What is visual literacy?

What is visual literacy and where do librarians fit? This presentation will introduce what is meant by visual literacy and why it is of growing importance. Within our educational institutions and society, how are we preparing young people and students for the visually saturated world we inhabit and what role should librarians play? Visual analysis has traditionally been seen as within the domain of Art and Design, but as our information world becomes increasingly visual is there a growing role for input from librarians and other education professionals? Conversely, are there emerging elements of visual literacy currently not factored into Arts programmes? The issues range from our ability to consciously critique visual data that is presented for consumption, including mass and social media images, through to how we consciously produce and encode our own diagrams, images and films, including the use of other people’s visual data. Georgina’s presentation will also discuss the differing attitudes and approaches taken to visual literacy by various professions. In 2010, Georgina was funded by the Art Libraries Society (ARLIS) to attend the 2010 International Visual Literacy Association Conference (IVLA), an organisation made up of professionals from a diverse range of subject disciplines, each with their own lens on visual literacy. This provided the opportunity to reflect upon the role of librarians within the context of the IVLA and the field of visual literacy. Finally, a number of current visual literacy interventions with Business and Design students at the University of Northampton will be outlined.