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While LIS scholarship emphasizes the need to be multi-literate by equipping people with critical information literacy, digital literacy, and media literacy skills to combat the phenomenon of fake news in the contemporary information society, the concept of political information literacy is still in its infancy. This chapter addresses this gap by developing an understanding of political information literacy and challenges the premise that information professionals and information organizations should remain neutral in the face of phenomena like censorship through noise and disinformation. In this endeavor, it reviews contemporary information environments vis-à-vis the growth of fake news and misinformation, and current information literacy approaches utilized by information organizations. Thereafter, it explores several cognitive barriers, such as the role of confirmation bias, information avoidance, information groupishness, and information overload, which affects people’s ability to process information. Finally, it encourages information professionals to hold regular information sessions on politically charged topics, tackle the cognitive factors increasing misinformation, and cultivate multidisciplinary approaches to confront fake news.

The purpose of this paper is to explore young people’s conceptions of political information. The study sought to identify what political information sources young people encounter, how they construe these sources and the messages they communicate, and how the information experiences of young people may be better understood to inform information literacy interventions to support the development of political agency.

Using personal construct theory as a conceptual framework, repertory grid (RG) interviews were used to explore the different ways in which 23 young people aged 14-15 from a town in Northern England conceive of political information and how they evaluate its quality and authority.

The study identified the sources of information young people engage with for finding and receiving what they understand as political information. The results from the RG interviews indicated that young people use a wide range of sources of political information to become informed about politics and the world around them. These sources of information include family, friends, teachers, television news, newspapers, radio shows, comedy shows, social media and community meetings. Participants were aware that they passively encounter information sources as well as actively engage in debate and discussion with other sources. Some participants had difficulty critically evaluating the political information sources they encounter. The nature of young people’s experiences of political information varied greatly. The degree of complexity in the experiences of political information varied not only between participants but was also dependent on their particular relationship with the information sources under scrutiny.

The paper has implications for personal construct analysis as a research approach broadly, from the point of view of its use within library and information science research. It is the first study to apply the personal construct approach to the study of young people’s political information use and to consider implications for information literacy support that would have been difficult to access using other approaches.

The paper provides insight into an understudied area; that of young people’s conceptions of political information. This insight may be used to inform the improvement of political information provision and information literacy support for young people.

A deeper understanding of the different ways in which young people identify, engage with and use information for political purposes may contribute to a clearer understanding of young people’s information needs, ideally leading to improved political education and a strengthened democratic process.

The paper explores a relatively under-researched area of library and information science research, and does so using a relatively under-used method in the domain. Insights into the perceived characteristics of different sources of political information are novel and contribute to the development of information behaviour and information literacy fields in terms of information for empowerment and democracy.

This theoretical paper aims to draw on existing literature to examine the case for libraries to play a key role in the democratization of Oman. This paper is intended to provide foundation for further empirical research to develop a proposed future strategy for Oman’s library sector that will help facilitate the future political and economic transition of the Sultanate.

This is a theoretical study that draws on existing literature to examine the case for libraries to play a key role in the democratization of Oman.

There are four main ways in which public libraries support democratization are identified and discussed: providing access to information, ensuring inclusivity of knowledge, forming a community hub for interaction and dialogue and promoting social inclusion through internet access.

As Oman undergoes political and economic transition, this study and the follow-on empirical research will be highly significant in ensuring that the expansion of democratic processes in Oman proceeds peacefully and that the Sultanate provides a best practice model for Islamic democracy within the Gulf Cooperation Council region and globally.

To provide some theoretical considerations concerning information literacy so as to contribute to a theoretically informed point of departure for understanding information literacy and to argue that to be an information literate person is to have knowledge about information sources and that searching and using them is determined by an insight into how knowledge is socially organized in society.

Using concepts from composition studies that deal with the question of what a writer needs to know in order to produce a text, the paper outlines some ideas and key concepts in order to show how these ideas and concepts are useful to our understanding of information literacy. To demonstrate how information‐literacy is to have knowledge about information sources and that searching and using them is determined by an insight into how knowledge is socially organized in society, the paper takes a point of departure in Habermas' theory of the public sphere.

Concludes that information seeking competence is a sociopolitical skill, like reading and writing skills, connected to human activity. Searching for documents in information systems is a complex and sociopolitical activity. As an expression of human activity we might say that searching for documents and reading and writing constitutes each other. The genre knowledge necessary in reading and writing does also apply when seeking information in systems of organized knowledge as the forms of information determine what can be expected and found in these systems. Information literacy covers, then, the ability to read society and its textually and genre‐mediated structures. Information literacy represents an understanding of society and its textual mediation.

Locating an understanding of information literacy in a broader discursive framework requires us to rethink our hitherto concepts and understandings of information literacy as socio‐political skills and not mere technical search skills

Rarely is information literacy discussed and understood from social‐theoretical perspectives. This article illuminates how an analysis of information literacy from the perspective of the theory of the public sphere can open up for an understanding of information literacy socio‐political skills. Thus, the article has contributed with a new interpretation of information literacy.

While much discussion of information literacy in librarianship has focused on the educational roles that librarians play in promoting information literacy among the communities they serve, the information literacy education of librarians themselves has not received much attention. In response to an article written by the authors of this chapter, a surprisingly large number of librarians responded to them to try to contradict the assertions of their article using what was clearly disinformation. Drawing upon these attempts by librarians to spread misinformation in a professional context, this discussion explores the ways in which a lack of critical information literacy among information professionals can impact the ability of libraries and librarians to support their communities. This chapter also considers ways in which the librarians and library professional organizations could work to promote critical information literacy among current and future members of the profession.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2016.

The paper provides information about each source, describes the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy. It provides an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts. The selected bibliography is useful to efficiently keep up with trends in library instruction for busy practitioners, library science students and those wishing to learn about information literacy in other contexts.

This article annotates 424 English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, theses and reports on library instruction and information literacy published in 2021. The sources were selected from the EBSCO platform for Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and WorldCat, published in 2021 that included the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction,” or “information fluency” in the title, abstract or keywords. The sources were organized in Zotero. Annotations summarize the source, focusing on the findings or implications. Each source was categorized into one of seven pre-determined categories: K-12 Education, Children and Adolescents; Academic and Professional Programs; Everyday Life, Community, and the Workplace; Libraries and Health Information Literacy; Multiple Library Types; and Other Information Literacy Research and Theory.

The paper provides a brief description of 424 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy within 2021.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2019.

The paper provides a brief description of all 370 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction through an extensive annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2017 in over 200 journals, magazines, books and other sources.

The paper provides a brief description for all 590 sources.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.