Practices of community representatives in exploiting information channels for citizen democratic engagement

Abstract

The purpose of the research was to investigate the practices of elected, yet unpaid, community councillors in Scotland as they exploit information channels for democratic engagement with citizens. Its focus is both novel and significant in that it considers the information literacy of a group that has not been studied before: volunteer representatives active in hyperlocal government. The primary means of data collection was semi-structured interviews of one hour in length with 19 community councillors. Research design and data analysis were informed by the SCONUL 7-Pillar Model of Information Literacy, and by Activity Theory. The main finding of the analysis is that community councillors engage with a range of information sources and tools in their work, the most important of which derives from local authorities. Three recommendations emerge from the analysis. These relate to: (1) information literacy training; (2) valuing information skills; and (3) the role of the public library service in supporting community council work.

An information literacy lens on community representation for participatory budgeting in Brazil

“…In contrast, there has been a tendency to neglect representatives as stakeholders in information science research, albeit with some exceptions such as Baxter, Marcella and Illingworth (2010). Understanding the IL practices of community representatives is important because they often act as information intermediaries (or proxies) between the government and the citizens in the communities they represent Hall et al, 2018a). Any such analysis should take into account social and geographical context.…”

“…Others have also proposed a model that incorporates everyday life into IL models (Martzoukou & Sayyad Abdi, 2017). Despite limitations noted by Hall et al (2018a), the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) ( 2011) model provides an approach to categorising activities, supplementing the general definition provided by CILIP (2018). Everyday life and embodied models of IL provide further context.…”

“…Successful participation in democratic processes carries a risk of information overload, for citizens, for officials charged with implementing the decisions (Davies et al, 2021), and for citizens' representatives (Hall et al, 2018a). Representatives work together to gather and evaluate information, to make decisions, then share these with government officials, and (importantly) the rest of their community.…”

“…It provides an opportunity http://dx.doi. org/10.11645/17.2.5 for evaluation against previous research into the information practices of community (or hyperlocal) representatives found in Scotland Hall et al, 2018a).…”

Evidence of improved students’ perceptions towards online research: pre and post assessment study of information literacy and research support

“…For supporting pedagogical enhancement in higher education, several renowned models have been adopted globally. Among them, Big6 (Eisenberg and Berkowitz, 2003;Mustadi, 2019), Chartered Institute of Information Professionals (CILIP's) IL Skills (CILIP, 2012;CILIP Information Literacy Group, 2018;Griffiths and Glass, 2011), SCONUL's Seven Pillars of IL (Bent and Stubbings, 2011;Hall et al, 2019;Sandercock, 2016) and six-core standards of IL, established by Australian and New Zealand Institute of IL (Carr et al, 2011;Miller, 2014;Wang, 2013) are mentionable. Though until recently; they have been exposed very little Pre and post assessment study critical examination, these models have widespread acceptance among librarians and other educators (McNicol et al, 2014).…”