Although there are various definitions of information fluency (IF) including the 21st Century Information Fluency’s Digital Information Fluency (DIF), the Information Fluency Triad, Six Essential Elements of IF (Appendix A) (Rettig, 2002), as one of the five 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age (Crockett, Lee., Jukes, Ian.,Churches, Andrew., 2011), and the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) Research and Information Fluency portion of their Student Standards, two elements seem common: 1) Information fluency intensifies information literacy, and 2) information fluency applies and adapts the general skills of information literacy to a given field.
For the purpose of UNT’s Information Fluency Initiative, the definition adopted by the Associated Colleges of the South fits best.
Information Fluency can be envisioned as the optimal outcome when critical thinking skills are combined with information literacy and relevant computer skills.(Associated Colleges of the South, 2002)