Just out from IFLA/De Gruyter: Libraries Empowering Society Through Digital Literacy
19 December 2025
High-speed connectivity, massive growth in social media, the ubiquity of mobile devices, and the emergence of artificial intelligence have led to information confusion, chaos and complexity. The ability for everyone to create, find, evaluate, use and apply information effectively is critical to successful personal, societal and global outcomes. Libraries and librarians must adapt their services and instructional approaches to engage with digital natives, immigrants and refugees to ensure all gain the competencies required by digital citizens. What constitutes digital literacy and how can we do it better? This book explores concepts, frameworks, and practices in digital literacy to foster adoption of initiatives to extend digital literacy to all.
The origins of the book lie in a proposal submitted several years ago to produce a book on the topic of transliteracy, which sought to address the issues of the multiple literacies required for successful information use. The world changed. Information and communications technology developments with high-speed connectivity, massive growth in social media, huge computer storage capacity locally and remotely, ubiquity of mobile devices, and the emergence of artificial intelligence led to new ways of human and machine interaction. Sustainability issues came to the fore, and the pandemic brought social and economic disruption.
There was a growing realization that sophisticated skills were required to deal with information access and use in an online world with a surfeit of information, vast quantities of user-generated content—particularly by so-called influencers—and multiple means of digital communication. An overabundance of fake news, misinformation, and disinformation, along with the many platforms being used for the transmission of information, has led to disquiet about the ability of individuals to discover and evaluate the information needed for daily living, participation in the workforce, and scholarly endeavors.
Community and individual information needs have changed. Digital natives, who have grown up using computers and smartphones; digital immigrants, who were raised before the ubiquity of information technology and have acquired skills over time; and digital refugees, who have lost jobs due to the emergence of new technology or who are unable or unwilling to use it effectively, have different needs, capabilities, and ways of learning.
These differences require librarians and educators to adapt their collections, teaching approaches, and services to reach and engage with these communities. The difficulties of locating, evaluating, and applying the right information at the right time have brought new attention to library values of authority, credibility, veracity, and equitable access to information, and a wider use of the term digital literacy.
Initially, this volume sought to increase access to the papers presented at two IFLA webinars jointly held in October 2021 that explored how information literacy education fosters a smooth passage for learners from pre-kindergarten to post-secondary education and beyond. Subsequently, a call for papers broadly addressing libraries’ involvement specifically in digital literacy was issued, and the remaining chapters in this volume were submitted in response to that call. The main focus of this book is the exploration of digital literacy explicitly across a wide spectrum of communities and illustrates how libraries have responded to the rapid expansion of digital information. It details how libraries have addressed growing misinformation, disinformation and malinformation through a range of programmes to support digital literacy. The book was highlighted at the 2023 Satellite Meeting of the IFLA Information Literacy Section (ILS) in The Netherlands, Libraries Empowering Society through Digital Literacy Education – Celebrating IFLA’s Upcoming Book, where presentations were made on six chapters included in this book.
The four editors have come together from across the globe with two from the United States, one from Australia, and one from Europe, to shape the book. In each chapter, the contributing authors share their experiences, accomplishments, challenges and insights with the hope of advancing the core values of the library and information professions.
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Libraries Empowering Society through Digital Literacy
The origins of this book lie in a proposal submitted several years ago to produce a book on the topic of transliteracy, which sought to address the issues of the multiple literacies required for successful information use.
The world changed. Information and communications technology developments wit...