Bibliometric analysis of the literature on the teaching of information literacy skills in Sub-Saharan African institutions of higher learning

Abstract

Information literacy skills (ILS) have increasingly become indispensable in the higher education landscape largely due to the explosion of information which is generated by the Internet and a myriad of information communication technologies (ICTs). Known differently as bibliographic instruction, user education, user instruction, library instruction, instruction services, and libraries and learning, ILS boasts of an impressive history spanning more than ten decades during which a considerable body of multidisciplinary literature has been generated. However, although the impressive contributions of ILS are self-evident, bibliometric studies focusing exclusively on Sub-Saharan African contexts are scarce. Consequently, there is a limited understanding of how ILS are taught in the broader African institutions of higher learning landscape. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how this core skill is taught in the African context. The study employed bibliometric analysis and review methods to explore the profile and research trends in information literacy skills in African universities and higher education institutions. Data were collected from the Web of Science database‟s core collection from 1990-2021 (31 years) using a variety of search strategies. Data were analysed through Web of Science‟s Clarivate Analytics and some data were exported to Microsoft Excel to produce images and graphs. The findings of the study revealed: the year 2020 with the most publications; the University of South Africa the most productive research institution; E. E. Baro, the most prolific author in writing on IL; the most research productive country Nigeria; the most dominant publishing outlet journals and the most citations were received in the year 2020.