Reflections on Week 1's Readings

Upon reading Clifford Lynch's Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy: New Components in the Curriculum for a Digital Culture, I saw the important need for education regarding the new forms of technology and how to use it. Both Information literacy and information technology literacy work hand in hand to enhance the experience of those who use them. People must posess a level of information technology literacy for a variety of tasks, whether it is for their career or just personal use.
The article Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers explores this issue further by explaining how information is being disseminated through different means now than it was in the past. Basically, people are not concerned with what contains the information. The big thing that concerns them is how easily they can access it. Consequently more people use sources such as blogs, streaming video, and other forms of multimedia in the same manner that they utilize traditional sources like books, magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. Over the next few years one could see libraries utilizing these new information sources.
There is also considerable concern with people using wiki engines over traditional academic means of research. People do not care that strongly about the origin of sources anymore; they are much more concerned with how easily they can access and use those sources. In Brian Lamb's article Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not, he writes that more people are using wikis as a collaboration tool, that they post things on the wiki, others edit them, and they reach conclusions about the matters at hand. In a controlled setting like that the wiki can actually prove to be a useful means of developing and executing a task. It is when people use information posted on wikis as factual, academic research that problems arise. Lamb conclues that wikis are just one piece of the information network and that while their rise in popularity might be a concern, there are enough other information sources for people to use that their influence could diminish.
Jason Vaughan wrote that enough changed in how people obtain information in the past four years that people must be aware of what all the different options are. The ALA also recognizes evolving trends in technology such as the use of blogs for commentary on news and events. More people use ebooks and podcasts for sources of information now than they did before. As time progresses, new information sources develop and reach different audiences. If one pays attention to the new sources of information and technology developing in the world one can find the information source that works best for them.