Presented at LILAC 2022

1. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/information-studies/forum-information-literacy

2. Leveraging information literacy : Mapping
the conceptual influence and appropriation
of information literacy in other disciplinary
landscapes
Alison Hicks (UCL), Pam McKinney (University of Sheffield), Charles
Inskip (UCL), Geoff Walton (Manchester Metropolitan University),
Annemaree Lloyd (UCL)
LILAC conference, Manchester, 11-13 April 2022

3. Who are we?
• The Forum for Information literacy (FOIL) represents a space for
academic researchers who are active in the field of information
literacy research in the UK, to discuss and challenge ideas, and to
engage in critical reflection on theory, practice and praxis oriented
research.
• Members: UCL: Professor Annemaree Lloyd, Dr Alison Hicks, Dr
Charles Inskip; University of Sheffield: Sheila Webber, Dr Pam
McKinney; Manchester Metropolitan University: Dr Geoff Walton;
University of Manchester: Dr Drew Whitworth

4. Context
Information literacy is manifest within a range of disciplinary and vocational
areas of study, including academic, workplace, every day, and health-related
fields. How is IL presented in the non-LIS academic discourse?
Research questions:
How has information literacy been leveraged by other disciplinary landscapes?
a. How have other disciplines and fields used their own terminology,
definitions, theories, and frameworks to talk about information literacy?
b. How have other disciplines and fields used LIS literature, terminology,
definitions, theories, and frameworks to talk about information literacy?

5. Context

6. Method
● Five disciplinary landscapes: Higher Education, Management and Business, Public Health,
Nursing and Psychology.
● Web of Science +
○ Searches for information literacy within key databases in their respective landscape;
○ Supplemented by using related disciplinary terms (such as health literacy);
○ Academic, peer-reviewed, proceedings papers, reviews;
○ 2010-2020;
○ exclude librarian, LIS researcher, LIS journal.
● Cluster maps - VOSviewer
○ extent to which keywords appear together with other keywords;
○ help to identify patterns in citation networks or keyword co-occurrence.
● Limitations
○ decisions: database, query, keyword frequency, cluster weighting;
○ dynamic and open to interpretation.
● Indicative (although not exhaustive) mapping.

7. Findings: Higher education

8. Higher Education
• Material published in discipline specific teaching journals AND
generic teaching in HE journals
• Some sources featured very well developed engagement with LIS
conceptions of information literacy, IL definitions and involvement
of librarians in IL teaching
• Other papers featured appropriate activity to develop IL, but not
linked well with the LIS/IL literature, lack of formal definitions
• Close links made between IL and learning, but often librarians and
the library absent from the research
• Strong sense of importance of IL to education in Evidence-Based
Practice e.g. for nurses

9. Findings: Management and business

10. Management and business
• Primary topic is information seeking
• Information seeking of consumers, managers, and staff, mostly draw from two
disciplinary clusters:
• management, psychology, quality;
• and business, public relations, marketing
• Information literacy references are infrequent, and sources low in number.
• Information literacy in a cluster with digital literacy, competence, skills, and
transformation.
• Link between information seeking work and what we know as information
literacy in this context, but it is situated in a business psychology or marketing
research context and rarely touches on the LIS literature.

11. Findings: Public health

12. Public Health
• Almost no perceptible integration of information literacy concepts
into health research
• Selected dimensions of Kuhlthau and Wilson occasionally used but little
explanation or impact
• Little integration of LIS literature
• Considerable focus on literacy literature (eg Papen, 2008)
• Possibly linked to ‘competition’ between health and information
literacy literature
• But sits awkwardly give HL’s focus on information

13. Findings: Nursing

14. Nursing
• Information literacy closely associated with Evidence-based
practice(EBP) and nurse education (overlap with HE literature)
• A skills-based conception of IL, particularly in the context of EBP,
and how to measure this
• Some reference to the retired ACRL standards and ACRL framework
• Little reference to the LIS literature, but some citing of HE literature
on the theme of IL

15. Findings: Psychology

16. Psychology
• Research published in research journals and teaching psychology
journals
• Digital, media and information literacy terms used but not
necessarily defined or explored
• Conspiracy theory researchers such as Douglas et al (2019) have
voiced concerns that studies don’t investigated people’s ability to
actively process information in order to promote analytical thinking
but fail to identify information literacy as a possible avenue
• Significant overlap in the field of misinformation studies, especially
the emerging field of technocognition
• Lewandowsky et al (2017) have made the most meaningful and
direct connections

18. Discussion
• IL is more commonly leveraged into professional fields of study
• Working with professional bodies could be a model for leveraging IL
• Confusion about definitions remains
• Use of academic definitions in workplace contexts / Own definitions
• Umbrella terms and plurality of literacies
• What does and does not travel?
• Narrower, reduced and generically represented understandings of IL
• IL as a central practice in learning about “what happens’ in a specific
context
• Leads to a simpler conception of IL that does not account for the complexity and
richness of learning

19. Conclusion
IL is present within disciplinary literature…
…but research is not connected to LIS literature / definitions
• Recommendations
• Publish outside of our field
• Disciplinary/Subject librarians should explore literature in professional
areas
• Continue to work with professional bodies
• Continue collaborating with teaching faculty
• Explore how IL has been leveraged in non HE areas, e.g. refugee studies
• Use peer review (where relevant) to highlight connections

20. Full paper
Hicks, A., McKinney, P., Inskip, C., Walton, G., and Lloyd, A..
(in press). Leveraging information literacy: Mapping the
conceptual influence and appropriation of information literacy
in other disciplinary landscapes. Journal of Librarianship and
Information Science.
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10145016

21. Thank you for listening
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/information-studies/forum-information-literacy