Remote Information Literacy Initiatives

Introduction

The needs to be an informed and knowledgeable society are inevitable to almost all ethnicity, tribes, working groups and society at large. Different people have different identifiable information needs necessary to effectively meet the challenges and surroundings which they live in, whether amongst the urban community or remote or rural folks.

The Importance of Information Literacy to the Indigenous,- Remote Community
For the last several decades, the question of what information needs and information seeking behaviours of a particular ethnic group in Sarawak has not been aggressively addressed, though its importance is irrefutable to effectively bridging the digital divide between the information rich and information poor. Within this context, information needs refers to a situation whereby the indigenous groups find themselves in a predicament, which requires information which is useful to suit their needs, be it inside and outside their communal bonding. Information seeking behaviours, on the other hand refers to the ways the indigenous groups fulfil their information needs by articulating and making sense of the gathered information to serve their intended ends. Information literacy has been widely known as one of amongst the many ways in fulfilment of information needs in which attitude, skills and knowledge (ASK) as information literates are greatly taught and emphasized.

Likewise any other indigenous groups in the remote settings all over the world, the Sarawak indigenous such as the Dayak, Orang Ulu, Penan, Punan and many more tribal groups have no exception in realizing and determining the importance of information literacy to their community. Information literacy is one of the key competencies essential in the present century. According to US National Commission on Library and Information Science, information literacy defined as “it encompasses knowledge of one’s information concerns and needs, and the ability to identify, locate, evaluate, organize and effectively create, use and communicate information to address issues or problems at hand, it is a prerequisite for participating effectively in the information society, and is part of the basic human right of “life-long learning”. It is the ability to gather, organize, filter and evaluate information and to form valid opinions based on the results.

The information literacy has been used as a collective term covering all or several literacies such as computer literacy, digital literacy, interactive literacy, reading literacy, numerical literacy, visual literacy and so forth. The whole concept of information literacy is to move from text-based learning to resource-based learning. <ref>
Remote Information Literacy Initiative Undertaken