This was the question raised by Dr Mathew Moyo, chief director for library and information service at the North-West University (NWU) and conference chairperson of the inaugural International Conference on Information Literacy (ICIL) that took place in Vanderbijlpark from 23 to 26 September.
The conference, hosted by the NWU, is a sister conference to the European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL), and saw a number of organisations – including institutions of higher learning that have a responsibility to ensure appropriate access and ethical and legal use of information – come together to engage on aspects of the broader spectrum of information literacy.
A collaborative partnership
In welcoming delegates from around the globe to the conference, Dr Moyo explained that the conference represent an international cooperative endeavour that saw the NWU’s Library and Information Service take hands with the UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources (OER) and the Unit for Academic Literacy in the Faculty of Humanities.
This spirit of partnership furthermore supports not only the NWU’s undertaking to be known as an international university distinguished for engaged scholarship, but also the interest of the UNESCO GaPMIL (Global Alliance for Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy) initiative. This initiative seeks to promote cooperation to ensure that the world’s citizens have access to media and information competencies.
A full conference programme
The theme of the inaugural international conference was: “Information Literacy in all spheres of life”, and delegates were representative of researchers, library and information services professionals, media specialists, academia and policy makers from around the globe.
A full conference programme included several interactive sessions ranging from individual papers and posters, PechaKucha (a visual storytelling format), a Doctoral Forum (covering short papers either on a critical literature review or research questions) and panel discussions.
Some of the topics included: information literacy in different contexts of everyday life, active citizenship, information literacy as an emancipatory pedagogy, employability, information literacy instruction, blended learning multi-literacies, open access and the contextualising information literacy.
The conference furthermore boasted an international line-up of keynote speakers. These speakers included the likes of Prof Serap Kurbanoglu (Turkey), Prof Irina Zhilavskaya (Russia), Prof Trudi E Jacobson (USA) and Prof Thomas P Mackey (USA). The national keynote speakers were Prof Bosire Onyancha (UNISA), Prof Karin de Jager (UCT), Prof Ina Fourie (UP) and Prof Jako Olivier (NWU).
The conference line-up included national and international keynote speakers. From left are Prof Trudi E Jacobson, Prof Thomas P Mackey, Prof Serap Kurbanoglu, Prof Jako Olivier, Prof Irina Zhilavskaya and Prof Ina Fourie.
Dr Mathew Moyo, ICIL conference chairperson.
