Cardiff University home for new information literacy project

Information Services at Cardiff University has become the home for a new project to establish a national Welsh framework for information literacy.

Funded by the Welsh Assembly Government’s CyMAL: Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales division as part of its Libraries for Life strategy, the project will develop a unified and progressive framework to support information literacy in schools, further and higher education, the workplace and the wider community.

This exciting project aims to raise awareness that information literacy is a key skill in the 21st century, one which will contribute to a whole host of social and academic benefits throughout Wales.

The project will be managed by Information Services’ Cathie Jackson, Senior Consultant in Information Literacy, who has recently been joined by the new Information Literacy Development Officer for Wales, Joy Head.

Joy and Cathie will be working closely with stakeholders throughout the education and libraries sectors in Wales to provide evidence of information literacy best practice via case studies, to highlight current work across all sectors and to map information literacy across the curriculum. Joy comes to the project with an extensive background in IT, project management and secondary school teaching which ideally complements the expertise of librarians in the all-Wales cross-sector steering group.

“The appointment of the new Information Literacy Development Officer for Wales, and decision to base the project here, further underlines Cardiff University’s positive national, and international, reputation for information literacy,” said Janet Peters, Director of Libraries and University Librarian.

“We know how important information literacy is to Cardiff University – information literacy is embedded into the curriculum for 56% of our students – but this project will explore the links between the kinds of information literacy skills needed in primary and secondary education, in further and higher education, and in employment and lifelong learning. Embedding information literacy training throughout education and employment in this way will enable Wales to capitalise on the benefits of information literacy, such as increasing social inclusion, enhancing academic achievement, and allowing all citizens to access key knowledge,” added Janet.   

Read more about information literacy at Cardiff University on our website – www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/infolit

For more information on the Welsh framework for information literacy, please contact Project Manager Cathie Jackson (JacksonCM@cardiff.ac.uk) or Joy Head (HeadJA1@cardiff.ac.uk).