International Day of Older Persons #IDOP2014

Today is International Day of Older Persons (IDOP), with the theme this year of Leaving No One Behind: Promoting a Society for All. The United Nations website is here: http://www.un.org/en/events/olderpersonsday/index.shtml, there is a WHO page about it here: http://www.who.int/ageing/events/idop_rationale/en/. This notes that "In our fast ageing world, older people will increasingly play a critical role - through volunteer work, transmitting experience and knowledge, helping their families with caring responsibilities and increasing their participation in the paid labour force": so that (healthy) older people need to be seen as an asset rather than a problem. Since "60" appears to be when you start being an Older person, I just qualify in this category, and I do get irritated when I see this issue being treated in a rather patronising way, as if all older people needed to catch up. I hadn't realised (before today) that today was IDOP, so I haven't spent much time identifying material dealing with information literacy and older people (perhaps next year!) There tends to be a focus on older people's deficit in using digital technology, and today's post on the CILIP blog focuses on that rather than a holistic view of information literacy in later life stages: Kathy Valdes of Digital Unite talks about How to get older people online.
The picture shows me in the virtual world, Second Life, doing what I believe people are supposed to do in their twilight years i.e. sunning myself on the porch ;-)