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Paul G. Zurkowski coined the term "Information Literacy" in 1974 when he was president of the Information Industry Association. In a report to the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science ("The Information Service Environment Relationships and Priorities. Related Paper No. 5"; www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/ 0000019b/ 8 0/36/a8/87.pdf), he wrote:
"Information is not knowledge; it is concepts or ideas which enter a person's field of perception, are evaluated and assimilated reinforcing or changing the individual's concept of reality and/ or ability to act. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so information is in the mind of the user."
With these words, he opened a door to a new way of understanding our emerging information age. The simple concept of studying information as a separate subject matter turned into the information literacy movement of today.
Zurkowski's voice was prophetic. Even in 1974, he wrote that people were encountering an increasing variety of information- seeking procedures, resulting in a "multiplicity of access routes and sources" to fulfill information needs. Yet mese new routes to information were "poorly understood and vastly underutilized." He set the agenda for the future by saying, " [M] ore and more of the events and artifacts of human existence are being dealt with in information equivalents, requiring retraining of the whole population."
To make his concept of information clear, Zurkowski wrote:
"People trained in the application of information resources to their work can be called information literates. They have learned techniques and skills for utilizing the wide range of information tools as well as primary sources in molding information solutions to their problems.
"The individuals in the remaining portion of the population, while literate in me sense that they can read and write, do not have a measure for the value of information, do not have an ability to mold information to their needs, and realistically must be considered to be information illiterates."
INFORMATION LITERACY CONCEPTS
From the outset, several concepts were clear in Zurkowski's work. First, information is not knowledge until it is manipulated, or "molded" as he expressed it. Second, knowing how to handle information so that it can be used effectively to solve problems is the essence of information literacy. Thus, information can never be an end in...