A new age of government information

This week I’ve been immersed in reviewing the chapters of a forthcoming contributed volume from ALA’s Government Documents Round Table. Ably edited by Andrea Morrison, Managing Electronic Government Information in Libraries: Issues and Practices fully covers the territory, from collection development to cataloging to reference to preservation and many topics in between.

Yesterday I was particularly pleased by the usefulness of the chapter on integrating government resources into information literacy instruction. Chapter authors Barbara Miller and Barbara J. Mann point out that government information, particularly electronic government information, is perfectly suited “to illustrate principles of information literacy such as determining and differentiating between primary/secondary sources, developing critical thinking skills, determining bias, understanding issues of copyright and intellectual property, evaluating Internet sources, and understanding freeware databases versus restricted (or copyrighted) information.” They follow with concrete examples and suggestions for incorporating government information sources into the framework of information literacy standards, as well as tips for promoting awareness of government resources among nonspecialist staff and the public.