What is it about?
Information literacy (IL) within an everyday life connected to searching for, critically evaluating and using information effectively. In everyday life people need useful information for making informed decisions that are of significant value to them and their communities around citizenship, health, well-being issues and, generally, their overall quality of life. This paper therefore examines the effective use of information and its impact in relation to people's everyday life situations.
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Why is it important?
The paper offers a comprehensive review of published research between 2000-2016. It focuses on different people and their experiences with information in everyday life (e.g., older adults/fourth age/retired people, young people/men, early years/preschool, nursery, aging women, parents, retired, citizens, immigrants, unemployed, job seekers, carers of others). The paper highlights the implications of the lack of information literacy as a 'mind-set' for people and identifies the key players in the advocacy of information literacy within different everyday life settings. The review suggests that the outcome of everyday life IL research has the potential to inform the design and delivery of evidence-based information services offered by decision makers and practitioners in different sectors and communities. It also demonstrates that this area of research is still new and more varied contexts need to be explored to nurture a detailed understanding of the use and impact of information in people's everyday lives. It is therefore is useful for researchers who are looking for a agenda for further research exploration in this area and policy decision-makers who develop strategies for the dissemination and use of information for citizens in everyday life settings .
Perspectives
Writing this paper was an enlightening experience which offered the opportunity to myself and my co-author to explore information literacy issues from a wide range of different perspectives in everyday life. In a modern world that is characterised by misinformation and a fast pace in terms of how we process and absorb information (often without enough time to critically think about it and consider how important it is for our wellbeing and decision-making) this is an area that is extremely important to research. We have also developed a model that it could be applied within the context of follow-up research and it would be interesting to see how it could be useful within different everyday life settings throughout the world. We would therefore be very interested to hear your views and engage in collaboration and further research, even if you are coming from a different knowledge domain.
Konstantina Martzoukou
Robert Gordon University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Towards an everyday life information literacy mind-set: a review of literature, Journal of Documentation, July 2017, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/jd-07-2016-0094.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Everyday life Information Literacy: A Review of Literature
A presentation at the European Conference of Information Literacy. Prague. October 2016. It presents a review of literature in the area of information seeking behaviour and information literacy within the context of everyday life.
Everyday life information literacy: a review of literature.
Open Access Institutional Repository at Robert Gordon University which contains the abstract of this work and further links.
Contributors
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