Content area
Full Text
Student Learning in the Information Age
Patricia Senn Breivik
Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1998, 173 pages,
$39.95 (hardcover)
In her recent book, Student Learning in the Information Age, Breivik offers a comprehensive examination of a paradigm shift in higher education resulting from the information explosion. She contends that the explosion of and access to information are re-shaping both learning and teaching. The focal points of the book are the concepts of information literacy and resource based learning explained in chapters 1 and 2.
In chapter 1 Breivik uses the definition of information literacy provided by the American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy in 1989. Although it has become a common term in today's parlance it is often misused or misunderstood. The ALA definition is lengthy and comprehensive yet it is best summarized as the "abilities to locate, organize, evaluate and communicate information" (p. 6). All of these are skills required of researchers, and one problem today is that every grade school or high school student with Internet access has become a researcher. These young students and older people as well have to be schooled not only in how to find the information but how to interpret and understand it. Until the advent of the Internet the public or school library was the source for information, so it seems proper for the ALA to take the lead in this area. Information is no longer limited to the library you have access to, or the hope of interlibrary loan from a facility...