Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.

0,
Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture

by George Lorenzo
March 2007

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this work. Please cite as follows: George Lorenzo, “Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and the New Education
Culture,” (Clarence Center, NY: Lorenzo Associates, Inc., 2007), http://www.edpath.com/stn.htm.
Introduction Some of the results generated by the 396 col-
It is extremely difficult today to effectively track lege student respondents revealed that
and fully understand how the vast amount and
quality of information so readily available over the • search engines are ranked as the first choice
Internet is transforming the way we conduct re- for information by 72 percent of colleges stu-
search and acquire knowledge. It is also safe to dents;
say that educators are having an extremely frus- • 2 percent use library websites as the source to
trating time keeping up with the prevalent and begin an information search;
growing overabundance of both cogent informa- • when excluding search engines from this pic-
tion and misinformation that today’s web savvy ture, college students typically learn about elec-
students tap into on a daily basis online. tronic information resources from friends (67
How can educators help today’s students reach percent);
an acceptable level of “information fluency” that • more than half (53 percent) believe information
they can carry with them during their academic from search engines is at the same level of trust-
careers and beyond? The term information fluency worthiness as library information; and
is used here to mean the acquisition of three pri- • 36 percent use librarians to cross-reference in-
mary skills : basic information technology skills formation for validation, and more than 80 per-
(including computer literacy), information literacy cent say that they use other websites with simi-
skills, and critical thinking skills. What do educa- lar information as a validation tool, followed
tors really need to know about information flu- closely by teachers/professors (78 percent).1
ency and its relationship to the swelling flood of
online-communication/sharing and web-based Some of the results generated by the 621 14- to
sources of information? 17- year-old respondents revealed that
This paper is a synthesis of some of the recent
literature that attempts to answer such questions. • they use friends, relatives, library materials and
It includes the perspectives of many educators, librarians to cross-reference information for
garnered through in-depth telephone interviews, validation more so than today’s college students
who are deeply interested in information fluency. do;
• 34 percent visit their public library at least
Perceptions of the Library and Information Resources monthly; and
The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) • while they more readily use electronic resources
recently published a report that highlighted col- than older respondents, only 20 percent of 14-
lege students’ perceptions of libraries and infor- to 17- year-olds who have used a library website
mation resources. The report was generated completely agree it provides worthwhile infor-
through a blind survey conducted for OCLC by mation compared to 45 percent of college stu-
Harris Interactive on May 20 through June 2, 2005 dents who completely agree.2
that focused on how today’s information consumer
perceives libraries. OCLC wanted to see if infor- OCLC has concluded that library resources, ser-
mation consumers believed that libraries mat- vices, and information experts “appear to be in-
tered, and at what level, as well as whether or not creasingly less visible in a universe of abundant
library usage would increase or decrease in the information.” So, it is not surprising that even col-
future. The blind survey garnered 3,348 respon- lege students, who, according to OCLC, are most
dents, including 396 undergraduate and gradu- aware of the resources and services available to
ate students from six countries, age 15 to 57, and them through academic libraries, do not access
621 14- to 17- year-olds mostly from the U.S. (la- such services as frequently as college students did
beled potential college students) whose responses in pre Digital Age years. The OCLC survey also
became the basis for the report focusing on stu- suggested that “libraries have no monopoly on the
dent perceptions of libraries and information re- provision of information,” and that today’s self-
sources. reliant students typically do not ask for help when
using both physical or virtual library resources.

2 Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture
In short, OCLC determined that “it is time to re- low them to create their own computer applica-
juvenate the library brand, which is still strong in tions, information-oriented websites and busi-
the category of books but needs to be made stron- ness models.10
ger in leveraging its brand to incorporate growing • NetGeners do not fear anything that is digital,
investments in electronic resources and library are constantly connected to information and
web-based services.”3 other people online or through their cell phones,
do not read instructional manuals, and demand
NetGeners immediacy.11
Responsible educators are always looking for • NetGeners are social, but their connection to
ways to rejuvenate themselves to meet the needs others does not have to be face-to-face; they fre-
of their most recent population of incoming stu- quently practice peer-to-peer learning through
dents. Hence, looking at some of the characteris- friends in their social network; and they prefer
tics espoused by those conducting research about a lateral approach to learning as opposed to a
today’s Net Generation (herein referred to as hierarchical approach.12
“NetGeners,” meaning young people who have • NetGeners read images much more easily and
grown up with the Internet) is a logical place to differently than generations before them. They
start building a framework and some context for are basically visual-based learners as opposed
answering questions about the information fluency to generations before them who are text-based
capabilities and habits of today’s students. learners 13
NetGeners have already started to enter higher • Because NetGeners have grown accustomed to
education and also represent the near future of rich media that has consistently kept their at-
the majority of our traditional-aged higher edu- tention and entertained them since birth, they
cation student population. demand to be engaged in their learning and in-
formation-gathering environments. Otherwise
• NetGeners are incredibly articulate, are esti- they will shut their instructors out.14
mated to have Intelligence Quotients that are
15 to 20 points higher than Baby Boomers, and Not So Tech-Savvy
are being recognized as the smartest genera- NetGeners are very capable of communicating
tion in history. 4 and sharing their interests online. They easily
• NetGeners with high SAT scores and who also navigate their way through instant messaging, e-
do well academically in higher education typi- mail, social networks such as FaceBook and
cally graduate from school systems that have Friendster, online social bookmarking websites
strong libraries. 5 del.icio.us and BackFlip, image sharing websites
• NetGeners are multi-taskers who have grown Flickr and Zoomanga; and the currently fast-grow-
accustomed to changing contexts seamlessly, ing social video-feed website YouTube. However,
and they expect this from others. 6 their information technology savviness is often
• NetGeners use a “Nintendo” approach to learn- considered less than admirable by most higher
ing by trial-and-error as opposed to conducting education standards.
careful research. 7
• NetGeners process information quicker than It is wrongheaded to think that undergradu-
previous generations and can “make connec- ates—because they have grown up in a digital
tions and recognize patterns easily instead of age—are better at understanding the technol-
following linear thought patterns.”8 ogy they use as it relates to researching infor-
• NetGeners are accustomed to synchronously mation. They are at sea, drowning in a pool of
and asynchronously connecting with others information, looking for life preservers. Librar-
worldwide and working in virtual teams, which ies have taken on the task for years of educat-
has important implications related to how they ing our undergraduate students, graduate stu-
access information and solve problems.9 dents, and professors about where information
• NetGeners see technology as a friend and not a resides, how to access it, and what can be done
foe, and it is recommended that educators al- with it. This is the vestal flame of libraries,

Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture 3
 and it is really an important task that can’t be nologies for scholarship and teaching,” by employ-
surrendered under the assumption that under- ing undergraduate and graduate students to ex-
graduates know about this because they have plore using technology and to teach them what
grown up with technology.15 can be considered information fluency skills for
producing digital projects. VCDH also participates
Engaging Students While Enhancing in workshops for K-12 teachers to “help them in-
Their Information Fluency Skills tegrate digital resources into their curriculum.” 18
There are pockets of information technologists, The kind of work being accomplished at VCDH,
instructional designers, faculty, librarians, and along with other scholars in the humanities over
publishers throughout the country collaborating the last two decades, has been tabbed “digital hu-
on projects that apply highly visual and interac- manities.” Their work revolves around experi-
tive technologies and pedagogies to create inno- menting with advanced technologies for discover-
vative teaching and learning environments that ing interpretations and creating new modes of
engage today’s modern students, as well as teach scholarly communication.
them information fluency skills. Such collabora- They (digital humanities scholars and informa-
tions typically create “contained spaces” in a web- tion technologists) have created large digital ar-
based environment comprised of reliable and fo- chives, complex hypertext narratives, and, in some
cused collections of audio, video, interactive and/ cases, algorithmic programs, relational databases,
or still digital objects, and documents. These con- and data mining systems. At the same time, the
tained spaces also provide specialized search en- volume of digitization has exploded, as libraries,
gine technologies and online access to extensive archives, and governments rush to move both his-
databases that link to full-text discipline-based torical and current data into electronic format.
articles and scholarly monographs. Using these Despite these advances and some stellar projects
contained spaces in face-to-face, fully online, and/ in digital humanities, advanced computing tech-
or blended courses can help students gain infor- nologies remain underdeveloped in the humani-
mation fluency skills at a faster rate and with ties, and there is opportunity for fruitful collabo-
greater traction than they would on the wild and ration across disciplines.19
chaotic web.16 The educators involved with digital humanities
One publisher that caters to libraries, for in- are seeking to build a distributed infrastructure
stance, uses the term (which it trademarked) “Se- with software that can analyze and represent spa-
mantic IndexingTM” in a number of its highly or- tial and temporal relationships among numerous
ganized and discipline-specific, subscription-based amounts of data, words, images, sounds, and bil-
resources that have been created by teams of schol- lions of artifacts from diverse sources. The goal is
arly editors. Semantic Indexing is a “framework to provide educators with the right tools and abil-
by which users can be guided to understand, ex- ity to access, retrieve, and process all of this dis-
plore, discover and learn,” as “route maps guide parate data into the creation of even more engag-
users through data - saving time and effort.”17 ing and sophisticated contained spaces online.20

Virginia Center for Digital History INFOhio

There is also a growing number of freely avail- INFOhio is another interesting case in point re-
able, sophisticated online contained spaces that lated to engaging students and educators (but in
faculty and students can tap into without going the K-12 sector) in conjunction with teaching them
through their academic library services. The Vir- valuable information fluency skills.
ginia Center for Digital History (VCDH), for in-
stance, which was founded in 1998, continues to INFOhio, a statewide cooperative school li-
focus on “new forms of historical scholarship,” brary and information network, uses technol-
through its creation of a variety of interactive his- ogy to ensure curriculum and instruction of
tory-related digital collections that are available information literacy by providing greater ac-
to the public at no cost. As noted on its website, cess for Ohio’s learners and educators.
VCDH also “encourages the use of digital tech- INFOhio’s components include electronic re-

