Information Literacy: The Battle We Won That We Lost?

As we continue to revise our formal definitions of “information literacy” and to hone our delivery of information literacy across higher education, have we failed to see that information literacy as a programmatic aim, for all of its successes to date, is no longer relevant? The essay charts how the institutionalization of information literacy arose naturally from the first calls in the 1970s to create a national program in support of an information-literate population—and how that focus became single-minded even as what had once taken place only in research contexts became the activity of our daily lives.