Librarians´ and University Teachers´ View on Information Literacy

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate on what perspective or perspectives university teachers and librarians at a medium-sized university in Sweden base their view on information literacy. More specifically, how do the respondents view their own information literacy and what opinions they have of their students’ information literacy as professionals. Three perspectives are used to interpret the results, the sociocultural perspective, the phenomenographical perspective and the behavioristic perspective.The method used is semi structured interviews with three university teachers and three librarians.Both librarians and teachers emphasize the importance of information literacy, for themselves as well as for students. The information literacy of the librarians involves being well acquainted with the subjects of the students. The teachers mention their ability to guide students in their search for sources and literature.Librarians consider the information literacy of students pretty poor or very poor, and one respondent says that more experienced students often have greater knowledge. The teachers agree that there are differences between more and less experienced students, but both positive and negative exceptions occur. Both librarians and teachers consider information literacy among students as important, because it is important to find relevant information to essays and papers. The three perspectives are connected or not connected to answers that the three librarians and the three teachers reply in interviews. This is important for how they do re-search, talk about and teach information literacy.Program: Bibliotekari