[Asis-l] CJILS Call for Papers

[Heidi Julien]

Call for Papers
Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science

The Global Challenge of Information Literacy

In his speech to the 1999 graduating class at the 
University of Toronto, Anthony Comper, then 
President of the Bank of Montreal, stated: 
“Whatever else you bring to the 21st century 
workplace, however great your technical skills 
and however attractive your attitude and however 
deep your commitment to excellence, the bottom 
line is that to be successful, you need to 
acquire a high level of information literacy. 
What we need in the knowledge industries are 
people who know how to absorb and analyze and 
integrate and create and effectively convey 
information­and who know how to use information 
to bring real value to everything they undertake.”

Indeed, full engagement in our “information 
society” is impossible without some level of 
information literacy. Success in school, 
postsecondary education, the workplace, and 
everyday life is dependent to some degree on 
information literacy. This dependency crosses all 
geographic and demographic contexts; information 
literacy truly is a global concern.

However, information literacy is a complex and 
often misunderstood concept, encompassing a range 
of skills, processes, attitudes, and understandings about information.

As Shapiro and Hughes (1996) note, “
 information 
literacy should 
 be conceived 
 as a new liberal 
art that extends from knowing how to use 
computers and access information to critical 
reflection on the nature of information itself, 
its technical infrastructure, and its social, 
cultural and even philosophical context and 
impact - as essential to the mental framework of 
the educated information-age citizen as the 
trivium of basic liberal arts (grammar, logic and 
rhetoric) was to the educated person in medieval society.”

Given the recognized importance of information 
literacy, what is its place on the policy agenda? 
What are the outstanding theoretical issues with 
respect to information literacy that should be 
debated? Who is being tasked with developing 
information literacy among citizens, and how are 
these efforts being resourced and promoted? Many 
stakeholders have responsibility for information 
literacy promotion and education, including 
governments, librarians, teachers, and 
parents­how should relationships among these 
various groups be managed? What are best 
practices for information literacy instruction? 
How can we effectively measure the impact of 
education for information literacy?

Articles related to any aspect of information 
literacy are invited for Vol. 32, Number 1 
(Winter 2008) of the Canadian Journal of 
Information and Library Science (CJILS). The 
deadline for submission is June 29, 2007. 
Complete manuscripts of approximately 5000 words 
should be sent to Heidi Julien, School of Library 
& Information Studies, University of Alberta, 
3-20 Rutherford South, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 
T6G 2J4. For manuscript guidelines please refer 
to “Notice to Contributors” which is included in 
each issue of the CJILS and on the journal’s 
website (http://www.cais-acsi.ca/journal/guidelines.htm).

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Heidi Julien, Ph.D.
School of Library and Information Studies
University of Alberta
3-20 Rutherford South, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2J4
Ph: 780 492 3934  Fax: 780 492 2430
Email: Heidi.Julien at ualberta.ca
Web: http://www.ualberta.ca/~hjulien/heidi.htm
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