我对联合国教科文组织全民信息计划推出的信息素养测度框架草稿的意见

2007年11月9日

Dear Misako:

I think the measurement framework is very good as a whole. I have some reservations, however.

-   Firstly, “Evaluation of information” seems to be too high a requirement for information literacy. It has “intruded” into the scope of science literacy. For instance, if a person manages to find some information or advice on new drugs, how could he or she judge whether to believe this piece of information or not? Unless he or she possesses  the sufficient knowledge on controlled clinical experiments and  medical statistics, it is almost impossible for one to take action without hesitation.

-   Secondly, I suggest to add an indicator to distribution indicators: the share of rural public library holdings  in the national total. Without this figure, we would  possibly be cheated by a very high number of per capita holdings, while in reality, only urban population get the benefits of accessing libraries. 

-   Thirdly, there seems to be a duplicate indicator. In distribution indicators, they include “hours of broadcast programs”. Then, in knowledge production indicators, they include “hours of nationally produced radio and TV programs”. In fact, more programs made domestically do not indicate stronger capacity in knowledge production. It only, or still, shows stronger indigenous information diffusion or distribution capacity. What is more, for a large country like China, these two “hours” are almost the same. For smaller countries, maybe people listen to a lot of foreign radios and watch a lot of foreign TVs.

-   Instead, I suggest to add “the number of start-up companies” as a knowledge production indicator. Companies are main producers of tacit knowledge. Therefore, this indicator would become a good complementation to such indicator as the number of papers, which embody explicit knowledge or coded knowledge.