Reviews for MLA guide to digital literacy

Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

Information literacy guides for librarians and instructors traditionally focus on helping students locate and evaluate academic sources suitable for research projects at the high school or college level. Carillo attempts to go beyond this. Her aim is to teach students to think critically when investigating online sources in a “post-factual” world that labels much information “fake news.” Thus, the book is much broader in approach than other resources. In addition to covering scholarly peer review, the author discusses the online technology of filters and algorithms, bots, visual manipulation, domain names, website evaluation, and types of open online information sources. In a chapter devoted to identifying primary versus secondary sources, the author discusses “lateral reading” and covers additional critical thinking skills, including how students can detect bias in their sources and in their own thinking. The chapter on credibility of sources includes traditional information literacy criteria but goes deeper, putting in context the credibility of sources such as Wikipedia and detecting misinformation and disinformation. In chapter 9, the author points to helpful fact-checking websites that identify “fake news,” and she explains the technique of reverse searching. Helpful teaching tools and classroom activities are included. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Susan A. Ariew, University of South Florida


Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In this second edition of MLA's hands-on classroom guide, Carillo (English, Univ. of Connecticut) pays particular attention to ethical dimensions such as harmful stereotypes and systematic bias as they relate to digital literacy. This edition includes a new chapter on multimodal composition and foreground accessibility titled "Composing in Digital Spaces," and features new sections, readings, and lesson plans. The format is designed with flexibility in mind, as it can be used in part or whole to assist instructors across disciplines or simply to enlighten the curious reader. In an environment where higher education prepares students to engage with scholarly resources, this book provides students with strategies to engage with free and openly available digital resources on the internet. Notably, the author references Google 70 times, while only occasionally mentioning other search engines. Each chapter ends with a list of questions that serves as a primer for future discussion. The book might have been improved by focusing more on the importance of critical thinking, but overall this resource should be helpful to students and graduates alike. VERDICT This edition should be added to any library without the first edition but does not offer enough new material to merit replacing an older copy.—James Rhoades

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