Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2018
I was delighted to be asked to write the Foreword to this book, which bridges an important gap between the Information Literacy work researchers and practitioners do in higher education, with the support that is needed in the workplace. Better collaboration between information professionals in all sectors has long been aspired to, but it is only relatively recently that work is being done to join the dots between Information Literacy initiatives in schools, higher education and the workplace. Understanding how people's ‘information landscapes’ (Lloyd, 2010) shift as they transition to a new environment is hugely relevant and this book offers us new perspectives.
I was particularly pleased to be invited to write this Foreword, as I am indebted to Marc Forster for a number of reasons. Most recently he has been a valuable addition to the CILIP Information Literacy Group's committee. And it was through his doctoral work that I first properly engaged with the research methodology, phenomenography, a methodology that originated in the field of education but has been used increasingly in Information Literacy research (Yates, Partridge and Bruce, 2012) in recent years. A qualitative methodology, it is concerned with the variation in the way phenomena are ‘experienced’. Understanding of the variations in the way Information Literacy is experienced and so given ‘meaning’, often in terms of the personal or collaborative knowledge it develops, helps us see how Information Literacy contributes to work, study and other aspects of our daily lives. I was already familiar with the work of Christine S. Bruce and the seven faces of Information Literacy; however, through Marc's work I saw how looking at themes and variations of complexity within experiences of Information Literacy translated into the work that I did on a day-to-day basis. Interacting with another person's work is an enlightening, highly reflective and iterative process and one that can fundamentally change our understanding of a subject.
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