Contextualising risk: the unfolding information work and practices of people during the COVID-19 pandemic

Fractured academic space: digital literacy and the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose

The study focussed on information literacy practices, specifically on how higher education staff managed the transition from established and routinised in-person teaching, learning and working practices to institutionally mandated remote or hybrid working patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design/methodology/approach

The qualitative study forms part of a broader research project, examining how information literacy and information practices unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Phase Three of this project, which forms the subject of this paper, employed semi-structured interviews to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the workplace and, in particular, the role that technology and digital literacy plays in enabling or constraining information literacy practices necessary for the operationalisation of work.

Findings

The complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a fracturing of workplace information environments and worker information landscapes by disrupting all aspects of academic life. The study recognises that whilst the practice of information literacy is predicated on access to modalities of information, this practice is also shaped by material conditions. This has implications for digital literacy which, in attempting to set itself apart from information literacy practice, has negated the significant role that the body and the corporeal modality play as important sources of information that enable transition to occur. In relation to information resilience, the bridging concept of fracture has enabled the authors to consider the informational impact of crisis and transition on people's information experiences and people's capacity to learn to go on when faced with precarity. The concept of grief is introduced into the analysis.

Originality/value

This study presents original research.

Risky (information) business: an informational risk research agenda

Purpose

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to suggest that the growing sociocultural theorisation of risk calls for a more robust research focus on the role that information and in particular, information literacy, plays in mediating hazards and danger.

Design/methodology/approach

Starting by tracing how information has been conceptualised in relation to risk through technoscientific, cognitive and sociocultural lenses, the paper then focuses on emerging sociocultural understandings of risk to present a research agenda for a renewed sociocultural exploration of how risk is shaped through the enactment of information literacy.

Findings

The paper identifies and examines how information literacy shapes four key aspects of risk, including risk perception, risk management, risk-taking and “at-risk” populations. These four aspects are further connected through broader themes of learning, identity, work and power, which form the basis of the sociocultural risk research agenda.

Originality/value

This paper is the first study bringing together the many understandings related to how risk is informed and establishes risk as a key area of interest within information literacy research.

Agency and liminality during the COVID-19 pandemic: Why information literacy cannot fix vaccine hesitancy

This article employs a sociological and dialogical information perspective to identify what shape information literacy practice takes for people who are hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccine. An information perspective places information and people’s relations with information at the centre of the inquiry. The study carried out 14 semi-structured interviews with UK adults who had not yet received or taken up their invitation to have the COVID-19 vaccine. Outcomes of this study suggest that information literacy practices related to vaccine hesitancy emerged through the liminal space and in relation to agentic performance, which was catalysed through engagement with experiential, corporeal and social information. This study has implications for the teaching of information literacy, in particular, the idea that being informed is an affirmative action that will automatically empower learners to make appropriate choices.

Health sciences librarian research and instruction services in pandemic information environments

This study examined research and instruction services provided by academic health sciences librarians in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 205 respondents (N = 205) completed an anonymous online survey about academic health sciences librarian involvement in providing research and instruction services during the global pandemic. In-depth literature searching services (86%, n = 176), curated COVID-19 research through guides (66%, n = 135), and systematic review consultations (53%, n = 109) were reported as the top three research services in demand. Librarians supported online teaching and learning at their institutions by providing online instruction for a course (92%, n = 189), facilitating access to licensed resources (73%, n = 150), and identifying open access and open educational resources (62%, n = 127). Overall, this study contributes to understanding pandemic-responsive academic library services to meet the unique needs of health sciences education and research in evolving COVID-19 pandemic information environments.

Information seeking amongst informal caregivers of people with dementia: a qualitative study

Purpose

This paper both supports previous findings relating to, and presents new insights into: the information needs and the information seeking processes of a sample of informal caregivers of people with dementia (in relation to their own needs and the interrelated needs of the people they are caring for); the extent to which such information needs are and are not being met; and the factors facilitating and hindering access to the right information.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopted a qualitative approach in the form of a thematic analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a sample of 20 informal caregivers from a range of different age groups, genders and caring roles.

Findings

Thematic analysis identified significant informational challenges, with a common perception that information seeking was onerous, requiring a proactive approach. Further challenges arose from a perceived lack of focus on carer needs coming up against the boundaries of professional knowledge and inconsistent information provision across the sample. Distance carers faced specific issues. A second theme of negative impacts described burdens arising from: difficulties in accessing information from a complex array of support services closure or change in services and unfulfilled information needs. Participants employed strategies to enable access to information, for example, being open about their caring role; and building formal or informal support networks. It is important to address emotional as well as cognitive dimensions of information needs.

Practical implications

This research highlights a need for health and social care, practice and policy to acknowledge and address information needs of this diverse population and build resilience. Above all, information seeking and sharing must be understood within the context of the emotional impact of caring, and recognition of these twin needs is crucial.

Originality/value

Whilst previous research has focussed on identifying specific needs and knowledge acquisition at cross-sections, a more holistic understanding of experiences is underexplored. This approach is needed to take into account broader contexts, diversity of experiences and different caring roles, e.g. primary and secondary carers, and in situ and distance carers.

