The Russian School Libraries Association as a distributor of ideas of personal information culture #wlic2013

Next in my liveblog from the IFLA World library and Information Conference in Singapore is: The Russian School Libraries Association as a distributor of ideas of personal information culture: experience of integration of researchers and school librarians' efforts for civic literacy formation from Natalya Gendina (Kemerovo State University of Culture, Kemerovo Russia) and Tatiana Zhukova (Arts and Russian School Libraries Association, Moscow, Russia). The first author presented.
She started by identifying the concept of "personal information culture" which she saw as broader than information literacy (I mentioned in the last post that the French speaker referred to "la culture d'information"). Civic literacy was a complex and ambiguous concept, in that (if I understood correctly) under the soviet regime it had a meaning that was focused on study of law and regulations.

Four elements of civic literacy were now identified as: law, policy, patriotism and moral values. These could be visualised using iconic paintings (see picture above). There are challenges for school librarians in teaching civic literacy - the term is not formally defined at the interational level and in Russia there any many theoretical approaches and points of view. However, the speaker identified numerous initiatives and acievements of the Russian School Libraries Association, which included collaboration with scientists to get their support. She said that the librarians were engaged more widely in civic society, and had also secured support at a high level: she showed a quotation from President Putin announcing the new title of "school librarian" which previously did not (I think) officially exist.
This talk was absolutely packed with information and I have only been able to capture a tiny part. Unfortunately I do not think the paper is online yet, but I will add the link when it is.