Page 3 - Introduction — Information Literacy and Information Behaviour, Complementary Approaches for Building Capability

Introduction 3

early 1970s and identified by Lorenzen (2003) in the area of ‘library
instruction’, and ‘bibliographic instruction’ (including for example, Lubans
and Sharma in the UK and Fjallbrant in Europe) pre-dates and informs
more recent information literacy practice. However, increasingly we see the
concept taken out of the educational or library context and into the
workplace, where the specific information cultures place an emphasis on
skills and attitudes associated with, for example, the ability to manage
information in the organisation, including the sharing of information and
knowledge. In addition we see the connection made between information
literacy and civil rights, empowerment and personal well-being. The latter is
echoed in the context of international development (Horton, 2007), and in
the Training Toolkit: Monitoring and evaluation for information literacy
training initiatives in Africa: A journey approach (2013).
There is a plethora of material available on how to teach information
literacy (see, for example, Lloyd, 2010). Melville et al. (2009, p. 7) raises the
importance of information literacy as a set of skills needed by students to
operate effectively in the digital world, especially that students should
‘possess the skills and understanding to search, authenticate and critically
evaluate material’. Work by Hampton-Reeves et al. (2009, p. 47) states the
value of information literacy training by concluding that, ‘Many students [in
HE] have developed an imperfect sense of the research environment based
on past experience, the occasional input from a tutor and the student
rumour mill.’ This is not news to the information profession because studies
which pre-date these reports (such as Breivik & Gee, 2006) demonstrate
that even though the information landscape has become an ever richer
environment, the workforce has a deficit in functional information literacy
leading to a demonstrable lack of efficiency. Add to this the study on young
people’s information behaviour (UCL, 2008) which shows that pre-
university students are unable to construct effective searches and use the
narrowest of criteria to evaluate their newly found information, and the
problem is clearly revealed: there is a need for information literacy to
underpin students’ intellectual development so that the successful graduate
has the skills to survive not only at university, but in the workplace too.
However, IL models are highly abstract ideas (Hepworth & Walton,
2009; Owusu-Ansah, 2003) and do not necessarily provide the tools for
delivering the relevant skills and neither do they provide an adequate
explanation of either the process of becoming information literate nor
information behaviour.
In general IL models appear to be prescriptive tools or manifestos for
action containing common sense statements regarding how individuals
should engage with the information world and structure their information
seeking behaviour (Walton, 2009). What they are not are explanations of
how information literacy or information behaviour takes place. IL models