Information literacy developments and issues in Spain

The adoption of the information literacy (IL) agenda in Spain has been comparatively slow and fragmented due to cultural setbacks during the twentieth century. Since the late 1980s, however, developments in library services and staffing policies, reforms in education, and wide availability of ICTs, among other factors, have led to a brighter picture, with academic and public librarians all over the country engaged in IL activities for all types of users – though school libraries still lag far behind. The main problems still to be addressed seem to be much the same as in most comparable countries: IL as a responsibility for all learning facilitators, social awareness of lifelong learning needs, training of IL trainers, assessing the individual achievements and the institutional outcomes of IL training programmes, and a clear understanding of the remit and rationale for different literacies within the information society.