Paul Zurkowski coined information literacy in 1974. Paul Gilster popularized digital literacy in 1997. Neither man invented the underlying activities. People evaluated information long before 1974, and they used computers before 1997. What Zurkowski and Gilster gave us were names—portable labels that governments, schools, libraries, and employers could attach to a collection of skills they increasingly expected people to possess.
The twenty-three years between their two definitions take us from a government report written before the personal-computer revolution to a book written for the early Internet. The technology changed enormously, as it is again today. Yet their problem framing is more relevant than ever. Both Pauls were asking some version of the same question.
The First Paul: Information Is Not Knowledge
Paul G. Zurkowski was president of the Information Industry Association when he submitted a report to the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science in 1974. The report had the unforgettable title The Information Service Environment Relationships and Priorities.
Buried inside was the first usage of the phrase: information literacy. Zurkowski described information-literate people as those who had learned to use information resources and tools to solve problems. His important verb was molding. An information-literate person does not merely receive, repeat, or store information. The person works on it—molds it productively—selecting, evaluating, combining, and reshaping it into something useful. Or, in Zurkowski’s wonderfully direct formulation:
Information is not knowledge.
Possessing information does not automatically entail mature processing of information. Information only becomes knowledge through human attention and judgment. It enters a person’s field of perception, where it may be evaluated, assimilated, rejected, or used to change how that person understands reality and acts within it.
Zurkowski was writing in 1974. Most people had never touched a computer. Yet he warned about an overabundance of information that exceeded our capacity to evaluate it. His concern was not simply that people lacked access. He feared that society would divide into two groups: a relatively small number of information-literate people who knew how to find, evaluate, and apply information, and a much larger group who did not. The latter might be perfectly capable of reading and writing, have access to libraries, newspapers, televisions, databases, and eventually the Internet, and still lack a reliable way to determine what information was valuable and how to use it. Zurkowski warned the United States to undertake a national effort to achieve universal information literacy by 1984…
Still working on it.
The Second Paul: Ideas Before Keystrokes
Twenty-three years later, Paul Gilster published Digital Literacy. By 1997, computers had escaped the research laboratory and corporate data center. They were entering homes, schools, offices, and libraries. The World Wide Web was turning information retrieval into an everyday activity.
Gilster defined digital literacy as the ability to understand and use information presented through computers in multiple formats and from many different sources. That definition widened the problem. Digital information was not confined to conventional prose. It arrived through websites, hyperlinks, images, discussion groups, databases, and other emerging forms. A person had to understand not only the information itself but also something about the systems delivering it.
Gilster’s best line was also his simplest:
Digital literacy is about mastering ideas, not keystrokes.
That sentence should probably be taped above every computer-lab door. Schools have repeatedly confused computer literacy with learning where the buttons are. Click here. Select that menu. Pass the test. But ideas last longer: Can you formulate a useful search? Can you decide whether a source deserves your trust? Can you recognize when an algorithm is trying to manipulate your attention? Can you synthesize fragments of information into a defensible conclusion? Can you notice when an answer sounds confident but does not make sense? Those are not point-and-click skills. They are habits of critical thinking.
The Difference Between the Two Literacies
Information literacy and digital literacy are often treated as synonyms. They overlap heavily, but they entered the world through different doors. Zurkowski was concerned with using information resources to solve problems. His context was professional work, government policy, libraries, and the rapidly growing information industry.
Gilster was concerned with understanding information encountered through computers and networks. His context was the early consumer Internet, where ordinary people were suddenly navigating a decentralized information environment without librarians, editors, or other traditional gatekeepers standing between them and the source.
Put simply:
Information literacy asks whether you can evaluate and use information.
Digital literacy asks whether you can do that when the information arrives through computer software applications and algorithms.
The distinction is useful, but the lineage matters more. Gilster’s digital literacy carries Zurkowski’s information literacy into a networked environment. Zurkowski supplied the judgment problem. Gilster placed that problem on a screen.
We are now repeating this history with AI literacy. Once again, institutions are rushing to define a new literacy. Once again, vendors are eager to sell the tools, training, certifications, and assessments that supposedly produce it. Once again, employers are beginning to shift the burden onto individuals: learn the new systems, adapt to the new workflow, and continually re-skill if you wish to remain employable.
The interface may be new, but the problem is not. Zurkowski named the problem. Gilster named its digital form. Together, they remind us that modern literacy is not primarily about access, possession, or mechanical operation. It is about evaluation, judgment, and the ability to turn information into understanding and responsible action.
Further Reading
- Paul G. Zurkowski, The Information Service Environment Relationships and Priorities (1974)
- “A New Digital Literacy: A Conversation with Paul Gilster”
- David Bawden, “Information and Digital Literacies: A Review of Concepts”
- “Information Literacy at 50”
- “Information Literacy: Did Alvin Toffler Beat Paul Zurkowski to It?”
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