Facing the Future: Librarians and Information Literacy in a Changing Landscape
IFLA Satellite meeting in Limerick Ireland, August 14th – 15th 2014.
Sponsor: IFLA’s Information Literacy Section; hosted by Limerick Institute of Technology#
Title of Proposed Presentation
Information literacy as a factor in decision making for librarians related to user support in information
discovery
Abstract (500 words maximum)
Everyone has to make substantial efforts to reach and maintain an adequate level of information
literacy, for instance to discover relevant information efficiently. Academic and scientific librarians offer
services to find information and they always try to increase the quality of these services. So their clients
are confronted with changes in the methods to discover information. In the past years, digital search
services have evolved as follows: (i) online access to separate, individual, databases, (ii) federated
searching through several of these databases in 1 action, (iii) searching one of the huge information
discovery systems that have merged numerous databases to make retrieval easier and faster. Only few
companies offer such a huge discovery service. Some have been dealing mainly with libraries, including
Ebsco, Ex Libris, OCLC, Proquest, and their systems allow inclusion of the catalog database that is made
by the library that pays regularly to use such a system. One other and bigger company –Google-- has a
different business model and offers Google Scholar; this huge search system is more aimed directly at
end-users, offers services free of charge and allows integration with library services through inclusion of
the library link generator knowledge database. The author of this contribution has published a
comparison of such information discovery systems. Here we add considerations related to information
literacy, as follows.
On the one hand, we consider those libraries that have implemented one of the big library-oriented
information discovery services for their limited user community. Concerning information literacy, the
consequences are rather negative. New, additional knowledge related to the discovery system has to be
transferred by the library to the users. However, efforts made related to information literacy are always
limited. So, other valuable discovery systems like Google Scholar and more specific databases receive
less attention. Furthermore, this new, additional knowledge is applicable and fruitful only for 2 to 3
years, until the user leaves the organization or until the user needs more specialized search and retrieval
systems.
On the other hand, each user can keep on using and exploiting Google Scholar free of charge,
independently of any library, school or organization. Furthermore, many users should learn, understand,
and use Google Scholar anyway, because this service offers also features that are not offered by the
more traditional library-oriented services, such as retrieval of documents that are made available on
scientific www sites, ranking of search results in a useful way that takes into account the number and
value of citations received by each document, and a report of citations received by each document. So
when an additional discovery service is NOT implemented, then time and efforts can be directed more
towards the exploitation of other databases and retrieval systems that should be mastered anyway.
In conclusion, information literacy should be considered by librarians in their decision making in the
domain of information discovery systems.
Published as:
P. Nieuwenhuysen
Information Literacy as a Factor in Decision Making for Librarians Related to User Support in Information
Discovery.
In Book of Abstracts, Information Literacy Satellite Meeting in conjunction with IFLA World Library and
Information Congress 2014,
Facing the Future: Librarians and Information Literacy in a Changing Landscape.,
hosted by Limerick Institute of Technology, Limerick, Republic of Ireland., August 14-15, 2014, 126 pp.,
pp. 87-88.