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6 - Information Literacy Competencies for Career Transitions in the Digital Age
- Edited by Gunilla Widén, José Teixeira
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- Book:
- Information Literacy and the Digitalisation of the Workplace
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 17 December 2023
- Print publication:
- 01 June 2023, pp 71-100
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Summary
Introduction
The digitalisation of society is an issue subject to scholarly attention (for example, Tsekeris, 2018; Valenduc and Vendramin, 2017, 2–4), particularly in respect of its reshaping of economic, political and cultural landscapes, including the transformation of work (for example, Toven-Lindsey, 2017). It is now possible to delegate decision-making for workplace practices such as hiring, training and on-boarding to non-human entities and ‘algorithmic bosses’ and work placements can be reconfigured into an online format (Beer, 2017; Duffy, 2020, 103; de Haas et al., 2020). While workplaces are subject to continuous change and pressure to innovate (Oeij et al., 2019), automation and alterations to the spatiotemporal organisation of labour also impact individual work experiences (Hoskyn et al., 2020; Kingma, 2019; Gill, 2020, 146).
In addition to the challenges associated with working within such an environment, many workers face considerable job precarity: an increased experience of inequality and insecurity accompanied by the destabilisation of institutions (Kwon and Lane, 2016, 10). Job precarity has grown steadily since the 2008 financial crisis and has led to the development of multiple anti-precarity agendas that call for an improvement of working conditions through trade union and government engagement (Paret, 2016, 111). When employers no longer offer job stability and/or vertical progression opportunities to their employees, working trajectories can become disassociated from the identification of a single career for life (Rodrigues and Guest, 2010). Thus, individuals need to be prepared to navigate a number of career transitions across their working lifespan (Bezanson, Hopkins and Neault, 2016; Lyons, Schweitzer and Ng, 2015; Todolí-Signes, 2017).
Attitudes to work are also changing in ways that may prompt voluntary career mobility and necessitate an increased preparedness for managing changeable career pathways. In pursuit of a better work-life balance, greater job satisfaction and career advancement opportunities, many workers seek more fulfilling work (for example, Chan et al., 2020; Kidd, 2008). This trend has been especially pronounced in recent years. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a global phenomenon known as ‘the great resignation’, whereby large numbers of workers resign from their jobs in protest at poor working conditions (Sheather and Slattery, 2021, 1).
Foreword
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- By Hazel Hall, Professor of Social Informatics, Edinburgh Napier University
- Edited by Maria J. Grant, Sen Barbara, Hannah Spring
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- Book:
- Research, Evaluation and Audit
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 08 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 31 October 2013, pp xiii-xvi
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Summary
I was delighted when the editors of Research, Evaluation and Audit: key steps in demonstrating your value invited me to write the foreword to this new work. This volume of contributions has been designed to meet the needs of practitioners eager to conduct research to inform their own practice and to develop the library and information science (LIS) evidence base. As such, it addresses an ongoing concern of the LIS community: the research–practice gap. In your hands is an artefact of the efforts of some key actors within the LIS research and practitioner community to close the gap by sharing their knowledge and expertise so that others can undertake their own research projects.
Although the research–practice gap has been evident for some time, since 2009 renewed investment in the UK LIS research infrastructure, alongside a number of smaller parallel initiatives, has drawn greater attention to it. The most significant of these initiatives derived from a base of informal discussions about the state of UK LIS research in 2006. Five key stakeholders – the British Library, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), JISC, the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and the Research Information Network (RIN) took action in 2009 by making a three year investment to facilitate a coordinated and strategic approach to LIS research across the UK. Known as the Library and Information Science Research Coalition, from the start this project focused on five key goals. Amongst these were two that relate directly to the content of Research, Evaluation and Audit (1) to promote LIS practitioner research and the translation of research outcomes into practice; and (2) to promote the development of research capacity in LIS.
In the final year of its implementation in 2011–12 the Coalition's main aim was articulated as ‘supporting practising librarians and information scientists, both in how they can access and exploit available research in their work, and in their own development as practitioner researchers’.