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

1 Introduction

The twenty-first century information society calls for practical, interdisciplinary knowledge that transcends academic fields rather than knowledge pertaining to only one specific discipline. Practical knowledge involves processing and utilizing vast amounts of information that serve as building blocks for creating new knowledge (Lee 2012). It is virtually impossible for an individual to gain practical knowledge through short-term public education. In other words, practical knowledge is not attained only through public education, like through schools, and does not last a lifetime. Further, lifelong learning is underscored in the information age and the key to lifelong learning is to develop the ability to remedy problems one might face throughout one’s life, whether in one’s career or in one’s everyday life.

In this context, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2019) insisted that learners must be equipped with the following three key skills: 1) learning and motivation skills, 2) digital literacy skills, and 3) career and life skills. Among these three skills, digital literacy skills include information literacy, media literacy, and information and communications technology literacy skills. It posits that information literacy (IL) is imperative for learners in the twenty-first century information era and that it enables lifelong learning.

IL is a research topic comprising many different fields including library and information science (LIS). In particular, for the LIS field, the interest in IL started with library user instruction in the late nineteenth century. Therefore, interest in IL and its research tradition is longstanding in the LIS field. At this point, it would be meaningful to review the results of past academic achievements. In addition, as Lee (2016a) stated, “it is a significant task for scholars to review previous research topics and areas to understand the academic trends in a given field” and “through these analytical studies, it is possible to look back on previous academic achievements and predict the future direction of the academic field” (263).

According to Sproles, Detmering, and Johnson (2013), nearly 90% of IL research papers published in the 1980s through the early 2000s were written in English, and about 51% of the papers were published in the United States.

Compared with the case of English-speaking countries, the article published in 1976 was the first related to the topic of IL in the Korean LIS field. Afterwards, only eight papers were published on the subject until the 1990s in Korea. It was not until the 2000s that scholars’ interest in IL started to heighten in Korea. Therefore, interest in IL might be relatively new, but the research achievements regarding IL are steadily increasing.

In this context, it is very consequential to compare Korea’s IL research findings with those in English-speaking countries (called other countries in this paper), which can be regarded as having accumulated a considerable volume of IL research.

Although some studies have analyzed domestic and international information literacy research trends, few have utilized a network analysis method and analyzed research trends comparatively in Korea and other countries. Based on this understanding, this study aims to examine and compare the trends of IL research in Korea and English-speaking other countries through keyword network analysis. As Lee (2016b) mentioned, “it would be an important contribution to compare scholars’ viewpoints on a specific subject from one country with others’ to gain a deeper understanding of the trends and characteristics of that subject” (73).

The purpose of this study is to compare research trends of IL studies of Korea with that of other countries using social network analysis in particular, the keyword network analysis method. To achieve the study purpose, the characteristics of the keyword network of IL studies, degree centrality, and betweenness centrality of the keywords were investigated.

2 Methodology

This study uses the social network analysis method. There are some basic concepts such as “actor or node,” “relationship or link,” “subgroup,” and “network” in social network analysis. The actor or node can be a person, company, product, organization, or country. In social network analysis, all the actors are regarded as socially connected with other actors. We call the connection links. According to Lee and Sohn (2016), social network analysis assumes “that actors within a group are mutually dependent, that resources are distributed through relationships, and that the behavior patterns of group actors are limited or encouraged by the actor’s social position within the group” (37). In this context, social network analysis can be used to measure relationships and patterns of relationships between actors. Keyword network analysis method is another type of social network analysis. In keyword network analysis, keywords are regarded as actors or node; further, researchers try to find relationships between keywords. Dotsika and Watkins (2017) mentioned that “a group of publications in a thematic domain is represented as a conceptual network of keywords (nodes) and keyword relationships (edges)” (116). In this context, keyword network analysis, in general, was used to find a knowledge structure of specific research areas. As Dotsika and Watkins (2017) stated, “by substituting keywords for actors, the method investigates, maps and analyses the thematic relationships, trend distribution and thematic flows within a semantic domain” (116). As Madani and Weber (2016) note, keywords can be good representatives for research purposes. Furthermore, according to Yoo et al. (2019), “researchers identified various types of networks based on how they defined the relationships using bibliographic data, such as citations among articles, cocitations among authors, and co-occurrences among keywords” (158). Therefore, this study uses keyword network analysis to investigate research trends of IL.

3 Data Collection and Analysis Process

4 Results of the Keyword Network Analysis

4.2 Network Characteristics in Other Countries

First, the network structure of the total author keywords is shown in Figure 1. It is very hard to analyze the network characteristics using Figure 1; therefore, this study recalculated the network structure using the keywords over 10 nodes and four links as shown in Figure 2. The keywords over 10 nodes and four links were selected for accurate analysis in keeping the network structure.

Figure 1:

Network structure of the total keywords in other countries.

Figure 2:

Network structure of the keywords that ranked highly (appeared more than 10 nodes and four links). The mean distance between the nodes was 2.383.

