Constructing librarians' information literacy expertise in the domain of nursing

Abstract

This article investigates negotiations of librarians' expertise in relation to information literacy at the micro-level, specifically in the domain of nursing education. A qualitaitve empirical framework is employed. The study draws on 18 semi-structured interviews, 16 with Swedish nursing students, one with a librarian and one with a nursing professor. Three themes on librarians' expertise emerge in the findings: technical-administrative, information searching and source evaluation expertise. The themes have different foci which are shown to be relatively independent, or dependent on the domain of nursing. The results indicate that it is important for librarians to navigate between two different strands of perceiving information literacy practices, either as generic or as embedded.