Information literacy: the meta-competency of the knowledge economy?An Exploratory Paper

Information literacy is a meta-competency that encapsulates the generic skills of defining, locating and accessing information. It is an essential and integral competency for both the knowledge worker and effective knowledge management. Librarians need to realign their roles from providers and organizers of information, to facilitators and educators of clients' information access and process. This requires librarians to develop partnerships with workplace communities so as to understand the role that information plays in the knowledge economy; and to develop a new language that is relevant to workplace communities and ties information literacy instruction to the authentic situations of the workplace. Information literacy is a meta-competency: it is the currency of the knowledge economy. The themes introduced in this paper are drawn from the current doctoral research of the author. The research examines what it means to individuals to be information literate in a workplace context, and how information literacy manifests and transfers in to workplace practice.