Page 4 - Introduction — Information Literacy and Information Behaviour, Complementary Approaches for Building Capability

4 Mark Hepworth and Geoff Walton

recommend certain skills, attributes, standards that individuals must
conform to or processes to be followed in order to become information
literate. However, these common sense statements are often grounded in
the language of the librarian, and only sporadically use the language of
learning theory, pedagogy or information behaviour and are not recognised
outside the information profession (Virkus, 2003). Inherent within these
models is a level of abstraction which causes IL models to make assumptions
about:

notions regarding the nature of information;
the context in which individuals are seeking information;
the existing knowledge that individuals bring to the information seeking
process;
individuals’ approaches to finding information;
individuals’ own psychological make-up and how this affects their
motivation towards engaging with information;
how individuals go about the process of engaging with information;
how individuals’ think about, analyse, evaluate and communicate
information.

Information behaviour research assists the grand theory of information
literacy in explaining the cognitive processes, behaviours and feelings that,
together, enable the information literate individual.
The chapters in this book explore these issues and provide a source of ideas
that both touch on people’s information behaviour and have implications for
strategies for helping to develop people’s information literacy.
A brief synopsis of the individual contributions is given below. They fall
into 4 broad areas moving from the strategic to the highly contextualised
and embedded within community settings:

1.1. Section 1: Strategic View

Sheila Webber and Bill Johnston’s chapter takes a strategic approach
and examines the future of information literacy in an ever changing
information landscape. The term they coin for this changing landscape is
‘information culture’ which includes the economy, technology, organisa-
tional culture, civic society and personal motivations. The information
literacy programme they envisage, which they argue reaches beyond notions
of skills and employability, overviews capacity building in a new way
which regards information literacy as a central component in a learner’s
lifecourse. Interestingly they identify four critical junctures in a person’s life