Supporting Information Literacy Skills of Students for a Successful Transition to Higher Education

Abstract

A survey was undertaken on how libraries are supporting information literacy to primary and secondary school students for a successful transition to higher education. Thirty-five librarians were purposively selected and questionnaires were sent and telephone interviews done to understand the opportunities and challenges that are encountered in imparting information literacy skills to students in preparing them for higher education. The results revealed that there are information literacy programmes in group A schools and universities. It was discovered that tertiary institutions do mentorship programmes and train teacher and school librarians on how to offer information literacy sessions. The greatest opportunity was the availability of information communication technologies (ICTs) in most of the schools and the support that is offered by the government towards the use of ICTs in learning. However, the major challenge is there are few online resources that are locally produced. The author recommends the need to produce more local content online for the primary school students.