4 Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture
 sources for schools, instructional development Beyond NetGeners
for teachers, library automation, media book- When moving beyond the NetGeners categori-
ing, and a statewide union catalog.21 zation into the total population of higher educa-
tion students, other factors come into play con-
One of INFOhio’s latest developments is a cerning students’ information fluency capabilities
“SchoolRooms” project that will provide a new, and habits. The “massification of higher educa-
“student-friendly” online portal to a wide array of tion,” for instance, relies on the notion that the
content from library catalogs, online databases, federal government’s authorization of financial aid
e-content from publishers, search engines, and grant and student loan programs, originating in
teacher-selected websites. This content is pre- 1965, and its expansion up through today, has re-
sented in “virtual rooms that help students dis- sulted in a highly diversified and growing student
cover information.” The INFOhio director noted body with a wide variety of information fluency
that the SchoolRooms project will hopefully give capabilities and habits. In short, as more students
students the ability “to discover information in a enroll in higher education, faculty and librarians
new and more engaging way.” In addition to stu- are exposed to the broader range of middle and
dents, “teachers and librarians (as well as parents) high school preparatory programs where these stu-
will have access to a variety of high-quality re- dents came from. While some come from school
sources from one easy and convenient search en- programs with excellent libraries and information
try.”22 technology services that support the development
of students’ information fluency skills, many oth-
The editor-in-chief of the School Library Jour- ers come from places where the school library, as
nal mentioned that the SchoolRooms project was well as the local public library, have been radi-
basically INFOhio’s way of keeping up with, and cally under funded. These incoming traditional-
possibly surpassing, the quickness and ease of aged students do not always match up with the
Google searching . He added that such new tech- NetGeners thus far described in this report. More-
nology can help make information seeking more over, there are other older generations of students
intuitive for students and hence the “least impor- who comprise a large and growing percentage of
tant skill we have to teach.” More importantly, the the total higher education student population and
focus will be on “what learners need to do with have yet another set of information fluency char-
information: evaluate it, analyze it, reconcile dif- acteristics and habits quite different from the typi-
ferent perspectives, and synthesize in into their cal NetGener.
own perspectives.”23
Web 2.0 and Library 2.0
California Digital Library When looking at the diversity of students by
A good example of cooperative library and in- both age and academic preparation, it is easy to
formation network at the university level can be see that the entire higher education environment
found at the California Digital Library (CDL). As is in “flux,” with academic librarians, faculty and
noted on the home page of the CDL: administrators struggling with decisions about
when and how to provide the appropriate levels
The California Digital Library supports the as- of information fluency instruction.25
sembly and creative use of the world’s scholar- Perhaps educators can discover what’s needed
ship and knowledge for the University of Cali- to build effective and modern information fluency
fornia libraries and the communities they initiatives through the lenses of “Web 2.0“ and
serve. In addition, the CDL provides tools that “Library 2.0.”
support the construction of online information
services for research, teaching, and learning, Web 2.0
including services that enable the UC librar- A condensed definition of Web 2.0 is that it’s
ies to effectively share their materials and pro- simply a term for generating discussions that rep-
vide greater access to digital content. 24 resent all of the very latest and reasonably fore-
seeable widespread functions and devices that

Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture 5
people utilize in an online modality. Web 2.0 holds Library 2.0
the mechanisms and infrastructures for facilitat- Combining Web 2.0 with Library 2.0 brings up
ing modern methods to create, share, publish and some interesting viewpoints directly and indirectly
promote information. Think beyond e-mail and ba- related to information fluency. Similar to Web 2.0,
sic websites, to social networking, web services Library 2.0 is just a term for generating discus-
technologies, and the next iteration of blogs, wikis sions. It basically represents a myriad of view-
and pod casts. points concerning how academic librarians can uti-
lize Web 2.0 tools for disseminating information
Web 2.0 is about the more human aspects of and for enhancing/modernizing their services . A
interactivity. It’s about conversations, interper- senior analyst for Research Libraries Group re-
sonal networking, personalization, and indi- searched this term and discovered 62 views and
vidualism. . . The emerging modern user needs seven definitions of Library 2.0.29
the experience of the Web, and not just con-
tent, to learn and succeed. . . Web 2.0 is ulti- One widely accepted notion concerning the mar-
mately about a social phenomenon—not just riage of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 is that
about networked social experiences, but about
the distribution and creation of Web content leveraging the approaches typified by Web 2.0’s
itself, characterized by open communication, principles and technology offers libraries many
decentralization of authority, freedom to share opportunities to serve their existing audiences
and reuse, and the market as a conversation.26 better, and to reach out beyond the walls and
websites of the institution to reach potential
Some fundamental principles of Web 2.0 include beneficiaries where they happen to be, and in
association with the task they happen to be
• the practice of freeing up more data that was undertaking.30
previously not available to the public;
• creating applications that are able to locate and Catalysts for Change in a New Information-Rich Culture
assemble content that meets our needs, as op- All the discussions, theories and initiatives of a
posed to conforming to the dictates of content Web 2.0/Library 2.0 world are influencing how
owners and their intermediaries; and information is disseminated and shared, and how
• communicating and facilitating community, knowledge is gained. All these elements are
moving away from the web flowing content from morphing into the early stages of what could be
provider to viewer to a more participative web considered a vast and meaningful culture change
in which content is user-generated and shared.27 in higher education that has educators thinking
about information fluency in new ways. In this
From another point of view, there are ten easy- new education culture, the earlier noted ages and
to-understand themes that describe Web 2.0: generation classifications and differences fre-
quently applied to both students and educators
1. Organizing the Unorganized may not be the prevalent catalysts of change. In-
2. Enhancing Consumer Choice stead, the catalysts for change in this new cul-
3. Empowering Individuals to Become the Media ture—some of which were alluded to when describ-
4. Facilitating Constant, Cheap Communication ing the characteristics of NetGeners—are defined
5. Sharing with Friends within a wide variety of concepts, tools, and chang-
6. Enabling a Multimedia Revolution ing social habits. Let’s take a closer look at some
7. Making it Easier to Find and Spend Online terms and concepts that apply to this new educa-
8. Democratizing Labor Markets tion culture.
9. Breaking Down Geographic Barriers Connectedness: The new bevy of web-based
10. Engaging Individuals in Conversation with the communications and information-sharing imple-
Powerful28 ments, beyond e-mail, are being used by more
people of all ages every day to connect with each
other. This “connectedness” includes a “peer-to-

