This chapter will discuss:

Please note: It is strongly advised that you read Chapter 2 before reading this chapter, as many of the research findings and ideas used below are introduced there and often discussed in more detail.

Introduction

In order that a professional can begin a career in the workplace using information effectively, in the context of the knowledge development and learning required for individual, team and organizational functionality, part of professional education should involve IL education of the kind appropriate for that workplace. In Chapter 8, page 111, Annemaree Lloyd suggests that students’ IL development requires a transition from an academic or ‘preparatory’ setting to a workplace one:

This chapter attempts to show one way in which workplace IL education might be based on detailed experiences of IL in the workplace, so that students are inducted into information experiences relevant to their work culture or profession. The chapter may be of particular interest to librarians attempting to develop IL in professional workers, and academics keen to develop in their students the skills that new professionals need in order to function effectively and ethically in the workplace.

In what ways has the development of IL traditionally been encouraged? Historically, the literature describes attempts to develop what are felt to be relevant skills and knowledge, based on behaviourist or constructivist approaches (Brettle, 2003 and 2007; Elrod, Wallace and Sirigos, 2012).

This chapter will discuss:

Introduction

As is well known, IL is often ignored, or regarded as a preoccupation only of librarians, or something only relevant in academic settings. How can we persuade businesses and organizations, professionals and other workers of its necessity? In fact, IL has a particular key role to play in work life that is arguably more fundamental than any other discussed in this book: an ethical role.

This chapter discusses the idea of the necessity of IL in the workplace. That is, its ethical necessity, which is found in the requirement of professionals, indeed all employees, to operate at maximum effectiveness for the highest possible safety and benefit of customers, patients and clients (Forster, 2013). In the information-rich modern workplace, this effectiveness requires the optimum search/differentiation, critique and application of all relevant information. An ill-informed professional is a potentially incompetent, even dangerous, one. A professional who has failed to develop, or sought to develop and maintain, the ability to identify information lack, search for and identify all relevant information and critique it in order to maintain professional knowledge levels, and practises from that incomplete knowledge base, is practising unethically.

This is not a common way of looking at IL's role and value. However, there is little question that its wider adoption and promotion by librarians would further strengthen its profile, and help increase an awareness of its proper value in the workplace.

Awareness of Information Literacy's vital role

This chapter's origins can be traced to something unexpected in the IL experiences of a representative sample of professional workers.

This chapter will discuss:

Introduction

Information Literacy can be seen as a personal attribute: one which, as a facilitator and enricher of the communicative faculty, can aid a professional to assist and empower patients or clients, and make a personal contribution to mutual endeavours within team and business or organization by supporting, leading or teaching colleagues.

It also facilitates the development of personal capabilities through its ability to facilitate learning (Bruce and Hughes, 2010), and therefore to engage in new and more sophisticated ways to make a contribution.

These perspectives on IL are essential to the understanding of its role and value in the workplace. That workplace is often a very complex social environment which is focused on the use of information for specific knowledge goals, often with and for the benefit of patients and clients, and often through teams and networks undertaking complex knowledgegenerating tasks. The sections below are intended to help information professionals, library managers and academics responsible for education in the professions become more aware of some of the likely details of IL's personal and social complexities and value, in order to support professionals in training and in the workplace as they negotiate their information world; ‘likely details’ because, though most professionals will share many of these experiences, further research into specific workplaces and professions is still required for absolute clarity.

What the research data can show

Knowledge of the breadth and depth of experience of IL can give valuable perspectives on how individuals, at different levels of responsibility, make their personal contribution to the development of knowledge needed by the team and organization, and the patients or clients they have responsibility for. How does IL allow them to make their own unique contribution in the workplace? In what way does it facilitate relationships with others? Does it inform leadership or form the basis for personal development? If so, how? The answers to these questions may be valuable to those who are responsible for IL education, and professional education in general.

Introduction

As the focus of interest in Information Literacy (IL) continues to spread out from the university into the wider world, including the world of work, can we be confident that existing assumptions, definitions and methods of development continue to be relevant and appropriate? Both anecdotal and research evidence suggests not; that IL may not manifest as the same phenomenon in the workplace as it does in the academic environment. Young professionals, confronted by a way of dealing with information quite different to the academic, may be disorientated by the experience (Goldstein, 2014; Inskip, 2014; Williams, Cooper and Wavell, 2014; Osborn, 2011) and find themselves having to think about their relations to information in new ways: in terms of meaning, value, and purpose.

How is IL to be reconceptualized for the workplace? How should its parameters be redrawn so that librarians, academics, organizations and businesses can better understand workplace professionals and the students studying for those professions, and so effectively support them in efficient and creative engagement with the contemporary information landscape? How can IL be developed in a way that is meaningful and appropriate for them? Perhaps the question is one of evidence as much as conception. How can professions, many of which are especially focused on, and dependent on, information (Evetts, 2006) be supported in their information use if there is a lack of evidence as to how and why they use that information? Do we know in what ways information experiences in the workplace are significant to professionals themselves, their employers and educators and society at large? Indeed, what is the ‘workplace’ in an increasingly virtual information world?

Information Literacy's role and value in professional and workplace performance has been the subject of a number of recent research studies in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong and the USA. These studies have led to the development of new perspectives on workplace IL, including as a facilitator of effective and empowering inter-professional and professional–client relation - ships; as a component of the structure and dynamic of a ‘learning’ workplace, where decision making is therefore effective and creative; and as an ethical safeguard in the duty and responsibilities professionals have to clients, patients and employers to be fully informed when making vital decisions.