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The objective of this paper is to analyse the consumption patterns of digital content found on the official website of Singapore’s National Information Literacy Programme (http://fb.com/sgsure) in marketing the content of the SURE portal.
The National Library Board (NLB) undertook the National Information Literacy Programme (NILP) from 2012 to 2016 to promote awareness of information literacy among Singaporeans. According to the American Library Association (1989), “to be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate and use effectively the needed information”.
Prior to the launch of the campaign, the NLB explored existing models of Information Literacy which have been used to raise the awareness, understanding and adoption of Information Literacy, such as The Big 6, SCONUL’s Seven Pillars, and the National Information Literacy Framework of Scotland (Scottish Information Literacy Project, 2013). However, none of these were found to be suitable for adoption in Singapore. For instance, The Big 6 resources were designed for the American audience and is a proprietary model, while pillars 5 to 7 of SCONUL’s Seven Pillars were ‘challenging’ to achieve (Sayers, 2006), especially for a new national initiative targeted at both schools and the general public. Like the Seven Pillars, the Scottish framework was deemed more suitable for an academic environment, even though it was meant to extend to the workplace and lifelong learning as well.
As the term “information literacy” (IL) was not easy for the man-in-the-street to grasp, a nationwide public awareness campaign was branded with the acronym, “S.U.R.E.” or “SURE” to simplify the concept of IL into four (4) basic building blocks or SURE principles, namely:
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Source: Make sure that the source of information is credible and reliable
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Understand: Know what you are reading, search for facts rather than opinions
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Research: Investigate thoroughly before making a conclusion, check and compare with multiple sources
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Evaluate: Look from different angles and exercise fair judgement (Teo, 2014; Cheng, 2013)
The objective of the NILP was to make Information Literacy more accessible to the two major target audiences while promoting the importance of being discerning when handling information: