimensions which
allow a critical and reasoned use of information;
- it includes thinking on the process of
information and knowledge creation and
communication, taking into account the
underlying values, biases, and belief systems.
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
 References
Baltz, C. (1998). Une culture pour la société de l'information ? Position théorique,
définition, enjeux. Documentaliste-Sciences de l'information, vol. 35, n° 2, 75-82.
Cotte, D. (coord.) (2005). Tout peut-il être média ? Communication et langages, n°
146
Dervin, B. (1998). Sense-making theory and practice: An overview of user interests
in knowledge seeking and use. Journal of Knowledge Management, 2 (2), 36-46.
Certeau, M. de (1990). L'invention du quotidien 1. Arts de faire. Gallimard. (Folio
essais ; 146).
Ertzscheid, O. (2009) L’homme, un document comme les autres. Hermès, n° 53.
(Traçabilité et réseaux).
Etévé, C., Maury, Y. (2007). Les savoirs en information-documentation et leur mise
en scène au quotidien : la culture de l'information en questions. Rapport d'étape,
ERTé "Culture informationnelle et curriculum documentaire", Lille 3.
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INFORMATION CULTURE AND WEB 2.0:
NEW PRACTICES, NEW KNOWLEDGE
Frisch, M. (2007). Disciplinarisation et didactisation de l'information-documentation.
Esquisse, n° 50-51, 155-166.
Laplantine, F. (2002) La description ethnographique. Nathan/VUEF, p. 7-8.
Lévine, J, Develay, M (2003). Pour une anthropologie des savoirs scolaires : de la
désappartenance à la réappartenance. ESF.
Paillé, P., Mucchielli, A. (2003). L'analyse qualitative en sciences humaines et
sociales. Paris : Armand Colin/VUEF, p. 13-16.
Rocher, G. (1968). Introduction à la sociologie générale. Ed HMH.
Tardif, J. (1998). Intégrer les nouvelles technologies : quel cadre pédagogique ? ESF.
(Pratiques et enjeux pédagogiques)
Tredinnick, L. (2008). Digital information culture : the individual and society in the
digital âge. Chandos Publishing.
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