Information Literacy for Demographic Engagement

Reports are available for a project funded by the UK's Information Literacy Group: Information Literacy for Demographic Engagement (IL-DEM). "The project was completed by a team from the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University. This comprised Professor Hazel Hall, Peter Cruickshank and Dr Bruce Ryan. The focus of the project was information literacy amongst those involved in hyperlocal democracy in Scotland as community councillors (the equivalent of parish councillors in England)." In order to carry out the research "In late 2016 the project team interviewed a sample of community councillors representing different types of communities (ranging from rural to urban, and from deprived to wealthy). Another set of community councillors completed an online survey, and some additional data was also obtained from public officials and librarians. Finally, desk research was undertaken into local authority policies about library support for community councils"
Conclusions include that "although community councillors are practised in obtaining and publishing information, the levels of information literacy that they exhibit indicate that their democratic roles could be strengthened with (further) training and development."
There is a stakeholder report here: https://communityknectdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/il-dem-stakeholder-report-january-2017.pdf
A summary of the findings is here: http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ILG-IL-DEM-website-summary.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: Heron, Amsterdam, May 2017