The overarching issue for this keynote concerns the relationship between information literacy (IL) practice and research. My basic assumption is that different actors such as librarians and researchers in the IL field, have much to gain from being well-versed in each other’s interests and activities.

The presentation will be somewhat retrospective and personal in nature. I will begin with some reflections on my previous experiences as an academic librarian working with IL. I will then move on towards my present interest and activities in library and information science (LIS), which includes research on IL. This intellectual journey from practice to research spans 20 years. When I was working as a librarian, I began to come across LIS research of the sort that I now quite systematically monitor in my capacity as a researcher. I strongly believe that research contributed to inform and improve my teaching practice as a librarian. I aim to promote what I would like to term a ‘research-use’ approach to teaching IL and to do this, I will present an overview of selected LIS research that I think relevant to people who are engaged in IL issues.

As a librarian I was primarily engaged in IL as a goal for my educational activities. What was most important to me then was to enable my students to become information literate. As a researcher my goal is somewhat different. Now I am more inclined to conceive of IL as a study object, as something that can be observed through the study of what people do with, and through information. However, in line with my suggested research-use approach to IL teaching, I can see a clear connection between these two interests. From my current researcher-perspective, I will elaborate on this connection between teaching IL and research into how people learn through information. I will conclude with a suggestion for an empirically based understanding of IL, which I believe has the potential to serve as an important basis for IL teaching. In this way, IL be seen as an embedded capacity to understand and be familiar with how information is produced, sought, used, and valued in a certain practice.