Designing information literacy programmes in Greek higher education institutions

Abstract

During the last two decades, mainly due to the huge increase of digital information accessible through Internet, user training by Higher Education (HE) libraries evolved from library instruction to elaborate information handling skills connected with student courses. Information Literacy (IL) has been defined as the set of capacities enabling an individual to understand when he needs information and has the skills to find, evaluate and exploit it effectively and ethically having learned how to learn. An international literature review demonstrated that IL instruction developments have being mainly taking place in HE libraries. Because IL instruction is a rather new development in Greek HE and relative research is limited, a survey including three questionnaires was performed with a main aim to describe how IL library instruction programmes are currently designed and delivered in Greek HE institutions which comprise 23 Universities and 16 Technological Educational Institutes (TEIs). Results from HE libraries showed that user instruction was offered by 77% of Greek HE institutions, while there were no course-integrated programmes or IL institutional policies. HE libraries employed various instruction techniques mainly targeting undergraduate and postgraduate students. Most libraries offered instructional programmes comprising basic library skills, while on average less than half of them included training on more advanced IL skills. In general IL instruction methods and content between University and TEI libraries were found to be similar. Instruction programmes were designed and delivered almost exclusively by librarians, usually not following any international IL standards, while in some Universities there was occasional faculty-librarian collaboration. Finally, Greek HE librarians considered that, although IL programmes are in their early stage of development, library instruction had a positive effect on the way students were handling information and listed course-integration and faculty-librarian collaboration as the best ways for the future development of IL programmes in Greek HE institutions.

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