Visual Literacy for Libraries

This book will give you an understanding of how images fit into your critical practice and how you can advance student learning with your own visual literacy. The importance of images and visual media in today’s culture is changing what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Digital technologies have made it possible for almost anyone to create and share visual media. Yet the pervasiveness of images and visual media does not necessarily mean that individuals are able to critically view, use, and produce visual content.

This book provides you with the tools, strategies, and confidence to apply visual literacy in a library context. You will learn ways to develop students’ visual literacy and how to use visual materials to make your own teaching more engaging.

Ideal for the busy librarian who needs ideas, activities, and teaching strategies that are ready to implement, this book:

• shows how to challenge students to delve into finding images, using images in the research process, interpreting and analysing images, creating visual communications, and using visual content ethically
• provides ready-to-use learning activities for engaging critically with visual materials
• offers tools and techniques for increasing one’s own visual literacy confidence
• gives strategies for integrating, engaging with and advocating for visual literacy in libraries.

With this book’s guidance, you can help students master visual literacy, a key competency in today’s media-saturated world, while also enlivening your teaching with visual materials. Visual Literacy for Libraries will be essential reading for librarians, information professionals and managers in all sectors, students of library and information science, school and higher education teachers and researchers.