The Effective Components and Indicators of the Promotion of Information Literacy Skills among the Users of Iranian Public Libraries: A Delphi Study

Public libraries, as one of the most important and widely used channels in providing information have a significant collaborative role in training and improving the information literacy skills of their users. The study aims to determine the effective components and indicators of the promotion of information literacy skills in the context of public libraries in Iran considering the lack of skills of audience community, the lack of a coherent planning, as well as continuous information literacy training in the mentioned context.

The research is an applied study in terms of the purpose, including a mixed approach. The research data gathered from the content analysis of available information literacy frameworks and holding three rounds of the Delphi Panel of information literacy experts in Iran. Moreover, the research population consisted of four information literacy frameworks in the section of the documentary analysis, and in the section of the human community, it included eleven experts in the first round, ten experts in the second and the third rounds. For data analysis, the coding method and MAXQUDA were used.

The results of the Delphi panel found forty-eight indicators and seven main components, respectively as the following skills: understanding and recognizing the information need, information access, information assessment, information use, information combination, information dissemination, and meta-literacy. The meta-literacy is one of the most prominent components of the present research (including 18 indicators) as one of the main aspects of the differentiation of derived components of the results of this research in comparison with the previous frameworks and models of the information literacy for public libraries.

While removing available insufficiencies and enhancing the information literacy skills of the target community, the results of the study can also be effective with proper scientific flow in filling the research gaps in the field of information literacy in the context of public libraries in Iran.