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Video: Digital Literacy, Part 10
Stacey Aldrich
State Librarian
California State Library
November 30, 2010
MS. ALDRICH: Digital literacy skills are really important in order to be able to thrive in the 21st century. You need them for basic work life and just life in general. When you think about work, it’s important to be able to communicate with all of the different media that are available. In order to find a job now, you have to search online, follow up applications online. You also sometimes have to take tests for jobs online.
And then if you think about education, improving your education to get more work, you can do that online. So we need to have those skills.
And for life in general, if you just want to learn a new skill, or you want to shop, or if you want to travel, you need to be able to use the tools available which are all digital now. The state library has many databases available for searching, and for finding information that will help people to be successful in their searches for genealogy or history. And in order to use those tools you have to have some basic search skills. You have to understand how to use those tools.