Opening keynote: Pam blogs from #ECIL2017

Bonnie Cheuk: Global head of digital knowledge and collaboration at Euroclear

 This is my summary of the opening keynote from #ECIL 2017 "Who care about IL in the workplace?"

Bonnie said that she aims to bring business perspective to the conference Bonnie confessed that she does not use the term "information literacy" at work, but has responsibility for many activities that come under the IL umbrella. The language used in the boardroom is very different, but executives realise that business is information driven.  Information literacy is often not listed as an essential competence in job advertisement, even though most jobs require essential competencies with information. Information is seen as an enabler to the delivery of the company's strategy, and this reminded me of Marchand's (2000) model "Competing with Information: A Manager's Guide to Creating Business Value with Information", which although quite elderly at 17 years old, is still a useful model that I use in my business intelligence module. It is important to look through the eyes of workplace when seeking to promote and develop IL in the workplace. The way people use information is just "part of the job" so IL is hidden. IL in the workplace is highly contextual. Information literacy can become a strategic planning framework, to ask what information is critical to achieving strategic goals? Information literacy can be a change management framework, to improve information flows within an organisation. For example how does the organisation encourage people-centric networking through communities of practice. It is important for information professionals to work closely with other stakeholders in order to develop these information practices. Bonnie gave an example of a customer strategic aim of improving customer satisfaction and how information and IL could be used to meet this strategic aim. Interesting that reflection was identified as an essential aspect of culture change. IL in the workplace becomes strategic, meaningful, practical, agile, tool agnostic, contextual and hidden. The challenges for IL practitioners include helping workers understand the logic and constraints of the information systems they work with, and understand their roles as information creators. IL researchers are encouraged to take a practice- and experiential based approach to their research, and to look beyond fixed notions of IL.