Teaching Information Policy in the Digital Age: Issues, Strategies, and Innovation

As technology continues to advance at a rapid rate, it is increasingly important to consider how information policies are formulated and the impact that they have on both the public's access to information and the roles of information professionals. As such, current and future information professionals must be adequately prepared through education to work with information policies and their ramifications. The breadth of information policy, as it acts as a meta-policy for other policy areas, and the depth of specific information policies that arise from communication, economic, and political issues, inform this discussion of the challenges and opportunities involved with teaching information policy to library and information science students, as well as to other audiences. Drawing from both past research efforts and extensive teaching experience, this article introduces a conceptual understanding of information policy; uses examples of how the library and information studies community has responded to information policies in the past to further this understanding; and finally, provides a discussion of different ways in which to teach this complicated, but critical topic.