Socially Driven authority
Steven Ovadia's Socially Driven Authority sounds just right. It's a really good phrase. In Digg.com and Socially Driven Authority, from Library Philosophy and Practice 2007, he writes:
For years, librarians have been able to distill the notion of authority, in its purest form, to two simple questions: Who said it? and Under whose auspices? Now, as more content migrates online, understanding authority is a more complex process. Social news sites, like Digg.com allow these traditional authority structures to be bypassed, creating a new, socially-driven authority, based upon an author expertise that is not necessarily recognized by academia. In order for researchers, especially student researchers, to evaluate these sources, they must learn to construct their own authority.
Teaching information literacy is changing in so many ways, I think because technology isn't just changing how we access information (monitor vs. paper is so 1995), but also how we organize communities around information, and how the recommendations from our communities matter so much (more than traditional authority recommendations).
I think also, information literacy concentrated on teaching how to evaluate and cite resources. Now, we have to talk with students (high school or college?) about being part of the conversation. Not that I have any answers... I've certainly wanted to delete my own posts, and I have changed flickr pics from public to private, but I think information literacy classes are a good place for students to really begin having this conversation in a formal way.
Like, right after the sex talk there needs to be a myspace talk. Or maybe it should be before the sex talk?