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Chapter 1: Information and Information Literacy 1 C H A P T E R 1 Information and Information Literacy Questions to Guide Your Reading ■ What is information? ■ What does it mean to be literate? ■ What is information literacy? ■ Why is information literacy important? Introduction Everything is information. Everything we read is information. Everything we see, hear, or experience with our senses is information. We are information. We are a collection of 6 billion A’s, T’s, G’s, and C’s arranged in pairs that make up our chromosomes, that make up the DNA, that makes us who we are (National Human Genome Research Institute 2019). We are surrounded and bombarded by information constantly, from friends telling us what they did last night, grandpar- ents telling us what they ate the day before, teachers telling us why Shakespeare chose those words, and advertisements telling us to buy their products. The purpose of this book is to give you an understanding of what information is, where it comes from, how to evaluate its validity and usefulness, and how to manage the deluge of information we are con- stantly exposed to so that we become better students, better consumers, and better people. So, let us start at the beginning.