1. HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
OF
INFORMATION
LITERACY
Presented by: Mary Jesette E. Penaojas
Presented to: Mrs Sheryl C. Farquerabao

2.  Just as the development of libraries and the
information industry are tied to
historical, social, and economic developments in
society, so is the history of teaching people about
information. It will show how general social
developments, particularly in the United States lead
to corresponding developments in education, library
services, the information industry, and both the
bibliographic instruction and the information literacy
instruction movements, especially in academic
libraries and school library media centers.

3. Three Waves of
Western History

4.  Western history can be divided into three periods,
the agricultural, pre-industrial, and pre-modern
period of the first wave; the industrial and modern
period of the second wave, and the current
information-based, post-industrial, post-modern
period of the third wave.

5.  Pre-industrial societies existed everywhere until
roughly 1760. Arnold Toynebee coined the term
“Industrial Revolution” to describe economic
developments in England in the period 1760-1840.
The second wave, modern, industrial society was
very slow in coming.

6. From the First Wave to the
Second: 1865-1945

7. Libraries were rarer than schools and were also
for the elite, for the most part. Collections of
books and manuscripts could be found at
monasteries, universities, and private homes of
the affluent.
Most librarians at that time were monks,
professors, teachers, and other interested people
who would maintain collections, either in addition
to other duties, or as an avocation.
The closest thing to public libraries were
subscription

8. libraries organized in England, in other English-
speaking countries, and in the U.S. (mostly on
the eastern seaboard).
People had to subscribe and pay, in order to use
these libraries.
There is some evidence that some information
instruction activities occurred in German
universities in the 1700s, but this type of
activity would have been extremely rare, at that
time for all of the reasons described above.

9. State universities for “the masses” were
established during this time of industrialization
as land-grant colleges and normal schools
 Land-grant colleges were founded to train
farmers and these colleges and universities later
added business, engineering, liberal arts, and
other programs.
Research, teaching, and service, including
community outreach have always been important
purposes of these institutions.
Some land-grant colleges would become the
“flagship” for state – supported colleges in their
states.

10. Normal schools and teachers’ colleges were
established to train public school teachers. A
number of them would later evolve into general
regional state colleges and universities.

11. While the U.S. was industrializing at a rapid
pace between the Civil War and World War I,
and extending secondary and college education to
the masses in the form of high schools, land
grant colleges, and normal schools, modern U.S.
 libraries also rapidly developed, In 1876 alone,
the American Library Association (ALA) was
created by Melvil Dewey, Justin Winsor, and
William Frederick Poole, Library Journal was first
published , and Samuel Green’s pivotal article on
reference services was published in one of the
first issues of this journal. In addition, Dewey
also published his Dewey Decimal Classification,
that year.

12.  While the first public libraries supported by taxes
and free to the public would start in Boston and New
Hampshire in the mid-nineteenth century, more public
libraries would be created during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, first in the northeast
and midwest, and later in the south west
Public libraries also created both reference services
and children’s services during this time
As this was happening libraries were first trained
locally as apprentices

13. As the modern industrialized period was a mass
society built upon standards, schools,
universities, and libraries all became very
bureaucratic institutions,
Libraries, in particular were centralized and
hierarchical.
They trained and hired professional librarians
to provide new reference services from a
centralized desk.
As the main source of information for a mass
society, libraries had standardized collections as
a result of the development of Wilson catalogs
and several other lists and review media.

14. They had standard classification with the use
of the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress
Classification Systems, and standard cataloging
with the creation and use of cataloging rules.

15. Instruction in Academic Libraries Before
1960

16.  However, instruction in the use of information was slow
to develop until the late twentieth century.
A number of universities offered courses on library use
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
These courses combined the history of books and
libraries with basic library research strategies and
the critical evaluation of materials.

17. However, in the early twentieth century, the
quantity and quality of these courses declined.
Full courses on evaluating library materials
changed to more shallow instruction on library
research techniques.
By the 1920s, any kind of library instruction
was rare.

18. There would be developments in the years
between 1920-1960 that would be important to
both the history and the future of teaching about
information, but these developments had little
effect on most libraries, at that time.
Most of this period is regarded as a relatively
stagnant one for teaching in higher education.

