Even though the English language concept literacy is about mastering both reading and writing, much of the debate on information literacy has focused on the reading, i.e. receptive use of information resources. The role of information creation as an equally essential skill has been largely omitted.
I just got out an article in which I suggest that more focus on information creation is needed. This would not only empower information use in general, but eventually could solve some of the issues related to the problems of information discovery. A person who can create information, not only in traditional forms of articles and essays but also in the contemporary digital and social media contexts, produces information that is more findable i.e. easier to find than information produced by a less skilled person.
Abstract of the article published in Finnish:
Even though information literacy implicitly comprises an idea of a complete participation in an information community, the typical definitions of information literacy have tended to underline seeking, searching, locating, receiving and evaluation instead of information creation. Wilder (2005) has criticised the concept information literacy for emphasising the problems of searching instead of finding relevant information. The problematising of information seeking places emphasis on the difficulty of searching and the complexity of required skills. A more sensible approach would be to facilitate information use rather than to teach searching using complicated tools. All information sought by human-beings is mostly produced by their fellow humans. Therefore an approach to decrease complexity of information searching could to be to educate people to create more searchable and usable information. This article discusses information creation as a part of the concept information literacy. Besides technical problems, information creation education is inevitably faced by the complexities of social and cultural dimensions of information and information production.
