Information culture cannot exist ex nihilo. It should be nurtured, and its elements must be taught as with other cultural aspects, such as arts or social norms. This must be done at all staged of education, explaining the complexity of the modern period of transition to electronic means of communication. It is important that university students understand the social laws of intellectual communication. (p.41).It is true that we do not have a university per se at the moment. However, the Maldives College of Higher Education does offer undergraduate as well as Masters level courses. Do they incorporate information culture components in their curriculum?
Information culture is, among other things, insight into the underlying information mechanisms regulating human behavior and social development. Today, the traditional information pattern of society is changing drastically under the influence of information facilities and by technology rapidly changing and coming into household use. (p.40)Information culture is seen as a major component in social development. And in Maldives, we are seeing the emergence of information exchange through the Internet. In the absence of a publishing culture, given the small population base, the Internet has paved ways for the general educated public to express their world views through the web and now commonly in personal blogs. The internet has also facilitated the information exchange because of the uncontrolled nature of it. This is especially significant in Maldives where censorship of thought is widely exercised through self-censorship (for the prompt publishing or even trepidation of being subjugated) or authoritative censorship before anything goes out to the public.
This free flow of information which has emerged within the last few years is promising as well as detrimental. Promising as it generates intellectual curiosity which is important for developmental outcomes. Detrimental because of the strong opposition to general beliefs and customs that Maldivians have held strong for a number of decades. The unity of the country, mainly based on its common language and on common religion, is on the verge of being shattered as there is a strong undercurrent of arguments going forth about freedom of religion.
It will be inevitable to hold on to one religion if the current situation persists. Maldivians for so long has been an isolated island in terms of challenging religious perspectives and people have followed in the path of Islam, to some extent, in the namesake of doing it without totally believing it or strong feeling for the religion.
This is where a strong information culture is important. It is important to have access to a wide variety of information and the public to be educated in using this information to make individual informed decisions.
Restricting access to certain kinds of information material, through either restriction on distribution or use or public access in libraries, is not going to stop people from getting access to controversial ideas as information is out there on the web for anyone interested enough to pursue it. Here again, there is a need to educate the users on authoritative information sources.
Information and library culture includes studying such notions as writing, books, documents, library, intellectual communication, information services, intelligence, data, information, knowledge, librarian, bibliographical, archival, and information activity, and informatics. In the course of studies [in information culture], students are given a general idea of electronic information technology and the latest changes in the knowledge dissemination paradigm. Special attention is paid to the regularities of document development and ageing, article distribution over journals, assessment of journal significance, and the time of response to published articles. (p. 41)Today we live in an information society also increasingly considered as knowledge societies. And information culture is the fundmanetal component of the modern civilised world.
Ref:
Gilyarevskii, R. S. (2007). Information culture in higher education. Scientific and Technical Information Processing, 34(1), 40-43.
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