Librarians must be abreast of digital media - Second Lady

The Second Lady, Mrs Matilda Amissah-Arthur, has charged librarians to follow the changing media landscape and the rapid information growth, to learn new skills.

She said information literacy has the potential to create new opportunities to improve people’s ways of life, and empower them to be able to achieve their personal, social and occupational goals.

Mrs. Amissah-Arthur was speaking at the Biennial Congress and the Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Library Association at the Cape Coast University.

The meeting which was attended by librarians across the country, was on the theme: “Information Literacy and a Changing Landscape”.

Mrs Amissah-Arthur said in this digital age, information literacy has become a basic human right, and as such people have to live, learn and work in the digital society.

She said, in order for people to survive and succeed in this complex environment, they need to acquire the skills to enable them assess and package the needed information for effective use.

“We are confronted daily with new information, as well as knowledge in different forms,” she added.

Mrs Amissah-Arthur also stated that despite the challenges posed by the changing media landscape, the digital and social media tools have brought some innovations.

She said information literacy could help people evaluate, as well as create, new information and knowledge, that could embrace diverse forms of change from an economy based on labour and capital, to one based on information, adding that information literate workers would be required to interpret the information rightly.

She said because the work force is now more diverse and the economy is now more global-skills required are beyond reading and writing.

She said the changing research landscape leaves non-expert researchers lost without knowledge to the techniques of searching, adding that the Universities are going through changes caused by the increase in student population, budget cuts and increase in service demands.

Dr Perpetual Dadzie, President of the Ghana Library Association, said the information landscape is constantly evolving with the changing social, political and economic environment of our society.

She entreated library and information professionals to accept change as part of their roles, as information literacy contributes greatly to the quality of life.

"Our role as library professionals is to accept and embrace change, and to equip ourselves to guide all users in both the digital and non-digital environment," she said.

She noted that librarians and information professionals must be information-literate themselves, adding that information literacy can create new developments, and new opportunities to improve the quality.