Information Literacy in the Workplace

This book explains how information literacy (IL) is essential to the contemporary workplace and is fundamental to competent, ethical and evidence-based practice. In today’s information-driven workplace, information professionals must know when research evidence or relevant legal, business, personal or other information is required, how to find it, how to critique it and how to integrate it into one’s knowledge base. To fail to do so may result in defective and unethical practice which could have devastating consequences for clients or employers. There is an ethical requirement for information professionals to meet best practice standards to achieve the best outcome possible for the client. This demands highly focused and complex information searching, assessment and critiquing skills. Using a range of new perspectives, Information Literacy in the Workplace demonstrates several aspects of IL’s presence and role in the contemporary workplace, including IL’s role in assuring competent practice, its value to employers as a return on investment, and its function as an ethical safeguard in the duty and responsibilities professionals have to clients, students and employers. Chapters are contributed by a range of international experts, including Christine Bruce, Bonnie Cheuk, Annemaree Lloyd with a foreword from Jane Secker. Content covered includes: - examination of the value and impact of IL in the workplace - how IL is experienced remotely, beyond workplace boundaries - IL’s role in professional development - organizational learning and knowledge creation - developing information professional competencies - how to unlock and create value using IL in the workplace. This book will be useful for librarians and LIS students in understanding how information literacy is experienced by professions they support; academics teaching professional courses; professionals (e.g. medical, social care, legal and business based) and their employers in showing that IL is essential to best practice and key to ethical practice.

Table of Contents:
Figures and tables Contributors Foreword – Jane Secker 1. Information Literacy and the workplace: new concepts, new perspectives? – Marc Forster 2. How is Information Literacy experienced in the workplace? – Marc Forster 3. Information Literacy and the personal dimension: team players, empowered clients and career development – Marc Forster 4. From transaction to transformation: organizational learning and knowledge creation experience within Informed Systems – Mary M. Somerville and Christine S. Bruce 5. Virtuality at work: an enabler of professional Information Literacy – Elham Sayyad Abdi 6. Determining the value of Information Literacy for employers – Stéphane Goldstein and Andrew Whitworth 7. Information Literacy’s role in workplace competence, ‘best practice’ and the ethics of professional obligation – Marc Forster The development of Information Literacy in the workplace 8. Learning within for beyond: exploring a workplace Information Literacy design – Annemaree Lloyd 9. Developing information professional competencesin disciplinary domains: a challenge for higher education – Stephen Roberts 10. The ‘hidden’ value of Information Literacy in the workplacecontext: how to unlock and create value – Bonnie Cheuk 11. The ‘Workplace Experience Framework’ and evidence-based Information Literacy education – Marc Forster References Index

About the Author :
Dr Marc Forster is a librarian at the University of West London, looking after the needs of the College of Nursing, Midwifery and Healthcare. His research interests include information literacy’s role in learning and in the performance of the professional role. Contributors: Christine S. Bruce, Professor, Information Systems School, Queensland University of Technology Bonnie Cheuk, Executive, Euroclear Stéphane Goldstein, Executive Director, InformAll Annemaree Lloyd, Professor, Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Borås Stephen Roberts, Associate Professor, Information Management, University of West London Elham Sayyad Abdi, Associate Lecturer, Information Systems School, Queensland University of Technology Mary M. Somerville, University Librarian for University of the Pacific Libraries in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Stockton, California, USA Andrew Whitworth, Director of Teaching and Learning Strategy, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester

Review :
Informed and informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking, "Information Literacy in the Workplace" will prove to be applicably useful for librarians and LIS students in understanding how information literacy is experienced by the professions they support and academics teaching professional courses. It will also be of interest to professionals (e.g. medical, social care, legal and business based) and their employers in showing that IL is essential to best practice and key to ethical practice. Students, librarians, professionals and organisations would do well to consider and explore the increasingly driven imperative that IL skills will be needed in a connected, ethical, constantly evolving future, and this book provides a platform to start on this road. This book offers a fresh perspective and suggests ways to reframe IL so that it is acknowledged throughout a workplace as relevant and valuable. It provides ideas for information professionals on how to develop their own and their colleagues’ IL in a workplace context, as well as on how to support students in their transition to work...This book is relevant to information professionals who support workplaces, to academic librarians who support student and staff IL, and also to those who are studying IL. Information Literacy in the Workplace makes the important point that IL is also essential in the contemporary workplace...I was particularly taken by Foster’s own chapter, “Information Literacy’s role in workplace competence, ‘best practice’ and the ethics of professional obligation,” in which he emphasizes that professionals are ethically required to use the best evidence they can in making their decisions since “[n]ot to be information-literate may result in harmful outcomes”