When information is so easy to share – can anyone really own it?

The IFLA Trend Report acknowledges access to information as having a profound influence on future developments in the information economy.

An ever-expanding digital universe will bring a higher value to information literacy skills like basic reading and competence with digital tools. People who lack these skills will face barriers to inclusion in a growing range of areas. The nature of new online business models will heavily influence who can successfully own, profit from, share or access information in the future.

The ways in which people can access information online and the volume and diversity of information produced pose new challenges for libraries. Do libraries need to present alternative vehicles for information seeking to a search engine? Can they, in a society where everyone uses Google? Or should libraries be developing digital literacy skills to assist users locate the most authoritative information returned by a search engine? How to enable serendipitous discovery? These questions and many more concerning regulation of access to information, changing concepts of 'ownership', 'authorship' and 'access' and information overload are posed of libraries in Riding the Waves or Caught in the Tide: Insights from the IFLA Trend Report.

What digital literacy skills do libraries need to assist their users navigating to information online?

Last page update: 13 August 2013