The Special Library Association will be holding its annual conference in Chicago, beginning this weekend and stretching into next week, much of it dealing with corporate librarianship. This may sound a little off-topic, since the general aim of this blog is for academic librarians. The two aren’t so dissimilar, however – what kind of information literacy will students need once they graduate and enter the workplace? What if they don’t have corporate librarians?
It’s a question that more than a few people have worked to answer. The topic came up at the recent CILIP meet, in which Mark Hepworth of Loughborough University came up with a very worthwhile presentation. This April, in the Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship (full citation below), James Sokoloff compared ACRL standards to the experiences of employers and their new staff. He found that most employers had problems realizing that information literacy is a skill, that most employees have to use only the information they are given (and are discouraged from seeking out others, especially with a subscription attached), and concluded that there were a few disconnects between the ACRL competencies and what is actually expected of the graduated student in the workplace. He recommends a “better balance between core information literacy standards and direct preparation for the experience of information usage in the workplace.”
What do you think?
Sokoloff, Jason. "Information Literacy in the Workplace: Employer Expectations." Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship 17.1 (2012):1.
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