The Role of Information Institutions in Promoting Information Literacy and Access to Information for Sustainable Development in the Post-Truth Era: The Case of Sweden

Introduction

According to Article 19’s report of 2017, the right to access government information has been a key element of sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Declaration. It is further recognized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS). The UN’s SDGs adopted in 2015 aim to promote peace and prosperity for all people in the world. The SDGs involve both the developed and developing world. Information access is at the core of all the UN goals and especially SDG 16. It is stated in the UNESCO’s report (2019) that despite an increase in disinformation, the public enjoys access to official information, which has evident provenance. People need to have the necessary skills to be able to access information in order to act on their rights. This article explores the role of Swedish information institutions in promoting information literacy in the Post-Truth Era.

Information institutions such as libraries and archival institutions are the navigators and evaluators of information. They are the gateways to knowledge and hence their resources and services are crucial to the development of information literate, creative and innovative societies. Information institutions preserve culture and heritage and hence foster continuity, promote information access, stimulate the search for knowledge and support literacy. They are important key players in the fight against disinformation since they are uniquely placed to teach critical thinking (St Lifer and Rogers 1996, White 2012). Avery (2014) who looked at the role of a small school library in a diverse urban neighborhoods in Sweden argued that libraries are critical learning spaces that could promote intercultural education if the resources they hold are leveraged. Eckerdal (2017) postulated that libraries shape their collections and activities in a manner that should promote the community and that information literacy programs are designed to strengthen information literacy and to promote people’s abilities to engage in learning. Yakel (2004) was of the view that the use of primary sources promotes critical thinking and that an archive can promote the creation of a generation equipped with skills that can enable its users to identify, select and use the information it contains. She encouraged an open discussion between archivists and researchers on what constitutes information literacy in archives both in the analogue and digital realms.

Henninger (2017) however argued that suppositions about the citizens’ access to information are fraught with complexities, since they are underpinned by an understanding that citizens are information literate. She defined information literacy as the capacity to find and retrieve information, to interpret and critically evaluate it. Bruce (2004) was also of the view that information literacy is the overarching literacy essential for the twenty-first century living. It is associated with information practices and critical thinking in an information and communication technologies’ environment. She further contended that promoting information literacy does not only enable people to make use of information communication infrastructures, but it also brings about information practices that are effective in professional, civic and personal life. Therefore, information literacy is the capacity to use information while information technology literacy is the capacity to effectively use the technologies that deliver the information. Information literacy constitutes the following dimensions:

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  Defining information needs: a dimension which represents an awareness of the features of the required information.

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  Access to information: a dimension which defines the knowledge of how to acquire the required information in the most efficient way possible.

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  Use of information: a dimension which includes strategies to utilise and present information effectively.

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  Ethical and legal use of information: a dimension which covers the knowledge and awareness of copyright and intellectual property laws regulating use and sharing of information (Ahmet, Yaman et al. 2017).

The ability to be able to locate information and understand it promotes economic independence and quality of existence (Carini 2016).