A Comparative Study of Information Literacy Study Trends Between Korea and Other Countries Using Keyword Networks

Abstract

This study aims to examine and compare the trends of information literacy research in Korea and in some English-speaking other countries in the last two decades from 2001 to 2020 through keyword network analysis. With regard to English-speaking countries, author keywords were collected from articles retrieved from the Scopus database using the search term “information literacy.” For the Korean LIS field, the author keywords were collected from articles retrieved through a Korean academic database called “KCI” using the search term “information literacy.” For other countries, a total of 1163 articles and 2454 author keywords were collected for this study. Among these author keywords, the top 10 that appeared most were “academic libraries,” “library education,” “assessment,” “collaboration,” “higher education,” “undergraduate students,” “e-learning,” “information literacy instruction,” “instruction,” and “instructional design.” By comparison, a total of 120 articles and 352 author keywords were collected for this study in Korea. Among the keywords, eight that appeared most frequently were “information literacy instruction,” “school libraries,” “school librarians,” “library education,” “academic libraries,” “information services,” “user education,” and “public libraries.” Based on the study results, some recommendations for Korea’s IL research can be made as follows: First, particular attention needs to be given to the subjects of “assessment” and “collaboration” related to IL research. Second, the research related to the subject of IL has been carried out by a few researchers majoring in school libraries. Therefore, in addition to researchers in the LIS field, those from various other fields need to have an interest in the subject.