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During October 19-22, the Tallinn University School of Digital Technologies hosted the third European Conference on Information Literacy.

Arranging a forum for global information literacy is an ambitious endeavour, the likes of which have been attempted for years by international information literacy research communities. Sadly, most such attempts failed. In 2013, Serap KurbanoÄŸlu, an information management lecturer from Hacettepe University in Turkey, and Sonja Å piranec, a lecturer from the Croatian Zagreb University information and communication sciences department decided to realise this idea on the European level.

The first European Conference on Information Literacy took place in 2013 in Istanbul, the second in 2014 in Dubrovnik and the third in Tallinn this October.

Despite a reference to Europe in the name of the event, it clearly has a global reach. This year’s programme featured nearly two hundred presentations and speeches pre-approved by an international programme committee, which represented fifty countries from North and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania and Europe.

The total number of participants was 361 from 62 countries. Finland was best represented with 55 guests, followed by Estonia (32), the USA (26), Norway (21) and United Kingdom (21). The conference also welcomed people who travelled across the world, e.g. from the Republic of South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Japan.

The conference held at Tallinn University was called Information Literacy in the Green Society and focused on information, media and digital competences and their role in creating a green and intelligent lifestyle.

The hosts believe that information-literate citizens are capable of making decisions based on relevant information and in turn contribute toward realising an intelligent lifestyle and a sustainable environment.

The two first conferences were a meeting place for researchers and professionals in information competences, but in Tallinn they also welcomed the researchers from media, digital and information literacy spheres. This posed the challenge of creating a forum for researchers, information professionals, media specialists, education workers, politicians and representatives from other fields from across the globe to enable discussion on the contemporary problems of media and information literacy, including challenges, developments, theory and research results, as well as exchanging best practices.

The speeches and presentations were as follows: three keynotes, five invited speakers, 89 article-based presentations, nine doctoral forum presentations, 37 best practice presentations, 22 PechaKucha presentations, 18 poster presentations, 10 workshops and two panel discussions.

They keynotes were given by professor emeritus Carol Collier Kuhlthau from Rutgers University, professor Sonia Livingstone from London School of Economics and Susan Danby from Queensland University of Technology. The invited speakers were renowned researchers Gobinda Chowdhury from Northumbria University, Heidi Julien from University at Buffalo, Mandy Lupton from Queensland University of Technology, Eero Sormunen from University of Tampere, Olof Sundin from Lund University and Mihkel Kangur from Tallinn Univeristy.

The presentations and speeches focused on various information users, starting with little children up to the elderly and disabled. Competences related to information were researched on various levels as well as in the context of everyday life. In addition to information, media and digital competences, the participants also discussed ecologic literacy, authors’ rights, health information literacy, visual literacy etc.