Information literacy and diginatives: Expanding the role of academic libraries

Promoting the development of pre-academic information literacy skills of the so-called Google Generation, and especially among upper secondary school students, is one of the current topics of discussion in the field of media and information literacy. Traditionally the Finnish upper secondary school library services have been provided by and developed with the public libraries, but the academic libraries, with their special expertise and digital resources, should also take part in the teaching of pre-academic information literacy skills. The Joint Higher Education Library in Lahti, Finland has taken several steps to meet these demands by collaborating with the region's educational institutions at vocational, upper secondary and university levels. This article discusses these issues and presents our approach to supporting and promoting knowledge creation, pre-academic information literacy skills and lifelong learning from upper secondary school to higher education.