4 DIGITAL VISUAL LITERACY to cite the works they use, the same must be done for any images that the user hasn’t personally created. There are many types of licenses and policies that can also affect an image’s ability to be used for a project. Understanding the public domain, fair use, and Creative Commons licenses will give stu- dents and other users the freedom to use and create different kinds of image- rich projects, as well as share them with the world. Close-Up of Crater Copernicus, our first example image, is in the public domain and is available through the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access Policy, and the title, date, and organization are cited in the image’s caption. The visually literate viewer could take that caption information and not just use it to provide context about the image they could use it to find out more about where the image was originally found. Visual Literacy Standards With a concept as complex as visual literacy, librarians will need tools to scaffold the larger idea into manageable principles. One tool that’s particu- larly helpful in understanding the intricacies of visual literacy are the ACRL Visual Literacy Standards for Higher Education. These standards can func- tion as a framework for both understanding and teaching the many different aspects of visual literacy. If you’re teaching in another setting, the rigor of these standards can also be scaled to suit a variety of classrooms. The stan- dards define visual literacy as a set of seven core skills that allow a student to both use and create images and other visual sources effectively in under- graduate college work. Each of these core skills, or standards, is mapped to a series of performance indicators and learning outcomes.2 When designing your visual literacy curriculum, these learning outcomes can be a great way to measure the success of your instruction and to tie into other aspects of your student learning outcomes. The different aspects of both visual literacy and the ACRL framework can be divided into four main overarching frame- works: finding images, evaluating images, communicating with images, and ethical use of images. In order to find the images that students need for their research projects and other assignments, students need to be able to articulate their image needs and understand the characteristics of different kinds of images—particularly digital images. Then, students need to be equipped with the tools and strate- gies to conduct effective image searches. Image evaluation is a crucial skill in understanding not just who created the image but also what kind of story the artist or photographer was trying to tell. Students should not only be able to evaluate the image source, context associated with the image, and accompanying metadata but also use traditional design knowledge and art vocabulary to interpret their deeper, and sometimes hidden, meanings. Stu- dents who effectively communicate with images need to be able to use tools
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