Information Services and Digital Literacy

Presenting a new approach for understanding how information services help and hinder people in becoming informed, Information Services and Digital Literacy: In Search of the Boundaries of Knowing scrutinizes the role of information services and digital literacies in the age of the social web. Huvila argues that a central problem in the age of the social web and the culture of participation is that we do not know the premises of how we know, and in this book he closely examines the ways that interacting with information affects people’s actions. Among the topics he explores are

• How to conceptualize information services and digital literacy using the economy of “ordinary” knowledge as a framework
• The consequences of abundant technology; Networking, with a look at participation versus nonparticipation, commercialism, and freedom
• The different behaviors toward knowledge exhibited by the “born digital” or “new” user
• How information itself, and its abundance and scarcity, affects the ways in which we know things.

Huvila's observations on how we know, where the boundaries to our knowledge lie, how to cross them, and what consequences our actions may have will stimulate researchers, practitioners, and LIS students alike.