What is the National Forum on Information Literacy?

From their site:

"The National Forum on Information Literacy was created in 1989 as a response to the recommendations of the American Library Association's Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. These education, library, and business leaders stated that no other change in American society has offered greater challenges than the emergence of the Information Age. Information is expanding at an unprecedented rate, and enormously rapid strides are being made in technology for storing, organizing, and accessing the ever-growing tidal wave of information."

Teaching college-level research skills is challenging. The amount of information available is staggering, and growing exponentially. Today's students must know how to phrase an information need. They must have strong information retrieval skills. They must know how to critically evaluate information for reliability and relevance, and then use it in academic, business and personal endeavors.

The combined effect of these factors is an increasingly fragmented information base, a large component of which is available only to people with money and/or acceptable institutional affiliations. In the recent past, the outcome of these challenges has been characterized as the "digital divide."

Read "American Competitiveness in the Internet Age Report" (2006) [PDF] — a snippet from the report:

"Technology Skills are simply not enough. In order for America to advance and sustain its global competitiveness, students and workers must be information literate, i.e., they must be able to discern information needs and locate, evaluate and effectively use that information in the workplace, in their communities and in their personal lives."