I was participating in a combined workshop and lecture day on Friday. I got some work done during the practical parts and maybe learnt some very useful things about and new input on my user education.
1. If I could bring back in by my earlier used information literacy components on how they can use their acieved skills and how information literacy fit in to their programs, the meetings with the students could be less boring to me. That the marketing and business students are bored and not interested is not being dealt through by this though - but that is a later question.
2. Once again communicate my "vision" (it is not a vision since every college and university is using the same working methods - except mine) to the people I am working together with, my patrons and the teachers. There was once one teacher some years ago that called me back quite some time after my first lecture and wanted me to explain the concept of information literacy. The interest is there but the knowledge gap still needs to be filled.
There seems to be a connection between my old field of interest and my professional tasks again. It has always been two roads of passion that sometimes come across each other but mostly they are in everyday life separated.
In the social science of knowledge field SSK and in social epistemology the discussion (aside with the lingustic turn in epistemology) was and may still be a interesting issue - the "sitatedness" of knowledge. Or maybe better expressed; knowledge is alwasy produced or created in a environment, a context or rather a paradigm. Besides that this is questioned by traditional philosophy of science and means a relativization of epistemology it is still a very interesting path. (I must go back to Hallberg, Margareta, on Reflexivity, do not have the reference right now..)
In Sheila Webbers' lecture she began with her open and maybe pragmatic but for her research purpose useful definition of Information literacy. She came back several times to the importance of
social aspects of the educating and of the information literacy and it is here in the view of seeing the academic creation of knowledge in academia that this information literacy view is presented.
What purpose do the teacher or researcher or student have with their work/research? It is presented as a awareness or a component in the concept of information literacy in itself but at the same time I consider it to be one of the most crucial and neglected questions on behalf of the scholarly community.
It could be a fruitful theoretical path to integrate som thoughts from SSK to make my own understanding better on where the concept of information literacy "fits in". It can make it possible to work on with the library educating and at the same time not loose the critical philosophical reflection that is neccessary for me.
