How writing experts understand information literacy: a message to academic librarians

Abstract

While academic librarians have been encouraged to collaborate with writing experts to improve students’ academic writing and research competence, their collaboration is perhaps far from satisfactory due to the lack of mutual understanding. This study, therefore, interviewed writing experts to investigate their understanding of information literacy as a basis for meaningful collaboration. Findings reveal that writing experts have a simple and rough understanding of information literacy, cannot explain information literacy as a scholarly construct, and highlight the textual dimension of information literacy. Based on these findings, I suggest formal communication of information literacy theories and co-development of a text-based rubric of information literacy.