6 Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture
peer movement,—aided by social software—that ments,” such as those found in the blogosphere. 35
is growing in popularity and changing the hierar-
chy of information trust, spreading the acquisi- Technorati.com is the authority on what’s go-
tion of information and knowledge laterally among ing on in the blogosphere. As of August 19, 2006,
friends and friends of friends.31 Technorati was tracking 51.6 million blogs. As
Online social networks have become prevalent noted on the Technorati website,
among higher education students. As noted in a
recent Inside Higher Ed article, more than 7 mil- with an increasing number of people reading,
lion students from 2,600 colleges and universities writing, and commenting on blogs, the way we
use Facebook.com, an online directory that con- use the web is shifting in a fundamental way.
nects people through online social networks.32 Instead of being passive consumers of infor-
These social networks are groups of people who mation, more and more Internet users are be-
can see each other’s online profile. Facebook has coming active participants. This is why the
networks for colleges, high schools, workplaces and blogging phenomenon and other forms of un-
geographic regions. fettered expression on the web is often called
One way of describing the Facebook phenom- the rise of the participant economy.36
enon is through the eyes of Forester Research,
which reported that How today’s blogosphere relates to higher edu-
cation and information fluency is a question that’s
easy connections brought about by cheap de- in an early stage of exploration today. One devel-
vices, modular content, and shared computing opment that influences how we find information
resources are having a profound impact on our in the blogosphere can be found through some rela-
global economy and social structure. Individu- tively new blog search engines that enable search-
als increasingly take cues from one another ers to find timely commentaries, customarily found
rather than from institutional sources like cor- on blogs, as opposed to the what might be found
porations, media outlets, religions, and politi- through typical search-engine results . Such new
cal bodies.33 methods for finding information have made the
boundaries around searching “fuzzier than those
There are an estimated 200 social networking in the already fuzzy world of Web search.”37
sites online today. From an information fluency Social bookmarking is another participatory so-
perspective, students need to be aware that, while cial software that has gained prominence with stu-
sharing information with each other over social dents and has obvious influence on the way infor-
networks has its benefits, publishing their profiles mation is discovered today. The earlier mentioned
online could also have occupational hazards. Some del.icio.us is the preeminent first-runner in this
students, for instance, unwittingly post informa- field. At del.icio.us, registered users can share their
tion about themselves that allude to their drink- favorite websites by posting personal descriptions
ing, sexual and/or gambling behaviors. There have and tags. The website also includes methods and
been instances where such information has been features for sharing and gaining access to the most
accessed by prospective and current employers, prominent tags and finding related websites
law enforcement, and university officials, leading within specified interests.
to negative consequences. So, students need to
understand that their freedom to publish what- There is something immediately gratifying
ever they want online comes with responsibility, about adding a description to a site one is in-
and recklessly posting information about them- terested in, being able to do so beyond prose
selves and others can have serious ramifications. sentences, and not having to look to an author-
34
ity for ontological assistance.
Participatory environments: In addition to
being connected online through social networks, Having found another del.icio.us user, one can
people from all walks of life are employing other check what else the other user has chosen to
social software to form “participatory environ- bookmark and share, thereby learning from a
potentially kindred spirit. This is classic social

Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture 7
 software, and a rare case of people connecting sions of the Times and Wall Street Journal com-
through shared metadata.38 bined.” Wikipedia entries, which exist in 200 lan-
guages, are created by hundreds of thousands of
Numerous other variations of social contributors worldwide. In March 2006, Wikipedia
bookmarking have popped up on the Internet, in- had recorded one-million articles, which was more
cluding three worth noting here: than four times the 120,000 entries in the Ency-
clopedia Britannica.40
• Connotea, an online reference management sys- The short definition of Wikipedia is that it is a
tem for clinicians and scientists; free online encyclopedia with entries created by
• CiteULike, for academics to share, store, and everyone and anyone that can be edited by every-
organize academic papers they are reading; and one and anyone. It is loaded with uninformative,
• Squidoo, where anyone can build a “lens” error-ridden and narrow-minded entries, as well
website on any topic they are passionate about. as plenty of highly informative, valid, and very
timely information that traditional encyclopedias
Distributed Cognition: Another way of defin- do not have.
ing the world of social software is to look at its It was explained in the New Yorker piece that
social habits from a “distributed cognition” point this open-editing format has caused more of its
of view. This is another example of the change fair share of “edit wars” in which entries get
happening within the hierarchy of information changed and re-changed and errors come and go.
trust. Wikiipedia, for instance shows how large Consequently, since Wikipedia launched in 2001
numbers of people are mediating the creation and it has increased the number of rules, guidelines,
dissemination of vast amounts of encyclopedic in- and governance of how information becomes live
formation in an online environment. In short, on Wikipedia. For instance, Wikipedia now has an
there is intelligence out there in the vast network arbitration committee that rules on entry disputes,
of people connected to the Internet that has enor- and “five robots troll the site for obvious vandal-
mous implications on everyone’s information flu- ism, searching for obscenities and evidence of mass
ency capabilities and habits. 39 deletions, reverting text as they go.” Still, many
violations require human interventions. Plus, ar-
What About Wikipedia? bitration and/or human intervention to correct
Those who are avid Google searchers are more inaccuracies does not happen over night. One
than likely noticing how references to Wikipedia important case over a global warming entry, for
are increasingly popping up on the first pages of instance, took three months to arbitrate.41
their searches. This is having a profound effect on Overall, the New Yorker article painted an am-
the way in which information is being discovered, biguous picture of Wikipedia. On one hand it was
and it is obviously another culture change worth reported that a well-known Harvard philosopher
noting. Many educators, especially librarians, are called a Wikipedia entry comparable to the
questioning the validity of Wikipedia as a primary Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. On the other
resource for anything.Understanding how hand it was explicitly stated in the article that
Wikipedia works has become an important infor-
mation fluency skill. Wikipedia remains a lumpy work in progress.
In a recent issue of The New Yorker Magazine, The entries can read as though they had been
Stacy Schiff wrote an informative feature article written by a seventh grader: clarity and conci-
about Wikipedia that should be read by anyone sion are lacking; the facts may be sturdy, but
who uses this source for any kind of information- the connective tissue is either anemic or ab-
gathering purposes. Schiff ’s article starts with sent; and citation is hit or miss.42
some interesting background information about
Wikipedia being a non-proftit organization with Other Catalysts for Change
only five employees, and “the seventeenth-most- Additional catalysts of change that fall under
popular website on the Interent, generating more the banner of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 and may or
traffic daily than MSNBC.com and the online ver- may not fall specifically under the concepts of con-

