75 lessons learned for enhancing information literacy programs. From Ibero-America to universities worldwide
| Date | 10 October 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-04-2017-0032 |
| Pages | 471-489 |
| Published date | 10 October 2017 |
| Author | Alejandro Uribe-Tirado,María Pinto |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library & information services |
75 lessons learned for enhancing
information literacy programs
From Ibero-America to universities worldwide
Alejandro Uribe-Tirado
Inter-American School of Library Science, University of Antioquia,
Medellin, Colombia, and
María Pinto
Department of Documentation, University of Granada –de Cartuja Campus,
Granada, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of thisstudy has the aim of expanding lessons learned that were originallydetected
for information literacy(INFOLIT) programs in Ibero-American universities (from LatinAmerica, Spain and
Portugal),this paper presents lessons learned for enhancing equivalent programsoffered by other universities
around the world.
Design/methodology/approach –As this paper is a comparativeliteraturereview,the
methodology involved three stages. Initially, a documentary analysiswascarriedoutto identify the
texts published during the past five years –since 2013 –reporting a categorization of experiences and
cases of international INFOLIT programs and their corresponding lessons learned. Second, we
conducted a content analysis of these publications to uncover the classification, identification and
frequency of the lessons learned. A third comparative step consisted of analyzing the similarities of
these lessons when compared to those reported in similar research on Ibero-American universities
(Uribe-Tirado, 2013).
Findings –From the 75 lessonslearned from INFOLIT programs in Ibero-Americanuniversities, 65 lessons
(87 per cent) were identifiedas also present in universities elsewhere. These similarities givean account of the
possibilities forcollaborative learning and benchmarking thatINFOLIT programs could achieve with regard
to content, pedagogy, learning objects and evaluation if there were more networking and more common
participation in sharing experiences,with appropriate adaptations to contextual, technologicaland idiomatic
variations.
Originality/value –As a comparativeliterature review, this paper makes a significant contributionto the
internationaladvancement of INFOLIT in higher education, as it correlatesthe lessons learned from INFOLIT
programs in Ibero-Americanuniversities with those from other countries. This providesa global view of the
lessons learned aboutINFOLIT, which to date have not been reported with sucha wide scope and number of
lessons.
Keywords Universities, Libraries, Information literacy, Lessons learned, Ibero-America,
Collaborative work
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The theory and practice of information literacy (INFOLIT) continues to evolve, as
highlighted in the extensive literaturepublished on the topic both from Ibero-America (Latin
American countries, Spain and Portugal) and worldwide. Drawing upon an extensive
literature review and documentary analysis, this paper presents a series of lessons for
Lessons
learned for
enhancing
information
471
Received28 April 2017
Revised3 August 2017
Accepted3 August 2017
Informationand Learning Science
Vol.118 No. 9/10, 2017
pp. 471-489
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2398-5348
DOI 10.1108/ILS-04-2017-0032
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2398-5348.htm
enhancing INFOLIT programs in universities. It expands upon a previous work that
identified 75 lessons learned from INFOLIT programs in Ibero-American universities
(Uribe-Tirado, 2013), by establishing that they are present at universities in other countries
and determining the similarities among INFOLIT programs from Ibero-America and other
geographical locations.
This study contributes to the research of the “Información, Conocimiento y Sociedad”
(Information, Knowledge and Society) Group of the Escuela Interamericana de
Bibliotecología at the Universidad de Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia) and the e-
INFOSFERA Group of the Documentation Department at the Universidad de Granada
(Spain). This joint effort represents a contribution to INFOLIT at a theoretical and
practical level (Uribe-Tirado and Pinto, 2013,2014,2015;Pinto et al., 2015b,2015a). The
topic of the 75 lessons learned was developed primarily in the doctoral thesis Lessons
learned in Information Literacy Programs at Universities in Ibero-America (Uribe-Tirado,
2013), which achieved an important compilation and categorization of the INFOLIT
programs conducted at Ibero-American universities (20 Latin American countries, Spain
and Portugal). These 75 lessons learned were compiled after analyzing 301 INFOLIT
programs and they were categorized as follows: 20 lessons related to the social and
organizational context, 24 to teaching and research, 17 to learning and 14 to evaluation.
Table IV summarizes these 75 lessons.
Since its publication, this research has been of great interest in the Ibero-American
context, first in Spanish (Uribe-Tirado,2013) and later in Portuguese (Uribe-Tirado, 2014). It
has been highly referenced and used by different authors and institutions. However, this
work has not yet been fully acknowledged in the English-speaking context, although it has
already been mentioned in key areas of INFOLIT around the world, such as on Sheila
Webber’sinfluential “Information LiteracyWeblog”[1].
This paper aims to make these lessons learned from Ibero-America known to a wider
audience, so that they can be a reference for enhancing collaborative work from south to
north. In addition, it examines the lessons learned that have been reported during recent
years from worldwide contexts beyond Ibero-America. In this way, it generates a
contribution that allows a general consideration of the similarities, which may enable
further collaboration and participation, based on the INFOLIT programs that are being
carried out by the universities, and that are appropriate for the common context of higher
education.
Thus, with these lessonslearned, it is possible to support the continuous improvementof
INFOLIT programs, and their general implementation may allow reaching a higher level of
information competenciesof university students around the world.This means addressing a
key purpose currently promoted by various reports and projects from the International
Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) (2013) and the United Nations
Educational, Scientificand Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (Horton,2013, 2014): achieving
human well-being in the twenty-firstcentury.
Theoretical background
This work is theoretically supported by various studies published over recent years, which
have led to the proposal of an INFOLIT macro-definition (Uribe-Tirado, 2009). Based on 20
key definitions from different authors and institutions that have been proposed in recent
decades it allows a comprehensiveview of INFOLIT as follows:
The teaching-learning process designed for an individual or group of people, under the
professional leadership and guidance of an educational or library institution, using different
teaching strategies and learning environments (classroom, mixed-blended learning or virtual). Its
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