Perceptions of Medical Librarians Towards the Importance of Information Literacy Skills

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out medical librarians' perceptions towards the importance of information literacy (IL) skills. A structured questionnaire, consisting of eight IL skills, was administered to the head librarians of all academic medical institutions in Pakistan. The respondents were asked to rate the importance of IL skills for their users on a 5-point Likert scale (1- Least important to 5-Most important). A total of 69 (60.5 %) usable questionnaires were returned out of 114 disseminated to the respondents. The IL skills about “accessing the needed information effectively and efficiently”, “identifying relevant, authoritative and reliable information sources”, “recognizing the need for information”, "verifying the relevance and quality of information sources” and “using information ethically and legally” got mean scores exceeding four from head librarians of both public and private sector medical institutions. However, IL skill "evaluating the information critically” received mean score less than four i.e., 3.94 from public sector medical librarians and IL skills "organizing information collected or generated in a logical way" and "using the selected information effectively to accomplish a specific task" although considered important but got lower mean scores (3.97 each) from private sector medical librarians. Respondents from both public and private sector medical institutions had considered all the eight IL skills important for their library users, meaning that library users must be adequately equipped with information competencies.