Information Literacy and Scholarly Investigation: a British perspective

The phrase, ‘information literacy’, is now well established in library and information science but it is much less familiar to practitioners in other disciplines, even those upon which information literacy impinges. It has yet to gain any significant coverage in education, for example, despite the fact that teaching the basic principles associated with the concept can help learners when undertaking various forms of scholarly work. This paper considers the often overlooked links between information literacy, scientific inquiry and the generic research process, and concludes by advocating that education in schools would benefit from concentrating on the axioms that underpin all three areas. Nonetheless, the author recognizes problems inherent in such a stance. In particular, he notes that activities which may be believed to lead to the acquisition of information literacy are frequently undermined in schools by detrimental attitudes and practices, some of which give priority to other concerns.