Information literacy in the professional literature: an exploratory analysis

TLDR

Information literacy has expanded beyond librarians and educators to broader professional contexts. The study reviews information literacy publications and emerging trends from 1999–2009 in Web of Science. The authors performed statistical descriptive analysis of publication metadata and a content analysis of keywords and abstracts from Web of Science. The analysis reveals that information literacy is increasingly associated with health and medicine, highlighting a growing need for such literacy in that domain.

Abstract

Purpose The current study aims to review the different publications dealing with information literacy and the emerging trends reflected over the ten years, 1999‐2009, in the Web of Science (WOS) database. Design/methodology/approach The study presents both a statistical descriptive analysis of document type, subject areas, authors, source titles, publication years, languages, countries and keywords of publications extracted from the WOS database, as well as a thorough content analysis of keywords and abstracts extracted from the WOS database. Findings The main results suggest that the term information literacy has various characteristics in an additional and interesting context: health and medicine. This finding may reflect a tendency of association between information literacy and health and medicine and stresses people's need for information literacy in this specific context. Originality/value The current study emphasises the notion that information literacy is no longer an issue for librarians or educators only.