8 Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture
nectedness, participatory environments, and dis- and method for disseminating information in the
tributed cognition, or perhaps overlap in some Web 2.0/Library 2.0 world. Professors, particularly
ways, are hybrid news and social software services, in fully online or blended learning environments,
RSS feeds, alternative realties, and what can be are converting their lectures into podcasts that
called the age of Google. All of these, too, influ- students can access via their MP3 player, phone
ence cultural change in higher education and has or computer . Academic librarians are also experi-
educators thinking about information fluency in menting with podcasting for library instruction,
new ways. seeing the value of this kind of technology for
teaching information literacy skills to off-campus
News and Social Software Combined students.45
“It is only logical that crossbreeds of news and
social software have emerged.” Two examples are Alternative Realities
Memeorandum, which lists links to the latest news Virtual reality games and learning environ-
alongside related opinions from blogs, and, Digg, ments are not just for young people, as a growing
which accepts articles from its community of us- number of adults actively participate in alterna-
ers who then vote on what stories they like best. tive, virtual worlds for entertainment and for
The stories with the most “diggs” are posted on learning. The adoption of such technology is no
the front page of the Digg website. “Such projects, longer a trivial matter.46 Participating in virtual
taken together with Wikipedia, represent the acme learning environments that are driven by innova-
of social software as information production and tive new “3D immersive technologies,” such as
aggregation.”43 those created by Croquet, ActiveWorlds and Sec-
ond Life, has great potential for enhancing one’s
RSS Feeds information fluency capabilities, especially as re-
Utilizing Rich Site Summary (RSS) technology lated to the latest developments in computer lit-
is another way of obtaining information more tai- eracy.
lored toward an online user’s individual prefer-
ences. Many blogs and other content providers, The Age of Google
including a wide and growing number of publish- The following is posted on one of Google’s “cor-
ers, for instance, have a small RSS icon, usually porate information” pages:
orange-colored, on the front page of their website
that lets visitors know that an RSS Feed is avail- Over time we’ve expanded our view of the
able to them. When a visitor signs up for a feed, range of services we can offer—web search, for
and installs an RSS reader on his or her computer, instance, isn’t the only way for people to ac-
the feed will send the reader regular updates from cess or use information— and products that
the original content source. then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of
Signing up for RSS feeds basically allows users our portfolio. This doesn’t mean we’ve changed
to manage the flow of information they peruse our core mission; just that the farther we travel
through their web browser. RSS technology is an- toward achieving it, the more those blurry ob-
other information fluency tool that influences the jects on the horizon come into sharper focus
way people find information related to their per- (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry ob-
sonal interests. It is also gaining ground quickly jects).47
for creative use by higher education faculty and
academic librarians. Today, for instance, the Google has created some innovative tools in re-
American Library Association has an RSS feed for cent years. Overall, it can be considered the most
its current press releases, news stories from Ameri- influential catalyst for change in our new infor-
can Libraries Magazine, and its blogs.44 mation fluency/Web 2.0/Library 2.0 world, just for
its search capabilities alone. But, as already noted,
Podcasting Google has become much more than searching.
Educational podcasting, which fits under the Click on the “more” link at the Google front page
topic of mobile computing, is another growing field to access the list of beta projects that keeps grow-

Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture 9
ing longer. There’s Google Scholar, Google Video, eLearning environment is a great way to build up
and Google Blog Search, for instance, and tools to one’s information fluency skills.
“communicate, show and share,” such as Blogger, The bottom line is we live in a world of abun-
Picasa, and Google Groups. dant choice where you can find just about any-
Perhaps Google’s most ambitious beta project thing you want online, including almost every ob-
to date is “Google Book Search,” which has the scure book, article, and song created; a formally
goal of creating “a comprehensive full-text search- unimaginable choice of for-sale items on eBay; a
able database of all the world’s books.” While this wide variety of elearning opportunities of vastly
project has generated lawsuits related to copyright different quality; and an infinite amount of con-
infringement that have yet to be fully resolved, tent, products and services being offered by niche,
and may not be for who knows how long, Google relatively unknown businesses and amateurs that
has entered into partnerships to digitize plenty of nobody can effectively track or fully understand.
books, including the full-text index of seven-mil- This multitude of choice, when aggregated, is re-
lion books from the libraries of the University of ferred to as the “Long Tail,” a term first brought
Michigan, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, the Uni- to the forefront in an article published in Wired
versity of California ,and the New York Public Li- Magazine in October 200450 and recently published
brary.48 in a book that shot up into the bestseller lists
In the meantime, conducting a Google Book quickly.51
Search today already helps users discover new and
old books as well as read limited previews of their The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down
discoveries, if the publisher or author has given to this: Our culture and economy are increas-
Google permission through its partner program. ingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively
How this, as well as all of Google’s latest beta small number of hits (mainstream products
projects, will affect higher education and the world and markets) at the head of the demand curve,
of information fluency is currently in an early ex- and moving toward a huge number of niches
ploration phase among educators. in the tail. In an era without the constraints of
physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of
The “Long Tail” distribution, narrowly targeted goods and ser-
All of the aforementioned catalysts for change, vices can be as economically attractive as main-
in combination with other new media develop- stream fare.52
ments, such as the latest video and imaging tech-
nologies, TiVo, hand-held advancements, and Put in another way,
more, are allowing people to self-create and push- these days our watercoolers are increasingly
button control individualistic learning and enter- virtual—there are may different ones, and the
tainment environments. The enormous amount of people who gather around them are self-se-
choice for downloading audio, video and text-based lected. We are turning from a mass market into
files to computers, MP3 players, ipods, cell phones, a niche nation, defined now not by our geogra-
and PDAs, gives people more control over the digi- phy but by our interests.53
tal files they want, when they want, without hav-
ing to go through some brand-name, centrally-con- What does this have to do with higher educa-
trolled commercial enterprise. The end result is tion and information fluency? For one, there is a
that individuals today have much more control Long Tail of scholarly information available on the
over their time and more self-power and choice in web, especially when one considers just what’s
meeting their knowledge and information acqui- available in the academic-oriented blogoshpere
sition and entertainment needs.49 alone. Secondly, academic libraries have always
The growth of eLearning, for example, also re- served the Long Tail niche marketplace by pro-
veals how students and faculty are increasingly viding their patrons with access to deep, histori-
seeking ways to manage their time inside more cal collections; interlibrary loan document deliv-
flexible, web-based teaching and learning environ- ery services; hard-to-find scholarly articles and
ments. Plus, actively participating in an monographs; and more, that are available through

