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Information literacy is a meta‑competency essential for knowledge workers and knowledge management, encompassing the skills of defining, locating, and accessing information and serving as the currency of the knowledge economy. The study aims to realign librarians as facilitators and educators, examining how individuals become information literate in workplace contexts and how this literacy transfers into practice. The approach draws on the author’s doctoral research, requiring librarians to partner with workplace communities, develop a relevant language, and align instruction with authentic workplace situations to study how information literacy manifests and transfers.
Information literacy is a meta-competency that encapsulates the generic skills of defining, locating and accessing information. It is an essential and integral competency for both the knowledge worker and effective knowledge management. Librarians need to realign their roles from providers and organizers of information, to facilitators and educators of clients’ information access and process. This requires librarians to develop partnerships with workplace communities so as to understand the role that information plays in the knowledge economy; and to develop a new language that is relevant to workplace communities and ties information literacy instruction to the authentic situations of the workplace. Information literacy is a meta-competency: it is the currency of the knowledge economy. The themes introduced in this paper are drawn from the current doctoral research of the author. The research examines what it means to individuals to be information literate in a workplace context, and how information literacy manifests and transfers in to workplace practice.