Northwestern University in Qatar brings educators together to enhance information literacy in Qatar

The Doha workshop, held under the auspices of the Information Literacy Network of the Gulf Region (ILN), will gather together librarians and educators from Education City and universities across Doha.

Entitled Information Seeking in a Second Language, it will investigate how educators in the region can adapt their approaches to information literacy in order to facilitate information seeking in a second language.

Library Director at NU-Q, Gillian Westera, commented:

"NU-Q is pleased to host the ILN workshop in Doha. The workshops are an important way to improve ways of teaching EFL students across the region by understanding the differences in how they learn in English compared to their mother tongue. The importance of information literacy cannot be overestimated. We need to make sure that we cater to the needs of all students."

Information literacy helps people to access, evaluate and process information efficiently, incorporating the selected information into their knowledge base to help them solve problems, make decisions and create new knowledge. As such, it is a vital educational tool that fits within Qatar Foundation's mission to unlock human potential.

The practical workshop will include analysis of the actual experiences of students researching in a second language. Participants will then use these learner experiences to reflect on their own approach to developing information literacy programs and how this might be adapted to better meet the needs of their clients.

It will be facilitated by Ken Scott, Library and Learning Centre Supervisor at the Sharjah Higher Colleges of Technology, who presented an earlier workshop in the UAE in October.

The Information Literacy Network (ILN) of the Gulf Region was established in 2005 by librarians and other learning specialists to provide leadership in the development of information literacy and lifelong learning skills within the region. Information literacy is about understanding the social, political and cultural issues attached to information.

International literature and research on information literacy do not generally cater for information seekers who are not native English speakers and who may not be working in the English medium. The ILN thus aims to address the specific challenges of the majority of information seekers in the region researching in English.

Alongside NU-Q, the workshop is also generously sponsored by Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFS-Qatar), and Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCUQatar).