Information Literacy Skills for Business Careers

Librarians, college educators and accrediting agencies are placing increased emphasis on promoting the development of information literacy skills in their students. At the same time, the business community has acknowledged the importance of the “knowledge worker.” The problem is that corporations do not yet formally recognize information literacy as a core competency for their workers, even though these same corporations do in practice require information literacy skills on the job. We examined the job profiles of 21 business and finance occupations in the Department of Labor's O∗Net database to find out if the skills and work activities associated with these jobs demand an information-literate worker. Our research found that information literacy skills are in fact valued in the workplace and are an integral part of the work activities demanded by those occupations.