Delivered at the 2012 L

1. From a “Crusade Against Ignorance to a Crisis
of Authenticity”: Cultivating Information
Literacy for a 21st Century Democracy
Andrew Battista
Information Literacy & Reference Librarian
University of Montevallo
2012 LOEX Annual Conference, Columbus, OH
May 4-5, 2010

2. #LOEX2012
Engaged Me talking:
discussion: 22 minutes
28 minutes
 Librarians should help students become sustainable
learners, citizens who cultivate networks of information that
compel them to pursue fairness, equality, and human rights.
 Many prominent information literacy metrics do not
correspond with the challenges of living and learning in our
“swirling vortex of information.”
 Information literacy instruction that directs students to
curate content on social media platforms is an essential
component of a democracy-centered education in the 21st
century.

3. #LOEX2012
Information literacy should be
understood “as a new liberal art […] as
essential to the mental framework of
the information-age citizen as the
trivium of basic liberal arts
(grammar, logic, and rhetoric) was to
the educated person in medieval
society.”
Shapiro & Hughes (1996)

4. #LOEX2012
“…strong emphasis on undergraduate liberal
arts studies [designed for] intellectual and
personal growth in the pursuit of meaningful
employment and responsible, informed
citizenship.”

5. #LOEX2012
“Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against
ignorance; establish and improve the law for
educating the common people. Let our countrymen
know that the people alone can protect us against
these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for
this purpose is not more than the thousandth part
of what will be paid to kings, priests, & nobles who
will rise up among us if we leave the people in
ignorance.”
--Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to George Wythe 1786
Thomas Jefferson, Rembrandt Peale, ca. 1800

6. #LOEX2012
“Over the past decade, we have seen a
crisis of authenticity emerge. We
now live in a world where anyone can
publish an opinion or
perspective, whether true or not, and
have that opinion amplified within the
information marketplace. […] Our
Nation’s educators and institutions of
learning must be aware of—and adjust
to—these new realities.”
Barack Obama, National Information
Literacy Awareness Month, October 2009
Barack Obama, Hampton University Commencement, May
9, 2010. Source: whitehouse YouTube channel

7. #LOEX2012
“Public education is a Since World War
scheme dreamed up by II, education has
the captains of industry to “increasingly been
incubate servility and decoupled from the life
ultimately sabotage and practice of
anything like a real
democracy.”
democracy”
--Benjamin Barber, A “Despite their reputation of being
-- Erik Reece, “The
Schools We Need,” Orion
Passion For Democracy avid computer users who are fluent
September/October 2011 with new technologies, few students
[use] a growing number of Web 2.0
applications for collaborating on
course research assignments.”
Head and Eisenberg (2010), Project
Information Literacy
Colleges and universities, for
all the benefits they
bring, accomplish far less for
their students than they
should.”
The organizational structure and
Our great universities have “lost Derek Bok, quoted in operating principles that have
sigh of the essential purpose of Academically Adrift: Limited formed the foundation of higher
undergraduate education” Learning on College Campuses education for more than two hundred
(Arum & Roksa 2011) years no longer function effectively.”
Harry Lewis, Excellence Without
a Soul --Mark Taylor, Crisis on Campus

8. #LOEX2012
“Online, kids have to make choices among
seemingly infinite possibilities. There’s a
mismatch between our national standards of
testing and the way students are tested
every time they sit by themselves in front of
a computer screen.”
--Cathy N. Davidson, Now You See It: How
the Brain Science of Attention Will
Transform the Way We Live, Work, and
Learn

9. #LOEX2012
 Determine the extent of information needed
 Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
 Evaluate information and its sources critically
 Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
 Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
 Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surround the
use of information and access and use information ethically and
legally
Phrases from ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards
for Higher Education

10. #LOEX2012
A Fresh Rhizome of Cimicifuga Racemosa
John Uri Lloyd and Curtis G. Lloyd, The Drugs and Medicines of North America, ca. 1884-87

11. #LOEX2012
Literally…
“Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything
other, and must be.”
“A rhizome may be broken, shattered at any given
spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on
new lines”
A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it
will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines.”
Theoretically…
“A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between
semiotic chains, organizations of power, and
circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social
struggles.”
Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia

12. #LOEX2012
Social Media Social media create “framing
destabilizes existing mechanisms for how people understand
information hierarchies politics” and allow students to “actually
create a culture in which questions of
and allows students to
dialogue, dissent, critical
make real changes in engagement, [and] global responsibility
the world. can come into play.”
Henry Giroux, interview with Al
Jazeera (October 8, 2011)

13. #LOEX2012
“[E]very year, I become more and more
convinced that having first-year students
use peer-reviewed literature in their
Social Media encourages research is a terrible idea that takes the
students to integrate diverse focus away from what is important for
kinds of evidence into their them to learn.”
writing, especially evidence
that is publically important. Meredith Farkas, Information Wants to be
Free (blog)

14. #LOEX2012
“Many large journal publishers
have made the scholarly
Social media presents an communication environment
alternative to sources of fiscally unsustainable and
academically restrictive. [...]
information (i.e., scholarly major periodical
communication contained subscriptions, especially to
on proprietary databases) electronic journals published by
that are probably not historically key providers, cannot
financially sustainable. be sustained: continuing these
subscriptions on their current
footing is financially untenable.”
Harvard University memorandum
to Faculty Advisory Council, April
17, 2012

15. #LOEX2012
Social media allows students to
present themselves publically and
become engaged with discussions
that take place in the public
sphere.

