Exploring information literacy meaning

Monday 1 September 2003

It's great to see workplace information literacy being addressed in this year's forum debate. This is a significant gap in our understanding of information literacy.

One thing that struck me in Annemaree's paper is that her references to tacit and explicit knowledge, people as sources of information, and the workplace as a social space etc, seem to be impliedly referring to knowledge management concepts. I believe there is a strong connection between KM and IL. I would argue that IL in the workplace has the potential to fill a gap in KM practice - namely enabling workers to cope in an information and knowledge rich environment, and to make sense of/take advantage of knowledge in the organisation.

So far in the KM debate I think people have missed talking about how the workers are to be equipped to deal with a knowledge focussed agenda in the workplace. I think IL concepts address that shortcoming.

And by the way, not all corporate librarians are deficient in teaching skills/knowledge of adult learning principles. We have a team of six very able and talented librarians within our library staff, delivering over 200 'information literacy' courses a year to staff in our five Australian offices.

Carmel O'Sullivan
National training librarian
Knowledge group, Blake Dawson Waldron

I am a tad puzzled by Fiona's comments

It important to make a conceptual shift from a library-centred view of information literacy towards viewing information literacy as a holistic educational outcome based on transferable concepts and skills.

The university library collaborates with academic staff to:

enhance the immediate learning experience of students in all programs
prepare them for a knowledge based workplace
develop their potential for lifelong learning
develop their understanding that information is the critical resource for individuals, business and industry and a functioning democracy

and I'm sure UniSA is not alone in this approach.

Irene Doskatsch
Acting associate librarian: client services and executive director, ANZIIL
University of South Australia

From what I have read in the literature and on other e-lists, the outcomes that you describe are quite common, but there isn't much discussion on how to actually measure them. For example, most discussions on the US based ILI-L list are focused on course integrated information literacy programs, delivered in the first year of university. Evaluation and assessment generally occurs a short time after the course has completed, to see if students found success with the demands of the course. They're not evaluated again once students reach the workforce, but some are starting to discuss the possibility of doing so.

I'm interested in how UniSA evaluates those outcomes you describe below, do they follow up students once they are in the workforce? How does it impact upon course design?

Personally, I'm of the belief that not all information literacy skills are necessarily transferable, and that we will need to continually acquire new skills to deal with new situations our whole lives. This is where information literacy becomes a social issue (as described by Bundy in Growing the Community, 2002) that needs to be addressed by governments, employers, and so on, not just by educators and librarians. As yet however, there are still few outside librarianship that know what information literacy is, or they reduce it to information technology literacy. Government departments in particular, tend to do this, as the other aspects of information literacy too often fall in the 'too hard' basket. If the concept is to really take off outside of libraries, it has to become known more widely, and made a priority on the government and wold stage, with organisations like UNESCO and the OECD.

Fiona Bradley

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