Current Situation of Information Literacy Pedagogy of Academic Libraries in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Information literacy is the ability of any national to locate, evaluate information, and analyse any problem of day to day life. It is scaffolding and intermingles with primary and higher education. According to the literature search, it is difficult to locate a unique format or curriculum in university level education and thus it is a dysfunctional situation. Information literacy programs have been discussed as the way of implementation to solve this problem. Many heated debates, conferences and seminars have been organized with the help of foreign experts to find a unique pedagogy and curriculum. As a result of development and deployment of Information Technology, information realm permeated the world. Every university has to take steps to include information literacy based credit- bearing courses in the curriculum with the purpose of making heuristic-reliant students in the university. The researchers observed available Information Literacy programs in all of the university libraries and found that they were unable to find a common structure relating to Information Literacy. Most of the university libraries have started this program under various names. It is also found that the curriculum and the assessment test varied from university to university. The researchers hope to apply their recommendations to the academic libraries to make a unique format and provide collaborative information to design literacy programs.