Literacy (opposite: Illiteracy or non-literacy)
Literacy in the narrow sense is the ability to read and write. However, both reading and writing involve the understanding of arguments (including judgments of their trustworthiness), why literacy - in the wider sense - include the ability to locate, evaluate, use, and communicate using a wide range of information resources. Literacy is not a set of specific qualifications learned once and for all. Literacy is a large spectrum of qualifications, and throughout schooling and education is literacy generally improved.
Non-literate persons are dependent of oral information sources. They cannot check information in dictionaries, encyclopedias or on maps. They fill their memory with issues, which literate people use their notes, handbooks and libraries to remember.
Literacy in the wide sense is related to general scholarly qualifications, such as checking the authority and validity of information sources used, tracking knowledge claims (as well as tracking contra-arguments) etc. Literacy includes a critical element and is thus opposed to naivety and ignorance. This understanding is shared by Weisse (2001) who identified a loss of literacy in the reviewing of medical books.
Literacy is of course partly domain-specific. You may be relatively illiterate in, say, mathematics.
There are different kinds of literacy,
e.g. visual literacy (with their own organization:
International Visual Literacy Association).
The term
information
literacy is popular within Library and Information Science (LIS). Also the term "computer-literacy" is used
today.
(There is not Danish term for literacy, although there is a Danish term for illiteracy: "analfabetisme").
Literature:
Andersen, J. (2006).The public sphere and discursive activities: Information literacy as sociopolitical skills. Journal of Documentation, 62(2), 213-228.
Goody, J. (1987). The Interface between the written and the oral. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. (2006). Literacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy
See also: Information literacy (Epistemological lifeboat); Reading; Written communication
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 18-05-2006