The width and depth of literacies for tackling the COVID-19 infodemic

Purpose

A wide choice of varied information and data-based tools is reviewed in order to determine their ability treating symptoms of the COVID-19 infodemic. Several literacies and derived literacies, presumably having the ability to fulfil these roles are enumerated. There is also a review of the impact of applying deconstruction, understanding, and anticipation as well as of tools for mitigating overload phenomena, and communication overload.

Design/methodology/approach

The article reviews literacies deemed to promise reducing the impact of the information crisis, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Findings

A non-exhaustive review of literature, taken from sources of varied disciplines, resulting from reverse snowballing and forward citation mining confirmed that there is a wide choice of solutions from among literacies, derived literacies and other approaches that have the potential to combat annoyance and anxiety, caused by the infodemic.

Originality/value

No other, published research has looked at such a wide range of literacies and derived literacies, as well as other, related approaches linked them to the COVID-19 infodemic.

Saturation, acceleration and information pathologies: the conditions that influence the emergence of information literacy safeguarding practice in COVID-19-environments

Purpose

The purpose of this second study into information literacy practice during the COVID-19 pandemic is to identify the conditions that influence the emergence of information literacy as a safeguarding practice.

Design/methodology/approach

The qualitative research design comprised one to one in-depth interviews conducted virtually during the UK's second and third lockdown phase between November 2020 and February 2021. Data were coded and analysed by the researchers using constant comparative techniques.

Findings

Continual exposure to information creates the “noisy” conditions that lead to saturation and the potential for “information pathologies” to act as a form of resistance. Participants alter their information practices by actively avoiding and resisting formal and informal sources of information. These reactive activities have implications for standard information literacy empowerment discourses.

Research limitations/implications

The paper is limited to the UK context.

Practical implications

Findings will be useful for librarians and researchers who are interested in the theorisation of information literacy as well as public health and information professionals tasked with designing long-term health promotion strategies.

Social implications

This paper contributes to our understandings of the role that information literacy practices play within ongoing and long-term crises.

Originality/value

This paper develops research into the role of information literacy practice in times of crises and extends understanding related to the concept of empowerment, which forms a central idea within information literacy discourse.

Time and temporality in library and information science

Purpose

The article introduces selected theoretical approaches to time and temporality relevant to the field of library and information science, and it briefly introduces the papers gathered in this special issue. A number of issues that could potentially be followed in future research are presented.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors review a selection of theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of time that originate in or are of particular relevance to library and information science. Four main themes are identified: (1) information as object in temporal perspectives; (2) time and information as tools of power and control; (3) time in society; and (4) experiencing and practicing time.

Findings

The paper advocates a thorough engagement with how time and temporality shape notions of information more broadly. This includes, for example, paying attention to how various dimensions of the late-modern time regime of acceleration feed into the ways in which information is operationalised, how information work is commodified, and how hierarchies of information are established; paying attention to the changing temporal dynamics that networked information systems imply for our understanding of documents or of memory institutions; or how external events such as social and natural crises quickly alter modes, speed, and forms of data production and use, in areas as diverse as information practices, policy, management, representation, and organisation, amongst others.

Originality/value

By foregrounding temporal perspectives in library and information science, the authors advocate dialogue with important perspectives on time that come from other fields. Rather than just including such perspectives in library and information science, however, the authors find that the focus on information and documents that the library and information science field contributes has great potential to advance the understanding of how notions and experiences of time shape late-modern societies and individuals.

The missing link: Towards an integrated health and information literacy research agenda

Information forms one of the main commonalities shared between definitions of health literacy. However, information literacy research, which centres how people become informed within a specific setting, has been almost completely sidelined from health literacy scholarship. This oversight risks limiting understanding of how health literacy is practised as well as narrowing research discourses. It also forms a missed opportunity as the recent sociocultural turn creates a valuable point of synergy between each field. This paper carries out a narrative literature review to identify key areas where information literacy research could help to extend understanding about how people interact with information within health contexts. Centred on exploring theoretical and empirical work, the paper uses examples from literature to suggest that assumptions related to how information, models of information use, social dynamics of information environments, the outcomes of information activity and critical approaches to information practice are understood impact the scope and the reach of health literacy research and practice. The goal of this paper is to establish an initial, shared research agenda that places health and information literacy in dialogue rather than in isolation from each other.

Remembering COVID-19; or, a duty to document the coronavirus pandemic

Remembering the coronavirus pandemic represents an obligation to the present and the future. Illuminating the intersections between remembrance, documentary heritage, memory institutions and COVID-19, this article argues that libraries, archives and museums have a unique and urgent duty to document the coronavirus pandemic as it unfolds to help ensure that its associated recorded heritage is collected, preserved and archived for the present and future purposes of consultation, reference and remembrance. Explicit ‘duty to document the coronavirus pandemic’ policy provisions should be adopted by libraries, archives and museums to, first, strengthen their current COVID-19 documentary initiatives and, second, support other possible documentary initiatives related to this or future global health crises. By documenting COVID-19, it can be collectively remembered and future possible health crises can be better anticipated.