Foreword

For most people the term information literacy simply equates to the development of sound information skills, often in relation to the research process. Over the last three decades many volumes have been written on the subject as it has been operationalized. However, for me, information literacy means something different, and this is probably because I have not come to understand information literacy in the formal education context but through the study of workplace learning and of people as they engage with the multitude of practices and nuances that shape their workplace.

In my previous work as a vocational education librarian, I was concerned about why I could not get the apprentices in my own workplace to engage with good information literacy practices. I could not understand why they were not interested in learning the information literacy skills that I wanted to teach them. This situation puzzled me and eventually compelled me to undertake a doctoral study of information literacy in the workplace.

When I first began my study, I had every intention of studying the operationalized aspects of information literacy in the workplace (e.g. defining, locating and accessing), because this is what I had been taught that information literacy was. However, as my study progressed I began to understand that what we called information literacy in educational settings was different from what could be considered information literacy in the workplace—or in an everyday setting. It was only part of the information literacy equation. These differences fascinated me and led me to look for reasons why information literacy manifested in different ways. What I found in the workplace was a complexity that I had not anticipated. This complexity was underpinned by the different ways of learning that were available to workers, and more importantly, by the range of information sources and ways that information was used; sources that were not accounted for in the current conceptions of information literacy or in our practices as information literacy educators.

As my study progressed I also began to understand the critical role that other people play in the information literacy process. This led me to reassess information literacy not as the individual practice that librarians often think it is, but as a complex social practice: one that involves people co-participating in practices specific to their settings, and in the process, developing collective and common understandings, as they engage with knowledge that is heritaged through social, cultural, political and economic features that are laid down over time and through which practices are organized within a setting.

I also came to understand that becoming information literate was not only a textual practice, as we commonly conceive it to be in the library or educational setting. It was also linked to social information, which is tacit or nuanced in relation to workplace culture, or it may be derived from embodied sources that can never be articulated explicitly. This has led me to wonder, about the preparatory nature of educational institutions and to consider whether information literacy as it is currently conceived and taught in these institutions actually prepares people for life outside.

In writing this book, I hope to convey this complexity. At the very least, I hope that the message of this book is clear: information literacy is more complex than the sum of its skills. To understand this complexity we need to delve deeper into how information literacy practice is constructed through a range of landscapes and what social conditions influence that development.