Building communities : information literacy and rural public libraries

Abstract

This study examined information literacy in rural public libraries in the Waikato region of New Zealand. It used qualitative interviews with two library mangers from the Waikato region to study their attitudes and perceptions about information literacy and the role it plays in rural public libraries, programmes that they are running or wish to run, digital literacy in rural New Zealand and differences or barriers that exist for rural public libraries to provide information literacy training in comparison to urban public libraries. The managers indicated the importance they place on information literacy for rural public libraries and the communities they reside in. However despite this importance, they do not feel they are in a position to run information literacy programmes, largely due to a lack of funding, resources, professional staff and existing stereotypes of the function of the library. Instead, the library takes on a supporting role in the way of promotion. Digital literacy was perceived as being strong in rural communities but the library was also not in a position to greatly further this training. It was concluded that the rural public library has much to offer the community in the way of information literacy training but in order to do this it must receive adequate funding to allow for further resourcing and staffing to take place.