Educators of the Information Society: Information Literacy Instruction in Canadian Informational Cities

Abstract

As information literacy is a key competence of the information society, information literacy instruction in public as well as academic libraries is crucial. Today, librarians do not only act as providers of information but also as educators of the information society's citizens. The rapid development of information and communications technologies is constantly changing the way we interact with information, making it difficult to keep up to date with instructional trends. This study aims to assess the perceived quality of information literacy instruction in libraries of Canada's informational cities: Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Therefore, librarians were interviewed by means of a questionnaire inspired by the SERVQUAL diagnostic tool. The questionnaire comprises of two parts: The first part consists of questions regarding information literacy instruction, in the second part the focus is on the seven competence areas of information literacy. Based on the difference between the librarians' "Expectation" and "Experience", gap scores for all questionnaire items were calculated and are now being presented and discussed.

Keywords

• Information Literacy
• library instruction
• Canada
• Toronto
• Montreal
• Vancouver
• informational city