10 Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture
their extensive online databases. Such resources content websites such as Wikipedia, as both a
are not-so-available via Google. blessing and bane. For one, Google and Wikipedia
In addition, librarians and faculty have and al- have made people familiar with accessing the web
ways will be experts at filtering out the noise so to retrieve content from a database. On the other
prevalent in the Long Tail of information so readily hand, the ease of use of Google and Wikipedia have
available to us today. However, as one librarian changed peoples’ standards of belief to one where
noted, “librarians shouldn’t kid themselves that they will more readily accept the instant, easily
people are sitting around their keyboards, unable accessible, fast result to their information inquiry
to find what they need just wishing that a librar- found online over the more difficult and complex
ian was there to help them. People are actually library database search. The University of Michi-
thinking, ‘I wish everything worked like iTunes gan library, for instance, has an overwhelming 700
and NetFlix.’”54 databases available to its students.58
Some of the developments in the field that at-
The Notion of Filters tempt to meet challenges related to making data-
Somewhere between students finding whatever base searching and navigation easier include the
they want with ease online and the basic informa- further evolvement of controlled vocabularies and
tion fluency requirement they need to conduct OpenURL technology.
valid, scholarly research via their academic librar-
ies is the “Filters Rule,” or, put another way, the A controlled vocabulary is a carefully selected
“Recommendation Rule,” espoused in the Long Tail list of words and phrases, which are used to
book: tag units of information so that they may be
more easily retrieved by a search. The terms
We are leaving the Information Age and en- are chosen and organized by trained profes-
tering the Recommendation Age. Today infor- sionals (including librarians and information
mation is ridiculously easy to get; you practi- scientists) who possess expertise in the sub-
cally trip over it in the street. Information gath- ject area. Controlled vocabulary terms can ac-
ering is no longer the issue—making smart curately describe what a given document is
decisions based on the information is now the actually about, even if the terms themselves
trick. Recommendations serve as shortcuts do not occur within the document’s text.59
through the thicket of information.55
OpenURL is a type of URL that contains re-
To put it simply, while more information choice source metadata for use primarily in libraries.
is good, presenting it in a way that organizes it, The OpenURL standard is designed to support
instead of confusing it, is better. 56 Librarians and mediated linking from information resources
faculty have always done this, but today, within (sources) to library services (targets). A “link
the new dimensions of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0, resolver”, or “link-server”, parses the elements
the landscape has changed. In short, the nature of an OpenURL and provides links to appro-
of the information resources you need to succeed priate services as identified by a library. A
within any specific discipline have changed. But source is generally a bibliographic citation or
how students use information, make wise choices, bibliographic record used to generate an
and cite information properly are the same.57 OpenURL. A target is a resource or service that
helps satisfy user’s information needs. Ex-
Creating More-User-Friendly Environments amples include full-text repositories; abstract-
The large database, content aggregators, and ing, indexing, and citation databases; online
publishers that service libraries, e.g. EBSCO, Gale, library catalogs; and other Web resources and
ABC-CLEO, ProQuest, etc., face the challenge of services.60
making their interfaces, search functions, and
navigational features easier for students and edu- A Shift in the Way Academic Libraries Do Business
cators to use. These aggregators see search en- While the businesses that service academic li-
gines, such as Google, and collaboratively created braries continue to work on the development of

Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture 11
new filtering and recommendation-oriented tech- the new tools; the new databases; the new search-
nologies to make academic library online inter- ing capabilities; the new bibliographic manage-
faces and functions easier to manage and navi- ment software; the new ways of assessing and
gate through, the academic librarians themselves teaching information literacy skills; the broad and
are seeing enormous change in the way they serve differentiating backgrounds of their students’ in-
their patrons. formation literacy skills; and the rise of new
pedagogies, with labels such as “active learning,”
Today’s academic librarians are bring tasked “resource-based learning,” and “inquiry-based
with learning” that involve the student getting more
• developing more sophisticated information flu- directly involved with information resources. At
ency initiatives, another level, librarians have to be more proac-
• having a keener understanding of increasingly tive than they have been in the past. Librarians
complex licensing and copyright agreements are at an early-stage of discussion that places an
with publishers and aggregators as they con- emphasis on its proactive leaders needing to speak
tinue to build large digital resources, powerfully, persuasively, and credibly about stu-
• constructing the appropriate web portal archi- dent learning outcomes, along with being capable
tecture for patrons to easily navigate around, of working with colleagues across-campus to help
and faculty make modern information literacy instruc-
• recognizing and getting a better understanding tion part of their teaching.62
of the workings of information technology and
campus computing departments. Embedding Information Fluency Across the Curriculum
In a March 2006 blog post hosted by the Asso-
Moreover, keeping up with the Web 2.0/Library ciation of College and Research Libraries (ACRL),
2.0 worlds is certainly a tall task. Plus, an information literacy instruction slant was at-
many academic libraries have the additional re- tached to the topic of Library 2.0 and its relation-
sponsibility of meeting challenges that are typi- ship to Web 2.0:
cally the result of inadequate resource allocations
that stress library management on both the hu- In a 2.0 approach, information literacy instruc-
man and technology sides. tion is integrated across the curriculum. The
In her inauguration speech at the 2006 Ameri- library serves as an instructional center on
can Library Association (ALA) conference, 2006- campus and as the hub for a campus-wide com-
07 ALA President Leslie Burger said: mitment to preparing students with the infor-
mation skills needed for success in the 21st
Librarians and libraries have already been century. Assessment of student learning ben-
through a decade of great change spurred by a efits from its integration into campus activi-
technological revolution that has changed the ties that foster input and interaction from stu-
way in which we do business. We are hard at dent and faculty library users. . . And, yes, you
work trying to transform reference service, our might meet those goals using an online course
catalogs, our approach to customer service, our environment, a Web-based learning object, and
buildings and our collections. Some of our staffs an interactive tutorial, but those are simply
are tired and burned out on change. We’ve been the tools.
so busy dealing with these changes, that we
haven’t always done a good job of communi- Likewise, it is very 2.0 to integrate informa-
cating them. How many of our users know what tion literacy instruction into campus educa-
a ‘database’ is? And how many of us can tell tional opportunities outside the classroom, e.g.,
them in 10 words or less? Now is not the time residence hall and Greek life education, and
to stop.61 as part of staff development and faculty devel-
opment programs sponsored by units such as
The professional expectations of librarians have Human Resources and the Center for Teach-
shifted. At one level, they have to understand all ing Excellence. Both foster integration, inter-

12 Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture
 action, user feedback, and permeable bound- and Their Reactive Behavior Patterns in the
aries between library and other campus ser- Online Environment,” Dissertation at the
vices—the very heart of the Library 2.0 con- University of Central Florida, Department of
cept; the heart of the library as an open sys- Educational Studies, Spring 2006, p. 20.
tem.63 8. Mark Prensky, “Digital Natives, Digital
Immigrants” (Part I and Part II), On the
Librarians, information technologists, faculty Horizon, 9:5, (September-October 2001), and
and administrators are coming together, realizing 9:6, (November-December 2001), in
that the new culture of education—influenced by Francisca Yonekura, “A Study of Millennial
information fluency initiatives, Web 2.0 and Li- Students and Their Reactive Behavior
brary 2.0—can impart much more than the skills Patterns in the Online Environment,”
students need to get them through their academic Dissertation at the University of Central
careers. Florida, Department of Educational Studies,
Information fluency skills aren’t limited to the (Spring 2006), p. 17.
academic environment. It may be that students
9. Ibid, p. 18.
do not need to have a strong understanding of how
specific information-resource tools work—because 10. Ibid, p. 18.
the tools change so quickly today. However, hav- 11. Diana Oblinger, “Integrating Tradition and
ing a basic understanding of how information is Technology,” presentation at the Cornell
created; how information is communicated; and University Computer Policy and Law Pro-
what’s needed to manage, evaluate, synthesize and gram, Ithaca, NY, February 28, 2006, <http:/
present information—whether they be a person’s /www.cit.cornell.edu/oit/ucpl/>.
work life, personal life or academic life—”this goes
12 Ibid.
on forever.”64
13. Ibid.
End Notes: 14. Marc Prensky, “Engage Me or Enrage Me:
1. Cathy DeRosa, Joanne Cantrell, Janet What Today’s Learner’s Demand,”
Hawk, and Alane Wislon, “College Students EDUCAUSE Review, (September/October
Perceptions of Libraries and Information 2005), p. 61, <http://www.educause.edu/ir/
Resources: A Report to the OCLC Member- library/pdf/erm0553.pdf>.
ship, A Companion Piece to Perceptions of 15. William Thomas, personal communication,
Libraries and Information Resources,” August 2006.
(Dublin, Ohio: OCLC, April 2006), <http:// 16. Ibid.
www.oclc.org/reports/
17. Stephen, Rhind-Tutt, “Physical and Virtual
perceptionscollege.htm>.
Artifacts - Philosophy and Practice,” presen-
2. Ibid. tation at the RBMS Annual Conference,
3. Ibid. Alexander Street Press, June 21, 2003,
4. Stephen Abram, personal communication, <http://www.astreetpress.com/articles/
July 2006. RBMS2003_files/frame.htm#slide0279.htm>.

5. Ibid. 18. Virginia Center for Digital History, <http://

www.vcdh.virginia.edu/index.html>.
6. Chuck Dziuban, Patsy Moskal, and Linda
Futch, “Blended Learning: Research Per- 19. William G. Thomas, “Complex Information
spectives,” Anthony Picciano and Chuck and the Future of Digital Scholarship,”
Dziuban, Eds., Needham, MA: Sloan Consor- presented to the Computer Science and
tium (in press). Engineering Department Colloquium,
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Septemeber
7. Tricia Bisoux, “Rethinking IT,” BizEd,
2005.
(January/February 2002) in Francisca
Yonekura, “A Study of Millennial Students 20. Ibid.

Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture 13
21. INFOhio, <http://www.infohio.org/ABOUT/ Executive Summary, <http://
about.html>. www.forrester.com/Research/Document/
22. Managing Information, “SirsiDynix School Excerpt/0,7211,38772,00.html>.
Rooms Content Creation by Ohio Librar- 34. Diana Oblinger and Brian Hawkins, “The
ians,” Managing Information, June 27, 2006, Myth About Putting Information Online,”
<http://www.managinginformation.com/ EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, (in press).
news/content_show_full.php?id=5001>. 35. Oblinger, op.cit.
23. Brian Kenney, “Keeping Up With The 36. http://www.technorati.com/about/
Googles,” School Library Journal, July 1,
37. Bryan Alexander, “Web 2.0 A New Wave of
2006, <http://
Innovation for Teaching and Learning?”,
www.managinginformation.com/news/
EDUCAUSE Review, March/April 2006,
content_show_full.php?id=5001>.
<http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/
24. California Digital Library, http:// erm0621.asp>
www.cdlib.org
38. Ibid.
25. Scott Walter, personal communication, July
39. Oblinger, op.cit.
2006.
40. Stacy Schiff, “Know It All: Can Wikipedia
26. Stephen Abram, “Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and
Conquer Expertise?”, The New Yorker, issue
Librarian 2.0: Preparing for the 2.0 World,”
of 2006-07-31, <http://www.newyorker.com/
ImakeNews, Inc., (December 21, 2005),
fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact>.
<http://www.imakenews.com/eletra/mod_
print_view.cfm?t his_id=505688&u=s 41. Ibid.
irsi&issue_id=00010126 2&show=F, 42. Ibid.
T,T,T,F,Article,F,F,F,F,T,T,F,F,T,T>.
43. Alexander, op.cit.
27. Paul Miller, “Web 2.0: Building the New 44. See http://www.ala.org/
Library,” Ariadne, issue 45, October 30, 2005,
Template.cfm?Section=News&template=/
<http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/miller/
cfapps/xml/pr_inst.html
intro.html>.
45. Michael Lorenzen, “Podcasts Lectures for
28. Chip Griffin, “10 Ways Web 2.0 Promised to
uni Students,” The Information Literacy
Change the Way We Live and Work,” Pardon
Land of Confusion Blog, Michael Lorenzen,
the Disruption Blog, posted on August 1, May 31, 2006, <http://lorenzen.blogspot.com/
2006, <http://www.pardonthedisruption.com/
2006/05/podcast-lectures-for-uni-
2006/08/10_ways_web_20_.html>.
students.html>.
29. Walt Crawford, “Library 2.0 and ‘Library 46. Oblinger, op.cit.
2.0’,” Cites & Insights,” vol. 6, no. 2 (Midwin-
ter 2006), <http://cites.boisestate.edu/ 47. http://www.google.com/corporate/
civ6i2.pdf>. tenthings.html

30. Miller, op. cit. 48. Bob Thompson, “Search Me?: Google Wants
to Digitize Every Book. Publishers Say Read
31. Oblinger, op.cit.
the Fine Print First,” Washington Post,
32. David Epstein, “The Many Faces of August 31, 2006, <http://
Facebook,” Inside Higher Ed, June 15, 2006, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
<http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/ article/2006/08/12/AR2006081200886.html>.
print/news/2006/06/15/facebook>. 49. Oblinger, op.cit.
33. Chris Charron, Jeap Favier, and Charlene
50. Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail,” Wired
Li, “Social Computing: How Networks Erode
Magazine, Issue 12.10, October 2004, <http://
Institutional Power And What To Do About www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/
It,” Forrester Research, Inc., February 2006,
tail.html>.

14 Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture
51. Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail: Why the
Future of Business Is Selling Less of More,”
(New York: Hyperion, 2006)
52. Ibid, p. 52.
53. Ibid. p. 40
54. Katherine Mossman, “Serving the Niche,”
Library Journal, July 15, 2006, http://
www.libraryjournal.com/article/
CA6349032.html.
55. Frog Design in Chris Anderson, “The Long
Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling
Less of More,” (New York: Hyperion, 2006),
p. 107.
56. Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail: Why the
Future of Business Is Selling Less of More,”
(New York: Hyperion, 2006), p. 222.
57. Steven Bell, personal communication, July
2006.
58. Susan Bedell, personal communication,
August 2006.
59. Amy Warner, “A taxonomy Primer,”
Lexonomy website,http://www.lexonomy.com/
publications/aTaxonomyPrimer.html and
Karl Fast, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel,
“What is a Controlled Vocabulary,” Boxes and
Arrows blog, http://www.boxesandarrows.
com/view/what_is_a_controlled_
vocabulary_> in Wikipedia, “Controlled
Vocabular,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Controlled_vocabulary
60. Wikipedia, “OpenURL,” <http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenURL>.
61. Leslie Burger, “Leslie Burger Initiates Year
of Transformation,” in The Shifted Librarian
blog, July 3, 2006, <http://www.theshifted
librarian.com/archives/2006/07/03/
leslie_burger_initiates_ year_of_
transformation.html>
62. Scott Walter, personal communication, July
2006.
63. Scott Walter, “What 2.0 Means to Me,”
ACRLog, (March 6, 2006), <http://
acrlblog.org/2006/03/10/what-20-means-to-
me/>.
64. Scott Walter, personal communication, July
2006.

Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency, Web 2.9, Library 2.0, and the New Education Culture 15