19. B. Lamar Johnson
organized an instruction program at
Stephens College, a small Missouri women’s
college in the years 1931-1950. He
prefigured the bibliographic instruction
movement of the 1970s and 1980s by
offering orientations, instruction in the use
of basic reference tools, point-of-use
instruction, individualized
instruction, course-related instruction, and
full courses.

20. Louis Shores
Louis Shores’ “library college” idea did
not begin or end with him. He believed that
libraries should be the center of colleges, that
students should be educated by doing
independent studies in libraries, and that the
professors should be “librarian-teachers”.
Some of these ideas go all the way back to
Dewey and Winsor, and they would also
directly influence people and programs in the
1960s.

21. The Bibliographic Instruction (BI)
Movement in Academic Libraries: 1960-
1989

22. Most of the 1960s would not be much livelier in
the development of instructional services for
college students than the decades preceding it.
 However, there were two programs influenced by
Shores’ “library college” concept, that would be
major catalysts to the development of a full-scale
bibliographic instruction movement in academic
libraries in the 1970s.

23.  The BI movement of the 1970s was a “bottom-
up” grass-roots movement lead by young and new
librarians with little or no power in their own
institutions.
Hardesty and Tucker (37) also mention young
faculty with Ph.Ds unable to get teaching
positions or to get tenure during the difficult
early 1970s.
A number of them also became librarians, with
strong backgrounds in their original fields, who
really wanted to teach. In any case, young
librarians trying to start instructional programs
in information use had to convince their often
skeptical bosses and administrators, first.
This would prove to be an “up-hill battle”.

24. From the Second Wave to the Third: 1945-1981
and Beyond

25. Just as the movement from a pre-modern,
agricultural, first wave society to a modern
industrial society lead to the birth of modern
U.S. twentieth century libraries, and just as
the social ferment of the 1960s lead to the
establishment of the bibliographic instruction
movement, another major paradigm shift and
another generational shift would lead to the
information literacy movement. Between 1945-
1981, the U.S.A. was gradually changing from a
modern industrial society to a post-modern
information-based one.

26. Computers were doing for the country and to the
country what automobiles and highways had earlier
done.
While automobiles redrew our physical landscape,
affecting where people lived, worked, shopped,
etc. computers did the same thing to us, mentally.
The implications of this for education, library
services, and teaching about information have
been staggering, and sometimes, shattering.
Everything about these fields is now being
questioned.

27. Libraries have been automating and using technology
for decades, but many things have suddenly changed.
At first, libraries would use a new technology, like
the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)’s
cataloging system to do old, traditional jobs quicker
and better.
Then they would use this new technology to do new
tasks. In the case of OCLC, they used the
databases to do Interlibrary Loan and to answer
reference questions.

28. But now, new technologies, like the Internet are
completely redesigning the nature and purpose of
work.
This represents a the U.S. one hundred years
ago! Libraries are also now competing with an
aggressive information industry and their survival is
no longer assured.
Librarians must figure out where they fit in the
near and far future and then be proactive.
 Everything about modern twentieth century
librarianship is being questioned at this time.major
paradigm shift comparable to the industrialization
in

29. The shift from printed information to
electronic information has changed collection
development policies and methods, reference
services, and modes of instruction.
In the case of collection development, a
boasting twentieth century librarian may have
said to a colleague from another library, “My
collection is bigger than yours!” Now she would
be more likely to say, “My library is more
connected than yours!”
In addition, hierarchies have been flattened in
many libraries, with librarians now operating in
teams.
There is also a blurring of distinction between
paraprofessionals and professionals and
librarians and technical people.

30. From Bibliographic Instruction to
Information Literacy: 1980 –

31. In some ways, information literacy continues and
even completes library or bibliographic instruction.
In other ways, it represents a different direction.
Both movements exist to teach people how to find
information.
Practitioners in both movements are concerned
with core competencies of information
users, learning theories, conceptual
frameworks, active learning, and critical thinking.
Practitioners of both approaches use a variety
of direct and indirect teaching methods. A number
of librarians have personally made the shift from
one movement to another.

32.  In some ways, information literacy completes and
fulfills the potential and work of bibliographic
instruction.
It has more of a theoretical base, it promotes
life-long learning, it deals with information
wherever it is, and it emphasizes determining
information needs and
evaluating and using information as well as finding
it.
While traditional BI was somewhat book and
library-based, information literacy is tied more
to electronic information and computers.