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Visual Literacy: Welcome to Visual Literacy

This guide outlines basic visual literacy skills including how to find, evaluate, and use images.

What is visual literacy?

Visual literacy is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media.

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Goals of visual literacy

  To be visually literate, students need to be able to:

1) Determine the purpose of including visual resources and find images that fit the purpose.

2) Evaluate images by understanding both the context and physical attributes of an image.

3) Understand the ethical issues surrounding the use of images.

Association of College & Research Libraries 2011, ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, viewed 24 March 2021, http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/visualliteracy

New Digital Resources

New digital resources

You requested more online content and we heard you!

Check out these new resources below:

Flipster provides access to full text digital magazines on many subjects including gardening, art, music, photography and more.

Kanopy provides access to streaming videos on subjects relevant to Melbourne Polytechnic courses including education, art, health, humanities and science.

Ask library staff for help accessing these online products.