Literacies

The concept of "literacy" is complex, and changes over time. We have gone from the days where literacy means solely being able to read written text. With new technologies being incorporated into the daily routine, there are technological literacies that must be acquired. People cannot simply rely on knowing how to read. Buschman (2009) effectively broadens the idea of literacy to mean inter-related concepts involving "reading, the teaching of reading, writing, and the teaching of writing, speech/orality and the acquisition of language...and the technologies affecting text and the changing nature of text."

Literacy within the LIS field means:

• guiding readers to "good" reading
• guiding readers to enlightenment
• guiding readers to read for moral/personal and civic reasons
• proliferating new materials and resources
• encouraging and facilitating information literacy

Relevant readings:

• Buschman, John. "Information Literacy, 'New Literacies, and Literacy." The Library Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 95-118.
• Clanchy, M.T. "Looking Back from the Invention of Printing." Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 39(3):169-183.
• Freire, Paulo. "The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural Action for Freedom." Harvard Educational Review 40(2) (May 1970): 205-225.
• Radway, Janice A. "Reading is Not Eating: Mass-Produced Literature and the Theoretical, Methodological, and Political Consequences of a Metaphor." Book Research Quarterly 2 (Fall 1986): 7-29.