Working Conditions Are Learning Conditions: Understanding Information Literacy Instruction through Neoliberal Capitalism

Abstract

Neoliberal capitalism’s demands for efficiency and innovation have greatly impacted North American academic libraries and the work conducted in them, including information literacy instruction. The divisive forces of neoliberalism must be met with resistance, and libraries hold the potential for generating an information literacy praxis where learners engage information with a critical consciousness instead of a consumerist one. Using library labor conditions and the contradictions between innovation and student learning as focal points, we argue that academic library workers should seek to center attention to inequities and injustices in the information economy and scholarly information systems in their instruction, identify shared issues within their workplaces to organize around, and build coalitions outside libraries to transform what is possible for academic labor and student learning alike.

Keywords

• information literacy
• neoliberalism
• capitalism