Want to teach information literacy skills in your community, in your classroom, or at home? You’ve come to the right place! Find out how you can guide others on the journey to information literacy by helping them develop critical skills to find, evaluate, use, and create information.
Think of this page as a roadmap to help you navigate the questions and challenges that may come up throughout the journey to information literacy. Learn more about this page and how you can use it to support your own information literacy work.
Why Teach Information Literacy Skills?
Information literacy is an umbrella term that encompasses several related skillsets. People of all ages can benefit from developing and practicing these skillsets. For example:
- Information literacy skills can help people separate fact from fiction and identify reliable sources.
- AI (artificial intelligence) literacy skills can help people understand how AI tools work and use them productively.
- Digital literacy skills can help people make sense of online information.
- Financial literacy skills can help people make the most of their money.
- Health literacy skills can help people make informed choices about their health.
- Science literacy skills can help people interpret scientific information and apply what they’ve learned in their everyday lives.
Think of teaching information literacy skills as a natural extension of the work you do every day.
If You Work at a Library or Museum
Throughout our country’s history, libraries and museums have served as essential hubs for information sharing, empowering people with the knowledge they need to navigate the world around them. Today, libraries also act as portals to internet access — especially in rural areas where access may be limited. As our information environment becomes more complex, libraries and museums can empower people to tune out the noise, evaluate the quality of information, and make informed decisions based on what they’ve learned.
If You’re a Classroom or Homeschool Educator
Walking alongside students as they learn new skills is what you do best. Even if you’ve never used the term “information literacy” before, information literacy skills — skills that help us think critically, evaluate information, and make informed decisions — are key to any curriculum.
Where Do I Start?
Everyone begins the journey to information literacy in a different place. No matter what your starting point looks like, this site has resources to help you teach information literacy skills in your classroom or community — even with limited time, staff, and budget.
Here are 4 phases that you may pass through on the journey to information literacy. Think of this as a roadmap to the information literacy landscape, not a linear process to follow. As you read through the phases below, take a moment to reflect on the questions and real-life examples. This will help you understand your starting point (the phase you’re in now) and identify next steps.
Identify Your Audience’s Needs
Consider what information literacy topics your audience may need or want to learn about. Here are a few ways to get started:
- Look for potential skill gaps. For example, if you notice that students are using ChatGPT to write essays, you could take the opportunity to introduce AI literacy skills.
- Consider questions that many students or community members have asked. For example, if you often get questions about using search engines, consider planning a digital literacy lesson.
- Ask your audience what they’re curious about. Then look for ways to connect those topics to information literacy.
The Wild Center connects learners of all ages with the natural world, encouraging visitors to become caretakers of the environment. Using a simple survey, The Wild Center asked visitors what they’d like to learn about climate-related topics, then used the answers to plan a new exhibit.
Design an Approach
Once you’ve learned about your audience’s needs, consider their communication preferences. For example, where do your visitors or students tend to seek out information? What platforms do they use to communicate with friends and family? Who do they trust? With this knowledge in hand, you can design an information literacy lesson or program that will resonate with your audience.
Discover ready-to-use lesson plans. Running short on time or funding? Check out our Teaching Information Literacy Skills toolkit for ready-to-use lesson plans on AI, digital, financial, health, and science literacy. Each lesson plan comes with a supplementary worksheet to reinforce key takeaways.
The Christa McAuliffe Center for Integrated Science Learning at Framingham State University brings fun and interactive science education to students of all ages. Working closely with local school districts, the McAuliffe Center designs learning experiences to fill knowledge gaps and teach skills that will help students succeed in the modern workplace.
Develop Partnerships and Find Funding
As many library and museum professionals can attest, building partnerships is a powerful way to expand your reach in the community. Teaming up with experts in your community can also make your information literacy lessons and programs even more impactful for your participants. Consider partnering with:
- Professionals with expertise in information literacy topics (e.g., a financial advisor for financial literacy or a computer science teacher for digital literacy)
- Community leaders
- Community-based organizations, including nonprofits or philanthropic foundations
- Libraries or museums
- Schools or homeschooling organizations
- State and local governments
- Health departments
You can find funding through federal and non-governmental grants for information literacy initiatives.
Follow these steps to build strong partnerships in your community:
- Identify ways that partners could support your information literacy work. For example, let’s say you want to build health literacy skills in your community. You could team up with a health educator to facilitate a program and ask a community health center to help you spread the word by sharing flyers about the event.
- Make a list of potential partners. Write down people and organizations in your community that have expertise in the information literacy topic you want to teach or have access to the people you want to reach.
- Reach out to each potential partner with a specific “ask.” Introduce your organization or class and the information literacy work you’re doing. Then, spell out how you would like to work together. For example, ask them to help you plan a program, facilitate a lesson, or spread the word about your upcoming event.
- Set clear expectations about what you would like the partner to do and what you can offer them in return. For example, if you work at a library, you could post flyers about the community health center to let patrons know about the resources available there.
- Nurture the partnership by staying in touch after your lesson or program. Show partners that you appreciate their contributions by sharing successes like positive feedback from participants, high attendance numbers, or student accomplishments. Look for opportunities to work together in the future and encourage your partners to do the same.
An initiative of the Pennsylvania Library Association (PaLA), PA Forward provides training and consults with library professionals across the state. PA Forward partnered with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to develop a financial literacy curriculum for public libraries.
Evaluate and Sustain Information Literacy Efforts
After your lesson or program, it’s time to evaluate, or assess whether your students or community members have developed key information literacy skills. Evaluation can be as simple as asking people to share their feedback on a lesson or program, then using their input to plan future information literacy activities. Showing that your information literacy work has made an impact can also help you secure funding and other support to build on your work in the future.
The New Mexico State Library’s Tribal Libraries Program empowers 24 Tribal libraries to cultivate information literacy in their communities. To measure success, the TLP looks at metrics like the number of people who come into each library, the number of programs the library can offer, and the number of people attending library programs.