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may there ever be, agreement by the experts for a single, standard
term which is universally used for each language and by every
country that speaks that language. This is in part because, while
the information and communications cultures in every region in
the world have many common elements, in the end they are each
quite distinctive and uniquely tied to each country, its indigenous
languages, its history, its traditions, and its cultures.
This is particularly noticeable in several countries where people
speak the same, or a very similar version of essentially the same
parent language, such as Spanish, Portuguese or French, but
which are located in widely distant geographic regions, and,
therefore, the human and country interactions between them
(trade, travel, etc.) are minimal. For example, in the case of
Spanish, disparate terms (but understandable by all Spanish
speakers) are preferred by different Spanish speaking countries, as,
for example, in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, and several other
countries in Latin America. Portuguese offers another example, as
terms related to information literacy differs between Portugal and
Brazil, and among other Portuguese speaking countries in other
geographic regions such as Africa. In the case of French, terms
may differ, for example, as between France, Belgium, Luxembourg,
Monaco and other Francophone countries in Europe, versus Haiti,
Canada/Quebec, Francophone West African and Caribbean
countries, and elsewhere. This is not to mention dialectical
differences in the case of a single language such as Catalan in
Spain. So, readers may well see terms in the IL logo for the same
language which appear similar, but are not precisely identical. We
have tried to combine all countries speaking the same language
together as the “default” option, but this has not always been
possible for various reasons. Professor Boekhorst has promised to
update his list of IL terms periodically, looking perhaps to the day
when a single, standard and preferred term emerges for a given
language.
The particular logo version appearing above, as well as the
comprehensive list of all languages for the Information Literacy
term which appears below, are still incomplete and are missing
some important languages because this project, and the
Overview of Information Literacy Resources Worldwide |16