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, amongst the urban community or rural folks.

The Importance of Information Literacy to Remote Indigenous Community

For the last several decades, the question of what information needs and information seeking behaviours of ethnic groups 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 fulfill 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 fulfillment 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 other 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 literacy 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

There have been a number of information literacy initiatives undertaken by PUSTAKA to reach out to the targeted groups, encompassing various demographic, socio-economic and geographical differences to effectively ensuring all individuals in the State have ready and easy access to information and knowledge through PUSTAKA as what PUSTAKA’s target has been spelled out and promoted. Amongst the information literacy initiatives which have been in place are the scheduled user education sessions onsite and offsite the library, Reading Seeds Programme, targeting for parents and children aged between 3 years and below, and Lan Berambeh (Lets Be Together), People Accessibility, Network for Digital Empowerment and Inclusivity (PANDei)a Statewide Digital Inclusion initiative which emphasizes on digital literacy to ensure at least one online transaction is ever experienced by every member of community. These information literacy initiatives are the instances to just name a few. Kembara Ilmu is another information literacy initiative or literally translated into Malay term as the Knowledge Journey. Instances given are theKembara Ilmu which took place at Long Bedian and Long Laput, the two (2) interior areas of Baram which the Kayan, the tribal group under Orang Ulu indigenous community reside as well as to the Kedayan community in Kuala Sibuti, Miri which is about 2 kilometres away drive from Miri.

Kembara Ilmu is not merely a one off Knowledge Journey, touch and go sort of programme but rather a year, two (2) phases structured programme on the implementation and assessment phases which had been conceptualized and carried out with prioritizing on the actual information needs and imparting attitude, skills and knowledge (ASK) competencies and how it is essentially assist to effectively and efficiently trained the participants to be information literate and ultimately life-long learners.

Smart Partnership as a Catalyst for Sustainability

Remote information literacy initiatives to the remote community would not be possible without knowing and understanding their surrounding which shape up their personal, socio-economic and cultural perceptions and acceptance to what they essentially see benefited and impacted. The remote community have been in close relationship with their community leaders so as to the facilitators – PUSTAKA and participating agencies in ensuring inter-collaborative efforts as a catalyst for sustainability.

Putting the collaborative framework and imparting the remote community with skills, competencies and knowledge towards becoming mature independent information seekers, the participation from community leaders and relevant organizations such as local authorities, health, welfare and agriculture departments were sought. In strategizing the framework, it was an emphasis and vital mission that each and every entity who participated in the programme, shall benefit from the syllabus or module taught, either in a direct formal manner, or indirect informal ways. The approach was initiated not only between the community or participants to the facilitators / participating organizations and vice-versa, but rather interestingly, it aimed for bottom–up, left-right and centered approaches in the sense that each of the participating agencies had its own module which benefited the community. The participating agencies also learnt about the indigenous ways of life, thus enabling them to ‘tailor’ their future programs to the needs of the communities. It was a chain-effect and system approach which aimed to ensure that in each module, the community participants and participating agencies were direct-beneficiaries of the lessons taught.

Train the Trainers Approach and Knowledge Agents

The train the trainers approach has extended its reach into many settings especially in terms of getting larger crowd and high impacts benefits. This approach has been applied in remote information literacy initiatives most to the time. The approach simply involves “initially training a person or people who, in turn, train other people at their home agency”. In other words, one subject matter expert share his or her expertise with a group of trainers and this group then uses this information to train and instruct others.<ref>(Sokolowski, Eric. (2015))

In the Kembara Ilmu setting for instance, the Kayan had undergone the learning assessment model which encompassed several learning modules and assessment processes which determined whether they had successfully reach certain marking standards which enabled them to be the trainers to their community. To entitle them to be trainers, in the final assessment phase, their scoring must be in the intermediates and advanced categories while for the beginners’ category, they had to attend the intervention programmes as a remedial approach to further strengthening their ASK. This train the trainers and Knowledge Agents have been applied to remote areas as regular revisit to the rural community is a challenge as far as financial and human resource constraints is concerned.

The identified trainers are basically the Knowledge Agents who facilitate and assist the Kayans and the neighbouring community areas which include other indigenous groups of Orang Ulu with the whole spectrum of their information needs and information seeking behaviours. Importantly, they are the ones who spearhead a change initiative within the community to predominantly achieve what it takes to be a Knowledgeable Society.