New Voices RGU Student Series – Selina-May Miller

Category: New Voices, New Voices, RGU Student Series

In the Robert Gordon University Student Series blog, we share the views of RGU students from the MSc in Information and Library Studies course.

Today, we hear from Selina-May Miller, a Library Assistant at Shetland Library who is currently studying on the RGU MSc Information and Library Studies course. Selina’s professional interests include the facilitation of information literacy skills as well as digital literacy within public libraries, and her blog examines the digital literary skills with which public library workers have had to equip themselves during the Covid-19 crisis.

In this blog, Selina-May discusses how public library workers can assist their communities in developing digital skills during the pandemic.

The year 2020 saw our lives change almost overnight across the world. Having the added pressure of a global pandemic has put public libraries on the spot, enforcing developments in how and why we assist library users to gain critical digital literacy skills, as well as utilising these skills ourselves. I am a strong advocate for the importance of digital literacy and was even before COVID-19. However, as we begin in our ‘new normal’ it is evident that action needs to be taken to ensure that information professionals are ahead of the game and on top of their digital literacy, not only for themselves but also to pass onto others.

According to a report undertaken by Lloyds Banking Group in May 2020, “11.7 million people in the UK lack the ‘essential digital skills’ needed for day-to-day life online, yet one in three (33%) ‘have boosted digital skills during lockdown’. During 2020, the UK was forced into a virtual and digital world and now more than ever, we have realised just how important digital literacy is.

The American Library Association’s digital-literacy task force offers this definition: “Digital literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.” More simply, Hiller Spires, a professor of literacy and technology at North Carolina State University, views digital literacy as having three ‘buckets’: 1) finding and consuming digital content; 2) creating digital content and 3) communicating or sharing it. I will be focusing on number 3, communicating and sharing digital literacy, as I feel this is where it is most relevant within a public library situation.

In November 2020, the Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals issued a statement regarding COVID-19. Within this statement, they recognised the increased importance of Digital Literacy by stating: “We urge the Government to work with us to bring forward a public programme of support for… digital and information literacy, so that individual citizens can be empowered to make informed choices about their welfare and the safety of those around them” (CILIP, 2020). I would argue that digital literacy has been the most important area in which information professionals have had to develop their skills. As stated by Reid (2020): “The information world is constantly changing and the tools we use to access and disseminate information have changed more radically in the last twenty years than in the previous two hundred.”

So, what does this mean for information professionals in public libraries? Well essentially, I believe it means that information professionals in public libraries can no longer have the basic competencies that are usually required for public library work. Instead, they must have a much more advanced level of knowledge and skills. Martin (2009) delves deeper into the levels of digital literacy and displays his three-tiered approach. I believe within this approach that information professionals can no longer have the basic digital competencies and now need to have a more developed knowledge of digital usage.

I am lucky in that I can call Shetland Library my workplace. Shetland Library is a public library based within the North of Scotland in the UK. I have worked within the public library service for the last two years and now more than ever I understand the importance of digital literacy and how these skills link to social exclusion. In 2020, the rise in the use of online tools such as Zoom went up drastically. In December 2019, Zoom had 10 million daily meeting participants. Just 4 months later, in April 2020, more than 300 million daily meeting participants were using Zoom (Cloudwars, 2020).

Part of my role as an assistant at Shetland Library whilst working from home was to enable and assist local library users in Zoom, so that they could connect and be more included socially. We saw a rise in the number of library users seeking help in digital literacy both for Zoom and for other online tools.

Now more than ever, society relies upon technology and digital tools to stay connected, to educate ourselves and to communicate with each other. I believe it is essential that public libraries keep up to date with digital literacy and ensure that their staff are well trained within this area. If 2020 has highlighted anything for public libraries, it has shown how important digital literacy is and how public libraries themselves can contribute and assist in their local community’s social inclusion.

References

Martin, A.,2009, Levels of Digital Literacy. From “Digital literacy for the third age: Sustaining identity in an uncertain world”, eLearning Papers, 12, p. 8

American Library Association. 2020. Office for Information Technology Policy. Digital Literacy Task Force. Digital literacy, libraries, and public policy: Report of the Office for Information Technology Policy’s Digital Literacy Task Force. Retrieved from http:// www.districtdispatch.org/wp-content/ uploads/2013/01/2012_OITP_digInformatio n Literacyitreport_1_22_13.pdf

Banking, P., 2020, Banking, I., Finder, B., on, L., services, P., accounts, C., cards, C. and accounts, S. Consumer Digital Index. [online] Lloydsbank.com. Available at: <https://www.lloydsbank.com/banking-with-us/whats-happening/consumer-digital-index.html?srnum=4> [Accessed 1 December 2020].

CILIP. 2020. CILIP Statement on New COVID-19 Provisions. [online] Available at: <https://www.cilip.org.uk/news/news.asp?id=536506> [Accessed 1 December 2020].

Cloudwars.co. 2020. The Zoom Revolution: 10 Eye-Popping Stats From Tech’S New Superstar. [online] Available at: <https://cloudwars.co/covid-19/zoom-quarter-10-eye-popping-stats-from-techs-new-superstar/> [Accessed 1 December 2020].

GOV.UK. 2020. Get Help With Remote Education. [online] Available at: <https://www.gov.uk/guidance/remote-education-during-coronavirus-covid-19> [Accessed 1 December 2020].

Ipsos MORI. 2020. Essential Digital Skills UK – 2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/essential-digital-skills-uk-2020> [Accessed 1 December 2020].