The American Library Association defines Information Literacy (IL) as “…a set of abilities requiring individuals to ‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (ALA, 1989). The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) (2000) underlined information literacy as the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.
Information literacy is more important than ever. The outbreak of COVID-19 poses new challenges to concepts of information literacy. Research trends studies have emerged in Information Literacy (IL) to determine research manner and changes before and after COVID-19. The aim of this study was to reveal the IL concept and relationship between the concept of IL before and after the pandemic. Also, common keywords were examined. The period between 2016-11-01 and 2019-12-31 was considered as pre-pandemic, and between 2020-01-01 – 2022-11-26 as post-pandemic, in both groups. Trend analysis on the information literacy pre- and post-pandemic period was performed by VOS viewer software and in-app algorithms thereby visualizing ISI database on the related concept (van Eck & Waltman, 2010). The co-occurrence analysis of the keywords of articles conducted to reveal common concepts and the most associated concepts.
The data set was extracted from ISI Web of Science databases and included 3141 articles published between 2016 and 2022. While 1701 of the articles were from pre COVID-19, 1440 articles were from post COVID-19.
Using a bibliographic mapping method, we pursued two research questions listed below
- What are the common concepts on maps before and after COVID-19?
- What are the most associated concepts with information literacy in both maps?
Results
After the bibliographic analysis of common keywords of the sample articles, 25 most common concepts before and after the pandemic were obtained and visualized. Some prominent concepts before the pandemic were digital literacy, assessment and collaboration, while misinformation, digital divide and disinformation were observed in the post-pandemic period. Also link strengths showed, health literacy, critical thinking and misinformation were the most associated concepts revealed from the maps. Detailed findings about the concepts and the implications of the results will be discussed in light of the IL – COVID-19 relationship.
References
- American Library Association (ALA), Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL). (2000). Information literacy competency standards for higher education. Retrieved December 4, 2022 from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105645.
- American Library Association. (1989). Presidential committee on information literacy: Final report (2006). Retrieved December 4, 2022 from http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential.
- Van Eck, N., & Waltman, L. (2010). Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics, 84(2), 523–538.
Buket Akkoyunlu1, Nihal Menzi Çetin2
1Çankaya University, Ankara, Turkey; 2Adana Alparslan Türkeş Science and Technology University, Turkey
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