Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Ways That Information Can Be Good, Mark Lenker

Library Faculty Presentations

Evaluating information is fundamentally a matter of judging an information source according to its value. Current practice in library instruction is somewhat limited insofar as it equates the value of information with credibility or usefulness in a persuasive argument. Philosopher Richard Kraut proposes a theory of value that links a thing's goodness to its capacity to promote well-being. Applying this idea to information, I argue that information is most valuable when it disrupts our current ways of thinking and feeling and leads us to consider new possibilities. We need to incorporate this aspect of value into our current strategies for …