The Information Literacy Cookbook: Ingredients, recipes and tips for success

I like Webology. Reading it brings to my attention things that many of the other journals don't and in full text without any hassle. I do not like that I have to remember to check for new issues -- or note from other sources -- since there appears to be no alerting or feed system.



That said I bring you a review by Hamid R Jamali in Volume 4 Number 3 September 2007 of The Information Literacy Cookbook by Jane Secker, Debbi Boden and Gwyneth Price (Eds.). Published by Chandos Publishing, Chandos House, 5 & 6 Steadys Lane, Stanton Harcourt, Oxford, OX29 5RL, UK. 2007, XIV, 162 p.,
Paperback, ISBN 1-84334-225-1 £39.95; Hardback ISBN 1-84334-226-X £57.00.


Jamali writes: A search in the Library of Congress’s catalogue for English books with "information literacy" in the title published between 2000 and 2007 results in more than 90 records. Information literacy has attracted a remarkable amount of attention during the last decade and much has been published by different groups including academics, librarians and information professionals and for various audience groups such as students, academics, information professionals and so on. So is there a need for a new book in this area? The difference between the book The Information Literacy Cookbook edited by Secker, Boden and Price and much of the existing work is that, as the editors stated, it is "written by practitioners for practitioners". All of the editors and authors of this collective work are information professionals and librarians who have the experience of working in different sectors of the library world. Their aim is to ‘create something that would be of day-to-day use by practitioners". Each of the chapters deals with a different information environment from school libraries to further education institutions. Therefore, each chapter could be read on its own meaning that this kind of book is not one that has to be read from cover to cover. The Information Literacy Cookbook does not try to introduce information literacy or to teach end-users how to improve their information literacy skills. The audience is information professionals and practitioners and therefore the readers are expected to have sufficient background knowledge on information literacy (although the editors do provide some background information in the introductory chapter and point the readers to resources for further information).
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Copyright © 2007, Hamid R Jamali

Just as soon as I'm well enough to travel I'll try reading this in the British Library.