This volume in Emerald’s Library and Information Science series is aimed at a dual audience of academics and practitioners. It draws together articles addressing various aspects of both information literacy and information behaviour. One of the strengths of this volume is the breadth of its coverage, which spans Europe, North and South America, East and South East Asia, Australasia and Africa.
The volume is divided into four sections. The first offers a strategic overview of the field and includes chapters linking information literacy and life-long learning and information literacy and media literacy. Both these chapters are particularly helpful in framing the ideas presented in later sections. The second section, “Delivering information literacy education” consists of four case studies of information literacy programmes in higher education. Of these, Ward and Duke’s report of an approach for special education teachers studying by e-learning in Alaska is among the most original and interesting. In addition to the case studies, this section also includes a chapter on media literacy and representations of race and ethnicity, which, while raising some interesting ideas, needs further development and seems out of place within this volume.
The third section of the volume examines the links between university and work. Again, this is focused on formal education contexts, although the final chapter, which reports on information literacy training for agricultural and health sector workers in Tanzania, demonstrates how information literacy can successfully move beyond the academy and highlights some of the challenges this can present.
The final section, “Beyond Higher Education” includes two interesting chapters. Bruce et al. use the notion of informed learning to analyse information experiences in diverse settings. However, attempting to cover five communities within a single chapter is, perhaps, a little ambitious and offers little opportunity to develop any of these analyses in great detail. The final chapter reports on a participatory research and action approach within a Brazilian community and provides an in-depth commentary on this relatively novel methodology.
Overall, I feel this series of articles work well as an edited volume and includes new material both in terms of geographical coverage and methodology. Informing People’s Information Capabilities also fulfils its remit of appealing to both academic and practitioner audiences. However, it should be noted that the volume, as a whole, is more strongly focused around information literacy in educational contexts, rather than workplace and community settings, as might be suggested by the title.
