Information Literacy Skills and the Role of Social Media in Disseminating Scholarly Information in the 21st Century

Book excerpt: The storage of information lies within the basic components called binary devices, and at present, storage media falls into two categories—random and serial (or sequential) access—which require different amounts of time to access a given piece of data. The typical serial-access medium is magnetic tape, which has a storage density that has increased considerably over the years. Vast quantities of source data are collected, digitized, and compressed automatically by means of unique instruments in fields such as astronomy, environmental monitoring, scientific experimentation and modelling, and national security. Information capture that is generated by an individual, in the form of packages of symbols called documents, is accomplished by manual and, increasingly, automatic techniques. Data that is entered into instruments manually, such as keyboard strikes, is a process that is comparatively slow and error-prone and often requires the use of computer programs with supporting editing software for formatting, grammar, spelling, and more. With the evolution of technology and its impact on human society, the social sciences have begun to describe this new version of society as a post-industrial or the information/knowledge society. Such terms attempt to capture the unprecedented development and use of information and communication technologies and the fact that information generation, processing, and transmission have become the fundamental sources of productivity and power. An exploration into the impacts of the modern knowledge society on the ways in which academic researchers utilize, distribute, and record data from their fields of study is necessary for further comprehension, protection, and maintenance of this ever-expanding body of information. Information Literacy Skills and the Role of Social Media in Disseminating Scholarly Information in the 21st Century analyzes the various factors of information literacy skill for disseminating scholarly information in the 21st century and increases the awareness level of social media use by researchers for sharing information. Covering topics such as information literate pedagogy, information literacy instruction, and ICT and learning in the knowledge society, this book is ideal for librarians, teachers, research scholars, students of library and information science, knowledge mangers, and information scientists.