IWIL 2006: Day 2

Guests of honor during the opening ceremonies (from L-R):

Rashidah Begum Fazal Mohammad, Prof. Norma Abu Seman, Dato' Hj.

Zahani Tan Sri Ahmad, Dr. Laili Hj. Hashim, Dato' Hj. Yusoff Haron, and

Putri Saniah Megat Abdul Rahman

The second day of the International Workshop on Information Literacy 2006 saw the formal opening ceremonies which began with the praying of the Doa'. It was followed by welcoming speeches from Assoc. Prof. Norma Abu Seman, Chairman of IWIL 2006; Librarians Association of Malaysia president Putri Saniah Megat Abdul Rahman; Director of Educational Technology Division Dato' Hj. Yusoff Haron; IFLA/ALP representative Rashidah Begum Fazal Mohammad; and Dean of the Faculty of Information Management of UiTM Assoc. Prof. Dr. Laili Hj. Hashim. Dato' Hj. Zahani Tan Sri Ahmad, Board Member of the Board of Directors of UiTM formally opened the workshop during his opening speech.

The first of the day's input came from Prof. Russell Bowden. He presented a backgrounder on information literacy including a framework that resulted from two IFLA workshops in 2004 and 2005 held in Colombo and India respectively. Sadly, Filipino librarians were absent in these two workshops. I wondered why when I know a number of our librarians are active in IFLA-sponsored activities. Could it be that they are unaware of what information literacy is or they just refuse to acknowledge its importance or they're simply not interested to learn about information literacy? I bet it's the former.

As a result of these workshops, a South Asian model of an information literacy framework was developed and was labeled Empowering 8 - a problem-solving model for resource-based learning. I will be discussing more on Empowering 8 in another post.

Blanche Woolls presented the development of different concepts and models from various information literacy proponents and discussed the difference between policy, standarda, and guidelines in the promotion of information literacy.

Listening to the two speakers was more than enough for me to really understand what information literacy is all about rather than just reading about it.

We ended the day early and had plenty of time to prepare for dinner which was hosted by the organizers in a restaurant whose name escapes me now but I had a great time having shared the table with my fellow presentors from other countries, Russell, and two other local participants. Believe it or not our dinner conversation centered on the tablecloth that was made of good quality textile. We couldn't help admiring it that it came to a point we had to ask one of the waitresses where they got it.

Speaking of the waitresses and waiters, they were all wearing earphones with mouthpieces. We initially thought they were listening to music while attending to customers. Well, it turned out these were used to radio the orders to the kitchen. Cool, huh.

All in all, it was a day well spent.