Digital Literacy [Hardcover]

Paul Gilster (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471165204 | ISBN-13: 978-0471165200 | Publication Date: February 24, 1997 | Edition: 1

"Readers leery of ramping onto the information highway and surfers suffering Internet overload will value the solid advice supplied by Gilster." --Booklist.

"Paul Gilster's intelligent, sobering look at the Internet is a breath of fresh air." --Amazon.com

"This book sheds light on the skills that Web surfers need to separate the digital garbage from the golden nuggets of good data. It's a good place to start for adult newcomers to the information highway." --Courant

Now in paper! Digital Literacy provides Internet novices with the basic thinking skills and core competencies they'll need to thrive in an interactive environment so fundamentally different from passive media.

PAUL GILSTER (Raleigh, North Carolina) is the author of The Web Navigator and Finding It on the Internet which have sold over 200,000 copies.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Until the Net became popular, we were used to pre-packaged, filtered news and information fed to us by giant media outlets. Now there is an abundance of raw material available via the Net. Along with easy access to lots of good stuff, there are sites developed by hate-mongers, conspiracy buffs, and others presenting urban myths or worse as fact. It's imperative, then, that we move from the passive consumer of broadcast media to critical consumers able to quickly assemble reliable knowledge. Digital Literacy capably instructs users in developing a set of critical thinking skills and core competencies that are different from those we've used in the past. Paul Gilster covers topics such as questions to ask when viewing material on a Web site, how to separate form from content, and how links can manipulate the context of hypertext.

From Library Journal

Gilster's latest book is meant to equip Internet users with core competencies and thinking skills. In eight chapters the author, a regular columnist for Carolina Computer News and a contributor to CompuServe Magazine, builds his argument for a critical approach to the information superhighway. Claiming that "your doubts are the strongest asset you bring to the Internet," he demonstrates several evaluative techniques for mastering the net's uncontrolled content. Along the way he provides background on the Internet phenomenon, a reassuring explanation for our state of coexisting media (how reading a book differs from reading web-based material), and a description of a productive workday on the net. Unlike Gilster's previous books, such as The New Internet Navigator (Wiley, 1995), this is not a manual for using computerized resources but a rich cache of theory and perspective taking. Recommended for libraries of all types. (Index not seen.)?Martin Jamison, Ohio State Univ. Libs., Columbus
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 276 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (February 24, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471165204
• ISBN-13: 978-0471165200
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #385,538 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Digital Literacy, April 14, 2000

By 

DB (Bradford, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Digital Literacy (Paperback)

I found the book Digital Literacy a very enjoyable and interesting book to read. I got as great deal of information from the readings that will help me in the future with Internet use. The Internet is a source of information with millions of ways of retrieving the data. There are times that I get overwhelmed with the Internet because of all the information and not knowing how to retrieve the info. Gilster shows that despite this overwhelming amount of data it is possible to find the information that you are looking for and confirm that it is from a reliable source. This has helped me in valuable ways. Gilster shows the Internet user how to navigate the Internet with good content-evaluation skills. I felt that chapter 4 (content-evaluation) of this book was most important. The Internet has given our society an incredible tool for research and entertainment. There are many people that don't believe this to be a positive thing. However, those that are learning and are excited about the Internet should read this book. The beginner may have a difficult time with a couple chapters but Gilster does an excellent job of helping the beginner with some very important information and the basic thinking skills needed to use the Internet.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent resource to Evaluate the Internet, April 6, 2000

By 

Natalie Cattell (Pennsylvannia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Digital Literacy (Hardcover)

Digital Literacy gives you an overall view of Internet language and how different parts of the Internet are used. Paul Gilster refers to digital literacy in the sense of not only being able to scroll down on a web page but fully understanding how pages are linked together to get the best and most infromation to one's benefit. Gilster strongly feels the Net, in contrast to written information within a library is unfiltered and can contain unreliable information. A lot of people often take a web page at face value, believing the content within it is factual. By taking the proper steps to evaluate a web page one can determine its reliability. Examining the page for author names along with other materials that list their occupation, location, and their email is useful to determine a web page's validity. Also by using major search engines to do searches on authors names, background, and other articles they have written is important to remember. Paul Gilster leads us on a journey called the "Internet Day." This gives a full account of how within one day of work as an author he can easily contact my sources of information from news groups, online chats with other authors, stock report checks, and newspaper headline readings. Throughout this book Gilster consisently compares the Internet resources to that of the actual physical world of books and magazines. He compares and contrasts the downfalls and benefits of both sets of information. Will the Internet elminate the library with a so called virtual library? Gilster discusses this throughly and feels that there will always be a demand for that physical world of literature and books to touch. But the immediacy of split second retrieval of information will and has brought about many changes. Card catalogues have been quickly replaced with online catalogues and book sorting. He believes the sacrifice of some things always is expected if change must occur. Therefore one must use digital literacy to sort through scads of information and commercialism brought on by the Internet to take in the arts, literature, and science that is truly beneficial to us. I thought this book was very useful in the sense that it brought to my attention how Internet information should not be taken at face value. It should be critically evaluated and researched before using its material for research. I feel this is an error I have made and I'm sure others have also. So, if one wanted to read about how you should "knowledge assemble" a five step plan on how to evaluate and pick apart each web page I would highly recommend this book. An excellent point that Gilster did bring to my attention was the fact the Internet is very beneficial in the sense that it gets us away from the television. It allows for us to become an active participant in a medium instead of propping ourselves in front of the TV with a bag of chips. I thought this was very interesting because it gave a positive view about the Internet instead of so much negative hype about Internet use and addication.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Paul Gislter's 'Digital Literacy', March 2, 2000

By 

Mina Ohuchi (Mountain View, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Digital Literacy (Paperback)

Although this book is several years old, it still holds an interesting insight into the world of the internet. The fact that it is several years old and raises questions about what direction the net was going, or in what ways it would become popular, is interesting as some of those questions have been answered by now.

Paul Gilster weaves an intersting background on the internet with a more anothropological look into how the internet has and is affecting our thinking and outlook at how information is perceived and passed on. The book talks in a fascinating way about how the internet forces its users to adopt different approaches to information sharing, learning, and distributing. The fact that the internet is rapidly closing down the international boundaries is also addressed.

While much of the book is an easy to understand look into how the internet works, operates, and can be utilized, the aspects I enjoyed most were the questions and answers he had about how the internet affects our traditional ways of thinking and dealing with people, the world, and its communities.

Even for a tech savvy person, this is an interesting book as it speaks to the thinking necessary behind the internet in order to maximize its potential.