We are soliciting chapter proposals for a book entitled Metaliterate Learning for the Post-Truth World that we will publish in fall 2018 by the American Library Association. We would like to include both theoretical and applied chapters written by academic librarians, disciplinary faculty from a variety of fields, administrators, and instructional designers that describe and reflect upon the importance of advancing metaliteracy in a post-truth world. We see a particular urgency in editing this book at this time when truth itself is questioned for political purposes, journalism and the free press are constantly under attack, science and climate change are doubted as factual, online hacking is prevalent, online privacy is a concern, and the ability to proliferate false information through circuitous social media networks has become a serious issue. It is profoundly clear that the competencies, knowledge, and personal attributes that define metaliteracy and inform the role of the metaliterate learner are critical in today’s connected and divided world: digital literacy and traditional conceptions of information literacy are insufficient for the extreme challenges we currently face.

We would like to like to build on the success of our previous books, Metaliteracy in Practice and Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners, while leveraging the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education in relation to teaching and learning in the post-truth world. As one example of this approach, our most recent article for The Conversation, entitled “How can we learn to reject fake news in the digital world?,” applied metaliteracy to the destructive emergence of fake news in the 2016 Presidential Election. We made the argument that we need to read online information with a critical eye, apply metacognitive thinking to the consumption of all information, and make purposeful and meaningful contributions to the social media ecosystem as active participants. Given the interest in metaliteracy as a model for preparing metaliterate learners as responsible participants in today’s divisive information environment, we are especially interested in expanding the conversation to educators who have developed successful metaliteracy teaching and learning theories and practices to resist these challenges. Overall, how do we best prepare our students for being active and engaged metaliterate learners in today’s environment?

The editors are interested in ideas that are easily transferable, and that include strong components of student metacognition and empowerment. The book will include both theoretical arguments for metaliteracy in a post-truth world and innovative case studies that respond to these complex issues, all from different disciplinary perspectives, and academic institutions in the U.S. and internationally. The Metaliteracy Learning Objectives featured in our books and available via Metaliteracy.org: https://metaliteracy.org/learning-objectives/ will be core to the chapters as well.

Tom Mackey, Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Professor at SUNY Empire State College and Trudi E. Jacobson, Distinguished Librarian and Head of the Information Literacy Department at the University at Albany will write the framing chapter and edit this new book.

Please send 1-2 page proposals to Tom at Tom.Mackey@esc.edu no later than September 29, 2017. We will make our decisions by mid October. First drafts of the completed chapters (20-25 pages) will be due on January 12, 2018. Final drafts will be due by April 13, 2018.

If you have any questions about proposal ideas or about the book, please contact Tom at Tom.Mackey@esc.edu or Trudi at tjacobson@albany.edu.