Information literacy: understanding peoples' information and learning experiences

As technology continues to proliferate, it becomes increasingly important to understand the information literacy experience that underpins peoples' engagement with their information environment in many contexts. In this paper, I present information literacy as the experience of using information to learn, empowering experiences that are essential to negotiating information environments of many kinds. The notion of information literacy as using information to learn is derived from the relational and experiential approach to information literacy which privileges peoples’ experiences as revealing the fundamental nature of information literacy. As this approach to information literacy has evolved, researchers have explored the information and learning experiences of many groups. I will profile a range of these studies, from formal and informal learning, and mainly in community contexts to highlight the critically important nature of information literacy in everyday life. These studies demonstrate the rich variation in experience that educators, policy makers, information professionals and others are able to support and make possible