The Non-Information Explosion
As a result of the majority of college students regularly using the Web for personal and academic information seeking, it becomes imperative to emphasize the importance of evaluating Web resources. The vast amount of potentially useful information of differing levels of quality and authority on the World Wide Web has necessitated the development of evaluation skills in students. Richard Saul Wurman (2001), in his book Information Anxiety21, discusses the Web and information:
If information is the product of the Digital Age, then the Internet is the transportation vehicle. That means more misinformation. The wrong information can be transmitted just as easily as the right information....The Internet is exploding with empty dazzle, sites that direct you to non-existent links, send you down fruitless paths, and generally don't help you get where you want to go. Some even make it nearly impossible to get there. (p. 13)
Terminology such as "information overload," "information explosion" and "non-information explosion" have been used to describe the levels of information available and the human responses to it. Wurman goes on to demonstrate the need for information literacy skills:
Therefore, the great Information Age is really an explosion of non-information; it is an explosion of data. To deal with the increasing onslaught of data, it is imperative to distinguish between the two; information is that which leads to understanding. Everyone needs a personal measure with which to define information. What constitutes information to one person may be data to another. (p.19)
Information literacy training is the method by which we will equip our students with that "personal measure" to help them define information and distinguish quality information from non-information. For students just learning to conduct research in the current technological environment, these skills are essential.
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1Wurman, R.S. (2001). Information anxiety2. Indianapolis, IN: Que.