In answer to your questions: Yes, I'd say very, very new. My MLS degree was from 2004 to 2005 and that was the first year I had even heard of Information Literacy even after having taught since the late 90s. The ideals and expectations of Information Literacy come originally from the American Library Association and were prepared and published by both the American Association of School Librarians and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. This shorter 9-paged booklet briefly covers the framework of Information Literacy, but in fuller detail, the book Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning is what is usually relied upon by librarians and other information professionals. Some states have used the American Library Associations 9 standards and tailored them to the needs of their own state. For example, Nevada and Colorado both list their own state standards. Then the Association of College and Research Libraries also have a list of higher education standards. For those who are completely new to IL, I'd start with the ACRL standard page which is also available as a 20-paged PDF. As I mentioned before, IL is now becoming a required course in various colleges and universities. It requires students to become detectives every time they find a source of information for school work, professional issue, or even personal interest. It really is a fascinating field!! (P.S. I sure hope your comments take html because I embedded a whole mess of links for anyone who might be interested).

Sounds like a fascinating field! From what I understand, it's relatively new (as in last 50 years, right?). I would love to pursue that more, would you have any good recommendations for books or other resources I could check out? I'd love to evaluate some of that information…wish I could find it on my own.

A wide variety of information skills are discussed and practiced. Students learn how to look at information found in a book, a magazine, a journal, a website, a blog, or any other format, and run through a checklist of authority verifications. It's a tedious process, but oh so eye-opening. IL also covers search engines, meta search engines, SEO, Boolean operators, copyright laws, and many other variables found within information's organizational properties.

I agree this finding (and more importantly, evaluating) the information you need will be a major determining factor in deciphering the "new" legitimate information experts. During this age (explosion) of information many will be left wandering from idea to idea with too few skills necessary to determine RELIABLE information from the average blogger's enticing OPINIONS.

Understanding others' perspectives is huge! Great thought!

I'm wondering if I haven't cast the net quite wide enough. There are lots of fields in which one can be an expert (as Kate's parachuting example above proves), and I'm not sure how an arena like that fits into your response, however much I agree with it.

And I'm certainly not arguing that "knowing where to find information" means being good at using Google. I'm more saying that one has to be versatile, like you are saying.

So you're saying that there's room for the old model, I think. Would you add any qualifications to my description?

I'd say, as well, allowing room for more than one perspective. You may mean that by your first point, but I think having a solid, developed worldview (ideally a defensible one) is a good starting point, but understanding others' is also helpful in troubleshooting.

Of course, there are still skills for which 'being able to find information' isn't good enough — anything time-critical or instinctive. Parachuting, maybe? lol