Nicola Blake, Dean of Faculty Affairs, Chair of Professional Development Committee & Center Director
Bindi Patel, Deputy to the Dean of Student Engagement, Co-Chair of Professional Development Committee
“We live in a world immersed in texts – news, job applications, advertising, medical prescriptions – so to lack literacy skills means disenfranchisement. It means being shut out of jobs and opportunities, which reinforces economic and class divisions.”
According to Assistant Professor Meagan Lacy, Information Literacy Librarian at Guttman since 2014, information literacy encompasses the reading and research skills essential for scholarly advancement as well as “a key element of critical thinking, necessary to solve problems and make decisions.” It “is also fundamental to building an informed citizenry and a healthy democracy,” enabling “those who seek and critically analyze information for themselves [to] make personally informed decisions on political and social issues.” Therefore, “information literacy matters for life, not just for school. The more information you have,” along with the tools to select the most reliable, relevant kind and use it effectively, “the more questions you can ask and the more you can advocate for yourself.”
