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provides the vital foundation for fulfilling the goals of the Millennium
Declaration and the World Summit on the Information Society; and
• extends beyond current technologies to encompass learning, critical
thinking and interpretative skills across professional boundaries and
empowers individuals and communities (1).
Based on this interpretation, we emphasize the role and importance of
information literacy as an essential means of facilitating the task of linguistic
diversity preservation in cyberspace. If you re-examine the above table showing
the main action lines for social institutions, organizations and establishments to
preserve multilingualism in cyberspace, almost all of them require for citizens’
proficiency in information literacy.
Functions of Information Literacy as a Means of Linguistic Diversity
Preservation
The most important functions of information literacy as a means of preserving
multilingualism in cyberspace are connected with accessing information and
communication.
The “key” function of information literacy is its being a kind of a key that opens
the door to information storages. We emphasize that this can be both traditional
(libraries, archives, museums), and electronic information storages. Mastering
information literacy allows individuals to get access to socially important
information contained in the electronic environment, including the Internet.
Without information literacy one cannot be provided with public access to
modern digital resources: online newspapers and magazines, databases, Web
sites and portals containing a wealth of legal, linguistic, educational and
scientific information that reflects the rich traditions and culture of the peoples
of the world, including small and indigenous nations.
Another important function of information literacy is giving people an
opportunity to communicate in digital environment. It expands opportunities
for communication and interaction in cyberspace for native speakers and
people studying a certain language, facilitates integrating the efforts of all those
interested in the preservation and promotion of multilingualism, regardless of
their location and distance from each other, through the use of ICT. The major
benefits of ICT in this regard are:
• openness – ability to access necessary information resources and
communicate with all those interested in the preservation and
promotion of multilingualism;