The Non-Information Explosion

As a result of the majority of college students regularly using the Web for personal and academic information seeking, the information literacy skill of evaluation becomes indispensible. Although all information literacy skills are important for student success, this one has become particularly urgent.

The World Wide Web offers a vast amount of potentially useful resources, but they are of differing levels of quality and authority.

The excessive amount of information (and its varying levels of accuracy) available on the Web has led to what scholars have called "Information Overload," the "Information Explosion," and the "Non-Information Explosion."

Richard Saul Wurman (2001), in his book Information Anxiety2 discusses the differences between information and data and the importance of individuals having a "personal measure" to make the distinction between meaningless data and useful information.¹

Through information literacy training, we will equip our students with the skills necessary to make this distinction.

Additional Information
Home Defining Information Literacy The Benefits of Information Literacy Information Literacy and the Library Summing It Up References
¹Wurman, R.S. (2001). Information anxiety2. Indianapolis, IN: Que.