His observations were prescient, but it is, perhaps, the third point that conveys the sweeping changes that the new world of information represents. He couldn’t have anticipated social media, but that development has led to the equation of social relationships to information. The importance of the point rests in its recognition that information is defining of current life, and the ways people are informed can all them to thrive in an altered world.

While he recognized that information is not knowledge, Zurkowski provided a framework for reconceiving the ways that individuals and groups interact with what does inform them. It took some time for library and information science to catch up with Zurkowski. After 1974 there was still the emphasis on finding information and a bit less on evaluating it for the needs directly experienced by the more proficient users of information. In other words, there remained a focus on skills in retrieving content. In 1989 the ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report, stated, “Libraries, which provide a significant public access point to. . . information and usually at no cost, must play a key role in preparing people for the demands of today’s information society.” That statement provided an impetus to seek a re-vision of what it means to be information literate, but standards that eventually followed retained a degree of the instrumental goals of information seeking and finding. Those goals were seen to be inadequate by a number of observers; Christine Bruce and colleagues (2006) noted that there is a need for more sophistication to information literacy efforts. They pointed out that there should be attention paid to content, competency, learning to learn, personal relevance, social impact, and relational factors. Those elements are indeed necessary for a full realization of the contributions that information literacy programs can offer.

A next step in the realization process was formally adopted by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), with a framework that is intended to guide information literacy efforts. The framework includes six principles:

• Authority as Constructed and Contextual
• Information Creation as a Process
• Information Has Value
• Research as Inquiry
• Scholarship as Conversation
• Searching as Strategic Exploration

The framework’s principles are somewhat more effective at capturing the conscious aspect of questioning, seeking relevant information, incorporating content into one’s knowledge base, and comprehending what research and scholarship are. There are still some limitations and confusions that need greater clarity. For instance, the first principle appears to suggest a relativism regarding authority. ACRL, at the time of this writing, has a task force examining whether revisions to the framework are needed (and what those revisions might entail). It must be admitted that information literacy is a complex process, one that has a history and a future. The Information Literacy Handbook, as a work of practical scholarship, is both a recognition of that admission and a project to recognize the past and future so that information literacy can be fulfilled in its complexity. The hope (the expectation?) is that it will help the discipline chart a path to the future.