During the last decade, UNESCO has been actively promoting the concept of Knowledge Societies in which Information Literacy (IL) plays a fundamental role in building inclusive, pluralistic, equitable and participatory societies. By enabling people to interpret and make informed judgments as users of information, as well as to become producers and distributers of information and knowledge in their own right, Information Literacy empowers citizens to better make critical decisions to achieve their full potential, and it enables countries to sustain their political, economic and social development.
UNESCO fully acknowledges that nowadays societies and citizens require multiple competencies in order to succeed in a constantly changing environment. Therefore, the new concept of Media and Information Literacy (MIL) was introduced by UNESCO with the aim of raising public awareness and drawing the attention of various stakeholders to its importance, and the need for joint plans and collaborative actions.
The Alexandria Proclamation of 2005, and the Moscow Declaration on Media and Information Literacy of 2012 both underscore the idea that citizens, communities and nations require a new set of attitudes, skills and knowledge to create, access, organize, evaluate, use, and communicate data, information and knowledge so as to achieve their personal, social, professional and educational goals. In addition, the Fez Declaration on Media and Information Literacy of 2011 highlights the importance of MIL in enhancing the quality of human life, sustainable country development, and proactive governance and citizenship, particularly in this digital age in which we live,
wherein information resources availability and accessibility have exploded, as have communication technologies, and they have also converged and become fully interactive with users.
In this context, the need for strengthened educational resources on Information Literacy has been identified by various professional communities, thus encouraging both UNESCO, and the author, to produce this publication. Although the IL conjcept has been studied and promoted in various countries, resources and information on the basic concept, as well as its practice, have been spread and scattered widely, from many different types of sources, and in many different formats, applications and languages. In order to provide inclusive and multilingual IL resources for Library and Information Science professionals, teachers, researchers, and students, among others, this publication was designed to bring together IL contributions in forty-two languages from all all of the different geographic regions around the world.
UNESCO is pleased with the keen interest shown by the professional LIS community in providing this selection of important IL resources. We believe that this publication will contribute to both education and research, and will raise the awareness of both ordinary people and experts from all different backgrounds and nationalities. We express our sincere gratitude to the author, Dr. Forest Woody Hort on Jr., who has been proactively researching, advancing and advocating the concept of Information Literacy during the last decades, as well as to all of the contributors, their colleagues and the peer reviewers, for their work in producing this important selection of educational and research resources on Information Literacy worldwide.