Next, the degree centrality was calculated. Among these, 30 author keywords were ranked highly (see Figure 3). According to the results, “academic libraries,” “library education,” “assessment,” “higher education,” “e-learning,” “teaching,” “undergraduate students,” “collaboration,” “information literacy instruction,” and “instructional design” were ranked as the top 10 keywords that had a high degree centrality. In other words, these 10 keywords were connected with many other keywords. The detailed findings were as follows:

1. The keyword “academic libraries” had the highest degree centrality. This keyword was connected with the keywords “library education,” “higher education,” “collaboration,” “assessment,” and “teaching.”

2. The keyword “library education” had the second-highest degree centrality. This keyword was connected with the keywords “librarian faculty collaboration,” “instructional design,” “undergraduate students,” and “higher education.”

3. The keyword “assessment” was connected with the keywords “academic librarians,” “first year students,” “evidence based practice,” “survey,” “instruction,” “teaching,” “academic libraries,” “library education,” “undergraduate students,” and “collaboration.”

Figure 3:

Degree centrality of top 30 keywords in other countries.

4.3 Betweenness Centrality and Community Betweenness Dendrogram in Other Countries

We can find the keywords that act as intermediaries of the other keywords through the analysis of betweenness centrality. Furthermore, the keywords that can be extended for the different subjects can be found through the betweenness centrality. In other words, the keywords of higher betweenness centrality are important keywords that make connections with the other keywords.

The top 30 author keywords were found through the calculation of betweenness centrality as with the degree centrality. According to the results shown in Figure 4, the keyword “academic libraries” had the highest degree of betweenness centrality (0.220154). In addition, the keywords “library education,” “teaching,” “digital literacy,” “assessment,” “higher education,” “active learning,” “social media,” “education,” and “e-learning” were ranked as top 10 keywords that had a high betweenness centrality. As a result, the keyword “academic libraries” mediates between and connects specific subjects of information literacy research. This means that these keywords can be extensible to other subjects.

Figure 4:

Betweenness centrality of the top 30 keywords in other countries.

We can find cohesive subgroups through community analysis; a dendrogram can show the hierarchical structure within the community. Furthermore, the closely interrelated keywords could be found using a dendogram. As shown in the dendrogram (see Figure 5), the keywords “assessment,” “higher education,” “undergraduate students,” “information literacy instruction,” “librarian faculty collaboration,” and “instructional design” were closely interrelated. In addition, the keywords “academic libraries,” “assessment,” and “library education” were closely related. The other interrelations can be seen in Figure 5.

Figure 5:

Dendrogram of 30 important keywords in other countries.

4.4 Network Characteristics in Korea

The network structure of the total author keywords is shown in Figure 6. Compared with the case of other countries, the total data size of Korea is relatively small. Therefore, this study recalculated the network structure using the keywords over two nodes (see Figure 7).

Figure 6:

Network structure of the total keywords in Korean journals.

Figure 7:

Network structure of the keywords that ranked highly (appeared in more than two nodes). The mean distance between the nodes was 2.222.

Next, the degree centrality was calculated (see Figure 8). According to the results, “information literacy instruction,” “school libraries,” “information services,” “school librarians,” “user education,” “library education,” “public libraries,” “reading education,” “research trends,” and “academic libraries” were ranked as the top 10 keywords with a high degree of centrality (see Figures 4 and 5). This means that these 10 keywords were connected with many other keywords. The following were the detailed findings:

1. The keyword “information literacy instruction” had the highest degree centrality. The keyword was connected with the keywords “information services,” “school libraries,” “library education,” “academic libraries,” “user education,” “public libraries,” and “inquiry based learning.”

2. The keyword “school libraries” had the second-highest degree centrality. This keyword was connected with the keywords “public libraries,” “library education,” “school librarians,” “reading program,” “inquiry tasks,” “elementary social studies,” “collaboration,” and “curriculum.”

3. The keyword “information services” was connected with the keywords “library education,” “digital literacy,” “school librarians,” “inquiry tasks,” “information literacy instruction,” “media literacy,” and “library program.”

4. The keyword “public libraries” was connected with the keywords “collaboration,” “literacy,” and “reading program.”

5. The keyword “user education” was connected with the keywords “information seeking behaviors,” “general education,” “instruction,” “bibliographic instruction,” “library education,” and “information literacy instruction.”

Figure 8:

Degree centrality of the top 30 keywords in Korean journals.

4.5 Betweenness Centrality and Community Betweenness Dendrogram in Korea

As shown in Figure 9, the keyword “information literacy instruction” had the highest betweenness centrality (0.517697) in Korea. Furthermore, the keywords “school libraries,” “public libraries,” “research trends,” “information services,” “literacy,” “school librarians,” “user education,” “reading,” and “information seeking behaviors” were ranked as top 10 keywords that had a high betweenness centrality. In particular, we find that the keywords “information literacy instruction” and “school libraries” are the keywords that mediate and connect specific subjects of information literacy research in Korea. This means that these keywords can be extensible to other subjects.

Figure 9:

Betweenness centrality of the top 30 keywords in Korea.

As shown in the following dendrogram (see Figure 10), the keywords “school libraries,” “information literacy instruction,” “school librarians,” “library education,” “information services,” “inquiry tasks,” and “elementary social studies” were closely related.

