“Lizard People in the Library”
Discussion questions for reading groups

PIL Provocation Essay #1: “Lizard People in the Library,” February 3, 2021 (2885 words)
Author: Barbara Fister, Contributing Editor, PIL Provocation Series
Read the author's reflections on what inspired this essay, February 3, 2021
Read the Atlantic version of this essay, posted on February 18, 2021 (2154 words)

Questions prepared by the PIL Provocation Series Team: Steven Geofrey, Alaina Bull, Barbara Fister, Alison Head, Merinda Kaye Hensley, Kirsten Hostetler, and Margy MacMillan, Project Information Literacy (PIL) Team, March 12, 2021. The University of Illinois Library has generously sponsored Barbara Fister’s essay, “Lizard People in the Library.”

About the “Lizard People” essay

When QAnon burst into public consciousness, many observers wondered why students aren't taught how to think critically about information in school. In fact, information literacy (sometimes framed as media, news, or digital literacy) has been a standard part of education for decades. In this timely essay, “Lizard People in the Library,” Barbara argues that educators have been too focused on training students for information consumerism; instead they must invite students to engage in inquiry as a civic practice in a world where weaponized digital media systems pose a serious threat to democracy.

Purpose and intended use of this resource

Project Information Literacy’s inaugural “Provocation essay” by Barbara Fister offers a wide variety of information literacy and media literacy lessons. This essay (as do other essays in our occasional series) makes an argument grounded in research while posing questions for the future: What haven’t we considered as the information landscape grows more complex? What new directions in information literacy and higher education should we be exploring? What fundamental aspects of student experiences with navigating information spaces have we overlooked? What fresh ideas can we advance to inspire librarians, educators, researchers, students, journalists, and policy-makers? These OA prompts are designed to provoke discussion around the themes in the essay, suggest ways to advance teaching and learning in your institutional context, and open up new avenues for inquiry and experimentation.

Questions? Drop us a line at: projectinfolit@pilresearch.org.in

Discussion questions

1. What do you think is the most important takeaway from Barbara Fister’s essay, “Lizard People in the Library”? Why does this essay matter to your institution and to your own teaching, especially now?
2. Barbara Fister highlights "information agency," the ability to claim a role in creating knowledge. While information agency may be absent from the classroom, it is abundantly present in those who spend time in the "library of the unreal." Where do you see your students learning to claim information agency? What might get in the way? Is this something you encourage in your students? If so, how?
3. Barbara Fister argues information literacy instruction too frequently serves as preparation for a specific assignment with arbitrary requirements for traditional markers of quality and credibility.
   1. How is information literacy tied to curriculum beyond single assignments?
   2. How is information literacy linked to students' lived experiences with information?
   3. Are there opportunities for collaboration with those who teach information literacy to embed learning about information systems in multiple disciplines and professions?
4. Barbara Fister writes about information literacy and media literacy having no specific place in the curriculum: “It’s everywhere, and nowhere. It’s everyone’s job, but nobody’s responsibility. In many cases, the people who care about it the most have had their jobs felled by the austerity axe.”
   1. In what ways does this describe your institution and your own teaching experience?
   2. What will it take for change to happen on your campus?
5. What recommendations from Barbara Fister are particularly salient for librarians constrained by standard one- or two-shot IL instruction sessions?
6. Barbara Fister concludes by telling us we need a better answer for the question often asked these days, "Why isn't this something students learn in school?"
   1. What’s the “this” that she is referring to here?
   2. So, why isn't this something students learn in school?
   3. What are the next steps?
7. The essay raises the point that information systems are designed components of our information environment, situated in larger networks of social and political influence, authority, and bias. Understanding how these systems work, and whose assumptions and interests are designed into them, requires adopting a more macroscopic view.
   1. In which courses do students discuss information systems either directly or indirectly? Where could this approach to understanding information fit?
   2. If you “look for the helpers,” as the essay suggests, who might those helpers be in your community? What kinds of collaborations could build this understanding — between disciplines, between students and instructors, between the institution and the community?
   3. What specific barriers are there in the organizational structure of your institution that might get in the way of this? How can they be overcome?
8. Barbara Fister refers to Yochai Benkler’s research on propaganda networks and what he calls an “epistemic crisis,” a state of affairs in which partisans disagree not simply on policy, but on facts themselves. While these crises are not new, they may have escalated in recent years as the decline of traditional media outlets have outpaced the materialization of new ones while the distorted understanding of "fake news" has eroded trust in any report that conflicts with one's own beliefs.
   1. What evidence have you seen of this epistemic crisis in the classroom?
   2. How do the students you work with talk about how they determine what is true? Is there room for discussing different approaches to seeking truth in your classes?
   3. How might a social epistemology approach that engages with the systems in which claims are made, inform teaching students information agency?
   4. What are the advantages and limitations of this approach?
9. How does the information landscape your students inhabit differ from what was available when you were a student? What is the impact of those changes on learning? On society? Where does your information landscape overlap with those of your students? What kinds of activities, assignments, or research projects could you develop to investigate this? What would be the impact of understanding this better?
10. How have changes in the information landscape affected how you discover, use, and share information? Is there a difference in how these changes affect your work and your personal life? How do you keep up with changes in information systems and their impact on society? What do you find most challenging about teaching information literacy in our current information environment?

Sponsored by the University of Illinois Library