Digital Literacy Niche in Academia

Abstract

With the awareness and proliferation of technology, the smart approach is possible to build a learning system or a smart city. The study aims to present the involvement of digital literacy in academics, making youth smart citizens, and assessing the continuous efforts at different levels. The study highlighted the mechanisms adopted by the libraries, such as training and other programmes, to enhance the digital literacy of the citizens. The chapter spotlighted the inclusion of digital literacy in academics, and with the adoption of digital solutions, young learners can become smart citizens. It also throws light on the impact of digital literacy during COVID-19 and digital literacy activities at JNU Central Library. A glimpse of the practices and measures adopted by the academic libraries to enrich the youth to make them smart citizens is provided, and a case example of an academic library (i.e., Jawaharlal Nehru University [JNU] Central Library) is considered for the study. Digital literacy has become an integral part of the youths' lives, and it supplements in making youth smart citizens would lead to smart city development.

Fostering Smart Citizens: The Role of Public Libraries in Smart City Development

“…Such collaborations may further new ways of working among various stakeholders and innovative uses of technology, which adds to knowledge on multi-stakeholder interactions and collaborative models for smart city development and governance frequently advocated for in the literature [7,9,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. In parallel, our case studies contribute to the emerging research indicating that community organizations such as public libraries can develop smart citizens [9,66,[83][84][85][86][87][88][89] and thus add to the studies on the roles of different actors in developing smart citizens [51,57,65,76,80,121,143,151].…”

“…Research shows that multiple actors can contribute to the development of smart citizens but usually emphasize more traditional actors such as governments, non-profits, and knowledge institutions as frequent contributors [42,51,57,76,80,121,126,130,143,151]. These actors play different but complementary roles and contribute to smart city development through strategies focusing on training, innovation, and participation.…”