This Monday I attended the Board meeting for the Association of College and Research Libraries, which was held as part of the ALA Midwinter meeting. At this meeting the Board voted to approve the Framework for Information Literacy, which made me very happy. I think the Framework is a groundbreaking conceptual document that skillfully updates the circa 2000 Information Literacy Competency Standards.
Those standards remain in force, however. For an indeterminate period of time the Framework and Standards will co-exist. Given the passionate feelings about this issue, as reflected at the open forum that occurred last Saturday, this is probably a wise move by the Board. For everyone like myself who believes that the Framework moves us forward, there are others who feel that losing the clarity of standards will harm the cause of information literacy instruction on their campuses.
The truth, though, is that people can continue to use the Standards if they prefer it to the Framework. Or they can continue to ignore this conversation entirely. As several commenters noted at the various events I attended, there will be no "police" checking to see what people do. Given that reality, I wish that ACRL had made a clean break and replaced the Standards with the Framework. Both documents are philosophical more than operational, and the philosophy of taking an organic rather than task-based approach to information literacy has carried the day.
Recent Comments