Librarians, Literacy and the Promotion of Gender Equity

Book excerpt: Today’s youth have available an unprecedented array of information and media, and today’s literacy must extend well beyond decoding the printed page. As the keepers of information, how do librarians help boys and girls separate relevant from irrelevant, important from unimportant, helpful from harmful? How can librarians help students become self-sufficient learners? This book addresses today’s need for literacies in technology, reading, information, and numbers, as well as visual, aural, and media literacy. With thorough consideration of the latest research, it focuses on how gender affects the way these literacies are learned, experienced, and used. Exercises are recommended to help students of both genders become effective learners and managers of their environment. After delving into issues of gender, such as differences and similarities in the way boys and girls learn, discussion concentrates on how librarians and other educators can design learning activities with gender and technology issues in mind. Individual chapters deal with each type of literacy, and the concluding chapter discusses the interdependence of all. This book demonstrates that the era of “one size fits all” literacy is behind us, and argues for the library as an optimal learning environment for exploring literacies holistically.