About INLS261

According to the American Library Association,

Information Literacy

... is related to information technology skills, but has broader implications for the individual, the educational system, and for society. Information technology skills enable an individual to use computers, software applications, databases, and other technologies to achieve a wide variety of academic, work-related, and personal goals. Information literate individuals necessarily develop some technology skills ...

Increasingly, information technology skills are interwoven with, and support, information literacy.

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A full information literacy curriculum would include:

Tool literacy - The ability to use print and electronic resources including software

Resource literacy - The ability to understand the form, format, location and access methods of information resources

Social-structural literacy - Knowledge of how information is socially situated and produced. It includes understanding the scholarly publishing process

Research literacy - The ability to understand and use information technology tools to carry our research including discipline-related software

Publishing literacy - The ability to produce a text or multimedia report of the results of research

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In SILS,

INLS200 focuses on concepts and techniques for finding and evaluating information, while INLS261-002 will focus on concepts and the tools needed to communicate your information to users.

We will start from the baseline of the former North Carolina high school computer skills requirement and build from there. [North Carolina ended that requirement in 2009 and replaced it with new standards.] To that end, in INLS261-002 we will explore some basic concepts related to how standards connect computers using various versions of software and hardware. We will spend quite a bit of time gaining practical experience with several Internet tools and resources.

We will also introduce concepts and practice skills germane to effective use of the power built into word processing, spreadsheet, relational database management, and presentation graphics software. Although we may use either the current Open Office or the current Microsoft Office suites of applications for many tasks, the basic concepts should provide you with skills that will enable you to be comfortable with other similar packages.

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Some of our goals for the semester include:

Ability to use the Internet effectively

  • become familiar with the Internet and its basic tools
  • be able to use some basic command-line instructions (using either UNIX or LINUX, or both) and to understand the file transfer protocol
  • become conversant with Open Source - some of its applications, its promise and its limitations

Ability to create useful Web content

  • understand the basic tools underlying the web
  • be able to create web pages by using basic HTML, basic CSS, and using HTML editors

Ability to effectively format written documents

  • understand the underlying power of markup languages in document creation software programs
  • be able to format documents for publication

Ability to effectively use spreadsheets

  • understand the vector power of functions in spreadsheet applications
  • be able to format spreadsheets for professional usages

Learn the basics of relational databases by using a common relational database management system

  • understand the power of related tables and the way to create new datasets through queries
  • be able to work with MSAccess on a fundamental level

Ability to design and produce effective visual presentations

  • understand the power of visual language and design
  • be able to design and deliver effective audio/visual presentations

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All work done in INLS261-002 will be done on computers ...

either on your personal laptop or on the desktop units in the SILS lab. There will be no paper products generated in this class and there is no printing requirement. You will be well served to bring your laptops with you to class every day.

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Thanks ...

to Jessica Bodford, Kristin Chaffin, Serena Fenton, Dr. Lokman Meho, Dr. Xi Niu, Bob Sumner, Dr. Rong Tang, David West and to all the previous instructors of the course. This course is built on all their contributions.

PDF version of the syllabus

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