My Information Literacy Odyssey

Information literacy has been a hot topic among educators and information professionals for over 20 years now, and it has shaped my own research agenda for the past decade. This presentation will trace my information literacy research journey, focusing on three projects: information literacy competency among college freshmen; teachers and public and school librarians as information literacy collaborators; and the Peritextual Literacy Framework as a strategy for teaching information literacy to middle school students. With all three projects, I’ll discuss the research questions posed, the methods used, and the results obtained.

Don Latham, PhD, is a professor in the School of Information at Florida State University, where he teaches courses on Information Needs of Children, Information Needs of Young Adults, Graphic Novels in Libraries, and Theory and Foundations of Information Sciences. He has published extensively on information behavior of young adults, digital literacies, and young adult literature and literacy practices, and is the co-author, with Melissa Gross, of Young Adult Resources Today: Connecting Teens with Books, Music, Games, Movies, and More (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014). He has received research grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Online Computer Library Center / Association of Library for Information Science Education, the Adolescent Literature Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English Foundation, and the Florida State University Council on Research and Creativity. He has served on the board of the Association for Library and Information Science Education as Director of Special Interest Groups, and was conference co-chair for the 2013 ALISE Annual Conference. He is also active in the Young Adult Library Services Association.