Rethinking the concept of "information literacy":

a German perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the original and diverse approaches to the concept of information literacy in the German academic world. Unlike the American notion of information literacy, whose pedagogy, methodology and conceptualization follow guidelines set forth by powerful professional organisations such as ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) and ALA (American Library Association), the German notion of information literacy is still negotiated on an interdisciplinary market of ideas ranging from communication science to didactics and from cultural anthropology to epistemology. An awareness of this international perspective on information literacy is timely, given the recent debates about the legitimacy of the radically new approach to information literacy put forth in the ACRL Framework.