Newcastle University

What do we mean by information literacy?

Sheila Webber describes Information Literacy as “ the adoption of appropriate information behaviour to obtain, through whatever channel or medium, information well fitted to information needs, together with critical awareness of the importance of wise and ethical use of information in society”

This definition goes far beyond the traditional “training” role adopted by many universities for decades and combines information technology skills with library information skills to produce an individual who is able to:

• Recognise an information need
• Determine the extent of the need and ways of addressing it
• Locate and access the information effectively
• Critically evaluate the information and the sources
• Organise, apply and communicate the information, using it ethically, legally and with an understanding of social and economic issues
• Synthesise and create new information

SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries) has established an Information Literacy framework, which forms the basis of the IL strategy in the Library here at Newcastle.

Seven skills model

The seven skills of the framework are listed below.

1. The ability to recognise and articulate a need for information

• Identify a need for information
• Identify existing knowledge
• Explore background sources to increase familiarity with the topic
• Re-evaluate the nature and extent of the information need
• Re-define the information need to achieve a manageable result

2. The ability to distinguish ways in which the information need may be addressed

• Know how information is produced, organised and disseminated
• Know appropriate kinds of resources, both print and electronic
• Know how to use Library services
• Differentiate between primary and secondary sources
• Select resources appropriate to the need
• Understand the issues affecting accessibility of resources eg ILL

3. The ability to construct strategies for locating information

• Produce a search strategy to acquire the information- a systematic method appropriate for the need
• Articulate the information need appropriately (keywords, synonyms etc)
• Understand the principles of databases
• Select resources appropriate to the need

4. The ability to locate and access information

• Implement the search strategy in appropriate resources (eg catalogues and databases)
• Assess the quantity, quality and relevance of the search results
• Identify gaps in the information retrieved and redefine search strategy
• Use current awareness methods to keep up to date

5. The ability to compare and evaluate information obtained from different sources

• Awareness of the peer review process of scholarly publication
• Awareness of different publication types (eg scholarly/popular journals)
• Evaluate content of information retrieved eg reliability, validity, accuracy, authority, timeliness, bias
• Appropriately extract information matching the information need

6. The ability to organise, apply and communicate information to others in ways appropriate to the situation

• Understand ethical use of information
• Construct a personal bibliographic system
• Cite information correctly
• Apply information to the problem in hand
• Communicate effectively using the appropriate medium
• Understand issues of copyright and plagiarism

7. The ability to synthesise and build upon existing information, contributing to the creation of new knowledge

There is a growing body of evidence to show that, contrary to their own opinions, most students and a proportion of university staff have very low levels of information literacy skills. Surveys have shown that <2% of undergraduates are using electronic resources effectively, most rely on search engines to find academic information and have little understanding of the more complex literacy skills.