Information literacy in the age of search engines

Information literacy is the ability to notice when information is needed, then find, judge, and use it well. Search engines handle the finding in seconds. The judging may be the hard part now. The term dates to a 1974 report by Paul Zurkowski, and the American Library Association fixed the modern definition in 1989. That definition has barely changed, but the setting has. A card catalog offered a short shelf of options, while a results page offers millions, ranked in ways the searcher rarely sees. The catalog waited for a query. The engine volunteers an answer. The site's literacy explainers treat that shift as the central problem of the field. The stakes are concrete. Journals that mimic real science while skipping real review can sit one result below genuine papers. The guide to how to spot a predatory journal walks through the tells. Telling them apart is information literacy in daily practice. Where did the term come from? The phrase first saw print in 1974.

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