Current Trends in Information Literacy Library Learning Trends Elsevier’s Learning Trends Series CHANDOS PUBLISHING Table of Contents: • The Nature of Information Literacy Excerpt from: Research 2.0 and the Future of Information Literacy by Tibor Koltay, Sonja Špiranec, László Z. Karvalics • Critical Thinking and Information Literacy Excerpt from: From Information Literacy to Social Epistemology by Anthony Anderson and Bill Johnston • Information Literacy Skills in the Research Process Excerpt from: New Roles for Research Librarians by Hilde Drivenes Daland and Kari-Mette Walmann Hidle • Visual literacy meets information literacy by Mary J. Snyder Broussard, Judith Schwartz Excerpt from: Skills to Make a Librarian by Dawn Lowe-Wincentsen • Science information literacy and the role of academic librarians Excerpt from: Managing Scientific Information and Research Data by Svetla Baykoucheva CHAPTER 2 The Nature of Information Literacy It is rather obvious that researchers are or should be informed citizens, not only in their everyday life but also in their professional work. This means that relying on a number of literacies is foundational to the work of today’s researcher. To gain a more accurate picture of the nature of these literacies, we can consider them from a bird’s-eye view. Such a perspective reveals three levels of literacy: • conceptual competencies that include innovative thinking, problem- solving, and critical thinking; • human competencies: social networking skills, self-management, and cross-cultural interaction skills; • practical competencies: including learning skills and information liter- acy (Lee, 2013). The best-known literacy from among practical competencies is informa- tion literacy. DEFINITIONS, DECLARATIONS, AND FRAMEWORKS The terms information literacy and information literate were coined by Zurkowski (1974) to refer to people who are able to solve their information problems by using relevant information sources and applying relevant tech- nology. As Pinto, Cordón, and Diaz (2010) point out, information literacy has stimulated considerable, long-standing interest throughout the second half of the twentieth century, and more significantly from the 1980s onward. This is shown by the number and variety of publications, regularly reviewed by Johnson et al. (2012), among others. Zurkowski’s work was the formative moment for information literacy. His approach logically perceived information literacy as a programmatic aim, and placed libraries and librarians at the core of this effort. The advent of bibliographic databases ushered in a new era of research. Early databases required significant additional technological know-how, often possessed by Research 2.0 and the Future of Information Literacy Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 61 62 Research 2.0 and the Future of Information Literacy librarians only. This decisive intermediary role diminished with the appear- ance of CD-ROMs in the 1980s and finally vanished with the arrival of social media tools. Zurkowski and other early writers on the topic were undoubtedly right to see that the changes in the research landscape would result in a situation in which researchers would be left without knowledge of the technologies of searching. These new methods of searching were indispensable, and with- out them researchers would have remained practically functionally illiterate in seeking academic information. Naturally, this required education. When databases became searchable and usable by non-experts, the role of librarians as teachers of research skills was well established. The meaning of information literacy as a theory as well as a practice had yet to be clearly articulated. The appearance of the ACRL Competency Standards in 2000 was an important step forward, as it could be used to show information literacy in all its complexity, laying out achievable objectives. Information literacy became a full-fledged practice with theoretical backing. In the meantime, information seeking has become a daily activity as “googling” is employed with unbelievable frequency. However, this does not question the validity of information literacy. The question is whether we should “refocus our efforts on the educational, cultural, and technolog- ical shifts in which ‘information literacy’ per se becomes a somewhat arbi- trary label for the very stuff of learning and information discovery in today’s academic (and larger) world” (Cowan, 2014, p. 28). In a more general context, we can say that the increase in available ma- terials not only caused changes in collection management practices, but also drove the need for information literacy (Palmer & Gelfand, 2013). Definitions and descriptions of information literacy (IL) can be summa- rized as referring to 1. the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to re- trieve and disseminate information; 2. the competences to find and use the information in information (re)sources; 3. the process of recognizing information need, and finding, evaluating, and using information to acquire or extend knowledge. The third option is the most comprehensive and most useful, as it in- cludes both the use of ICT and the information (re)sources concept (Boekhorst, 2003). Perhaps the best known and widely accepted definition of IL says that in- formation literate people are able to recognize when information is needed. They are also able to identify, locate, evaluate, and use information to solve The Nature of Information Literacy 63 a particular problem (ALA, 1989). This definition has been widely used and further developed by other definitions. In their foundational work, Johnston and Webber (2003, p. 336) provide the following definition of information literacy: Information literacy is the adoption of appropriate information behaviour to ob- tain, 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. They identify four major goals for information literacy in the information society: • information literacy for citizenship, including engagement in develop- ment by freedom of access to and critical use of data and information; • information literacy for economic growth that stimulates the develop- ment of new and existing enterprises by intensive and creative use of information and knowledge; • information literacy for employability; • information literacy for personal growth and creativity, which cuts across and contributes to achieving all the above goals (Webber & Johnston, 2000). Our previous discussion has demonstrated that all four goals are valid in the research environment. Obviously, the weight of these goals differs to some degree. If we take the role of the researcher as a citizen, we have to say that there is no room in this book for outlining this issue in its entirety and we do not intend to do so. Nonetheless, we have already pointed toward this role and mentioned developments to achieve citizen science and open science or open access, just to name a few. Critical use of information and data is crucial for information literacy and thus has found its place in this book and plays a major role in it. Without wanting to be exhaustive again, there is hardly any doubt that research contributed to economic growth and development in general. Intensive and creative use of information and knowledge is very much the essence of research. IL may not influence em- ployability directly, but writing this book would make little sense if we did not believe in its importance. The relevance of personal growth and creativ- ity is unquestionable, especially as they affect all the goals above. IL education emphasizes critical thinking (appearing in several places throughout this book, especially in the section about reading and writing) and the necessity of being able to recognize the quality of a given message. It is firmly positioned among other literacies despite a certain amount of (occasionally well-founded) skepticism, which in itself highlights the fact that information literacy and especially its lack has always been of greater 64 Research 2.0 and the Future of Information Literacy importance to academic librarians than to any other group of “players” in the information and education arena (Bawden & Robinson, 2009). Different models approach information literacy from different view- points. The Seven Faces of Information Literacy in Higher Education, conceived by Christine Bruce in 1997, concentrates on experiencing information lit- eracy (Bruce, 1997). From a different point of view, we will come back to this model. Using Vannevar Bush’s vision of the technologically connected and en- abled researcher who plays key role in the information society, Johnston and Webber (2005) propose information literacy as a soft applied discipline. They contrast this approach to the characterization of information literacy as a personal attribute. As we will demonstrate, they are not the only ones directing attention to the importance of information literacy aimed at re- search and researchers. From among the numerous conceptual models of IL, we will take the approach that differentiates between three levels, that is, macro, micro, and meso, and places culture on the macro-level. The meso-level is composed of different information subcultures, and the micro-level represents the so- called individual playground. The meso-level materializes in concepts such as the information culture of individual organizations.