Information Literacy in Russia: Survey of DIREKT Project

Abstract

In this work, we analyze responses of the Russian universities, research institutes and public libraries to survey questionnaire aimed to study the level of understanding and estimate the role of information literacy (IL) in the practices of Russian higher education. The survey was conducted in 2019 among 122 Russian organizations in 30 cities. In this work we study four reference groups: faculty, librarian, student/graduate student and others. We report that 90 % of the respondents emphasize the importance of IL for their organizations, 69 % agree that IL can be easily integrated into training courses of their organization, and 72 % consider such integration necessary. At the same time, only 24 % of respondents confirmed that IL was already well-integrated into the curricula of their organizations in 2019. and 53 % - that this was implemented at the level of individual modules. The majority (80 %) of the survey participants highly appreciate the participation of teachers and librarians of their organization in the development of IL and note the high level of their cooperation. Russian specialists highly estimate their competence in terms of knowledge and skills in the field of IL: 72 % of those who answered this question gave themselves good and very good ratings. Meanwhile, 80 % of the survey participants rated the ability to teach IL only as good and satisfactory.