This series provides a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Digital Literacy: An NMC Horizon Project Strategic Brief, courtesy of lead author Bryan Alexander.

“Here’s more background on how we created that New Media Consortium digital literacy report. (Previous posts here and here)

Alongside our survey of nearly 500 people, we conducted research into digital literacy. This involved interviews with several thought leaders, international presentations, and, of course, reading.

Personally, working on this topic didn’t represent a change of pace or topic. To put my cards on the table, and to get autobiographical, I started working on information literacy in the late 1990s. As a faculty member at Centenary College of Louisiana I won grants from the Associated Colleges of the South for two years to explore, support, and teach information literacy. We (myself, student workers, IT and library colleagues) built online resources, led classes, gave public talks, collected print resources, worked with librarians at other colleges, wrote a campus copyright policy, and more. I was fascinated by the subject intellectually and pedagogically. I dove into the definitional issues, the differences between information literacy and fluency, the questions around copyright, and the many connections to other strands of intellectual history.”

> Read more on Bryan Alexander’s blog.