16. #LOEX2012
Assignment: Curate a Twitter List
Basic Elements
 Curate a list over a semester
 Establish the organizing principle of the list
 Be prepared to talk about the logic of the list
Basic Learning Outcomes
 Encourages students to organize information into
meaningful categories and reign in the challenge of attention
 Students evaluate the quality and source of information
 The class is able to crowdsource knowledge and present
information to others
 We begin to understand that the process of information
seeking is always ongoing and lasts even after the class ends

17. #LOEX2012
“This is the most extreme and long-term hope
Detroit offers us: the hope that we can reclaim
what we paved over and poisoned, that nature will
not punish us, that it will welcome us home—not
with the landscape that was here when we
arrived, perhaps, but with land that is
alive, lush, and varied all the same.”
- Rebecca Solnit, “Detroit Arcadia: Exploring the James D. Griffioen, The Disappearing City ,“Feral Houses”
Post-American Landscape.”

18. #LOEX2012

19. #LOEX2012
“...a school with a 90% graduation rate
and a 50% college acceptance rate for
its pregnant students sounds like a good
thing to me. Students are taught to grow
their own food, build, and they even have
farm animals which they have learned to
take care of. Instead of being praised for
their actions, the school is being shut down
entirely (it’s pretty sketchy if you read the
Protests for Mary Catherine Ferguson School whole article).
- Lauren Tinchey, class blog

20. #LOEX2012
Task-based Information Seeking
Professor assigns project and requires defined amount of sources.
Student locates requires sources
and integrates them into project.
Student turns in project, gets a
grade, and moves on with life.

21. Fluid Information Discovery Facilitated by Social Media #LOEX2012
Process of discovery
begins by reading Student writes and makes
curated sources. Twitter connections enabled by a Twitter
assignment supports account. Writing is motivated by
this goal. the desire to essay and participate
in public process of democracy.
Student starts curation of Twitter
feeds without a specific goal in Student reads and learns about
mind, other than cultivating a social problems in Detroit
useful network of information. through class discussion.

22. #LOEX2012
Selected References
Barber, B. (1998). A Passion for Democracy: American Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP.
Bivens-Tatum, W. (2012). Libraries and the Enlightenment. Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.
Dabrinski E., Kumbier, A. & Accardi, M. (Eds.). (2010). Critical library instruction: theories and
methods. Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.
Davidson, C. (2011). Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We
Live, Work, and Learn. New York: Viking.
“Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” (n.d.) Association of College and
Research Libraries. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency
Jefferson, T. (n.d.). “A Crusade Against Ignorance”: To George Wythe, Paris, August 13, 1786. Electronic
Text Center, University of Virginia Library. Retrieved February 28, 2012, from
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccernew2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/en
glish/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=47&division=div1
Kopp, B. M. & Olson-Kopp, K. (2010) “Depositories of knowledge: library instruction and the
development of critical consciousness.” In Dabrinski, E., Kumbier, A., & Accardi, M. (Eds.), Critical
library instruction: theories and methods. Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.

23. #LOEX2012
Kvenild, C., & Calkins, K., Eds. (2011). Embedded librarians: Moving beyond one-shot instruction.
Chicago:Association of College and Research Libraries.
National Information Literacy Awareness Month, 2009 by the President of the United States of
America: A Proclamation. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/2009literacy_prc_rel.pdf
Pawley, C. (2003). Information literacy: a contradictory coupling. Library Quarterly, 73(4), 422-452.
Shapiro, J. & Hughes, S. (1996). Information literacy as a liberal art. Educom Review, 31. Retrieved
fromhttp://net.educause.edu/apps/er/review/reviewArticles/31231.html
Solnit, R. (2007). Detroit arcadia: exploring the post-American landscape. Harper’s Magazine. July.
65-73.
Tinchy, L. (2011, June 8). Michigan farming high school shutting down. ENG 230 Introduction to
Literature.Retrieved November 4, 2011, from http://thepastoral.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/michigan-
farming-high-school-shutting-down
Zimmerman, J. (2011, June 8). Amazing urban farm school for teen moms will be shut down. Grist.
RetrievedNovember 4, 2011, from http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-08-amazing-urban-farm-school-
for-teen-moms-will-be-shut-down

24. #LOEX2012
More Information
You can download a copy of this presentation and a draft of
the essay, with the Twitter assignment attached.
http://tiny.cc/crusadeloex
http://tiny.cc/twitterassign
An extended version of this essay is slated to be included in
the forthcoming collection, Information Literacy and Social
Justice: Radical Professional Praxis, edited by Shana
Higgins and Lua Gregory (Library Juice Press).
Contact Information
Andrew Battista, Ph.D.
Information Literacy & Reference Librarian
University of Montevallo
E mail: abattista@montevallo.edu
Twitter: @rawdeal85
Hash tag: #curationculture

25. #LOEX2012
Questions
What are some ways that we’ve had success collaborating with
teaching faculty to integrate social media tools into the narrative
arcs of courses?
I think the advantages of social media are evident, but what are
some of the challenges of bringing social media tools into
information literacy instruction?
How can we can use social media tools to facilitate the discovery of
traditional sources of information?
Is the issue of publicness something to be concerned about when
we ask students to participate on social media networks?
Can social media tools work for “one shot” instruction contexts, or
does the involvement of the librarian have to be much more
substantial than that?