Information Literacy

"Information literacy is a popular and widely-written about topic in the literature of library information science, and is widely identified as an essential competency for college students. Nevertheless, recent research indicates that students largely lack the competencies associated with information literacy and that many colleges and universities are not moving beyond one-shot, course-level library instruction sessions to integrate information literacy into their curricula at the program and institutional levels. One reason for this lack of progress may be that discipline faculty—those who have the most direct contact with students, as well as the most direct oversight of and responsibility for the curriculum—have been largely missing from the conversation. This study aims to fill this gap by surveying and interviewing a nationwide sample of teaching faculty in six disciplines for their perspectives on the importance and relevance of information literacy competencies for their students. The results of this study provide academic librarians a broader insight into faculty understanding of information literacy and will help to advance the discourse of information literacy further into the disciplines."

"Information literacy is the primary instructional focus of many librarians. With the development of a core set of information literacy threshold concepts, librarians often strive to impart these concepts to undergraduate students during their years of study. However, when students come to school, they are not blank slates. They arrive with preconceived ideas or misconceptions which can impede this process. In this article, the authors report on the results of focus groups held with first-year students at a private, liberal arts university. During the focus groups, participants were asked to share their perceptions of the misconceptions identified by Hinchliffe et al. (2018) in their information literacy misconception inventory. This study adds support for some of the misconceptions included in the Hinchliffe et al. inventory. However, it was not able to add support to all of them. In some cases, participants indicated conflicting results; in others their responses opposed the misconception."

"School librarians teach students information literacy to help them navigate, evaluate, and use information. The need for information literacy is increasing as the amount of information and misinformation available on the Internet has increased. In this study, the perceptions of school librarians were sought concerning the topic of information literacy importance. Three current school librarians who are professionally active in the field of school librarianship were interviewed. Data for these interviews were collected and transcribed. Once patterns emerged from these interviews, the story of the importance of information literacy was told through the eyes of school librarians. The results of this study could be used to make policy and practice decisions in school environments to increase information literacy instruction."