Figure 10:

Dendrogram of 30 important keywords in Korea.

5 Discussion and Closing Remarks

In 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.”

In Korea, by comparison, a total of 120 articles and 352 author keywords were collected for this study. Among the keywords, eight that appeared most were “information literacy instruction,” “school libraries,” “school librarians,” “library education,” “academic libraries,” “information services,” “user education,” and “public libraries.”

Next, Table 6 shows the comparison of degree centrality of keywords between other countries and Korea. As the table shows, there are both similarities and differences.

The unique characteristics of the study results of other countries and Korea will be reviewed. The important study results of other countries are as follows:

First, keywords that revolve around university education such as “academic libraries,” “higher education,” and “undergraduate students” were high in frequency and degree centrality. It is imperative to look into standards that are presented by several well-recognized institutions related to IL to understand the results. The AASL & AECT disclosed the American federal “information literacy standards for student learning,” otherwise known as “Information Power” standards in 1998. More recently, the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) in 2000 released “The Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.” According to the ACRL (2000), “developing lifelong learners is central to the mission of higher education institutions” (6). In addition, the ACRL insisted that IL is a crucial factor of lifelong learning. In this context, the ACRL suggested a framework to assess IL levels for individuals. Afterwards, the ACRL in 2016 (ACRL 2016) replaced its IL standards established in 2000 with the “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.” The report mentioned that “the rapidly changing higher education environment, along with the dynamic and often uncertain information ecosystem in which all of us work and live, require new attention to be focused on foundational ideas about that ecosystem” (2). Furthermore, such change underscores the need for a new IL definition and standard amidst the changing environment. As a result, interest in metaliteracy has been growing and the following definition was proposed for IL: “information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning” (3).

The Society of College, National & University Libraries (SCONUL) Working Group on Information Literacy published “Information skills in higher education: a SCONUL position paper” in 1999 (SCONUL 1999). In this paper, SCONUL introduced the seven pillars of the IL model. Since then, SCONUL has revised the model to be relevant to different communities and ages for higher education in a very different information world.

As mentioned in the data analysis process, this study analyzed the author keywords of peer-reviewed journal articles published on IL for the past decade (2011–2020). Therefore, it is assumed that the ACRL’s new IL standard published in 2016 and the revised seven pillars for the information skills model released by SCONUL in 2011 (SCONUL 2011) would have a significant impact on the recent decade of IL research. In this context, such keywords as “academic libraries,” “higher education,” and “undergraduate students” are also high in frequency and degree centrality in other countries. However, such trends are not just prevalent in the literature published in the past decade. According to Rader (2002), 60% of research on IL from 1973 to 2002 was focused on IL in academic libraries. Therefore, no significant shift has taken place in the past decade that would warrant research focusing on keywords such as “academic libraries,” “higher education,” and “undergraduate students.” Instead, it is plausible to conclude that past trends were prevalent even in the past decade.

Second, keywords such as “collaboration,” “information literacy instruction,” “instructional design,” and “instruction” were high in frequency and degree centrality. This is also related to the above-mentioned documents. According to the ACRL (2016) document mentioned above, “teaching faculty have a greater responsibility in designing curricula and assignments that foster enhanced engagement with the core ideas about information and scholarship within their disciplines” and “librarians have a greater responsibility in identifying core ideas within their own knowledge domain that can extend learning for students and in collaborating more extensively with faculty” (2). This means that faculty members have a responsibility to design their curricula and assignments so that their students’ IL skills will be improved and librarians also have to play an important role for the benefit of students’ IL skills. To this end, librarians must collaborate with faculty members. In other words, faculty, librarians, and related affiliates must collaborate for the benefit of student’s IL skills. It was emphasized through the above document as follows: “opens the way for librarians, faculty, and other institutional partners to redesign instruction sessions, assignments, courses, and even curricula; to connect information literacy with students success initiatives; to collaborate on pedagogical research and involve students themselves in that research” (3). The importance of collaboration is also stated in a 2000 ACRL document that reads: “incorporating literacy across curricula, in all programs and services, and throughout the administrative life of the university, requires the collaborative efforts of faculty, librarians, and administrators” (4). The keyword “collaboration” has always been a prominent research topic even before 2011. According to Sproles, Detmering, and Johnson (2013) who reviewed the different research trends of library instruction and IL from 2001 to 2010, the subject “collaboration and partnership” was a frequent research topic for instruction delivery during that time. Furthermore, 10–20% of literature accumulated from 2005 to 2009 was on that very topic for instruction delivery. In conclusion, a series of literature affirms that IL instruction can be conducted effectively through collaboration between related experts and different curricula, not through certain experts or a certain curriculum.

Third, the ACRL’s document on “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” published in 2000 is very important to understand the meaning behind the keyword “assessment.” The document expands on the AASL & AECT’s IL standard and focuses on primary, secondary, and university students. According to this standard, the ACRL provided respective performance indicators under five standards and each performance standard comes with a wide variety of learning outcomes. Such standards became the basis for assessing different IL-related programs and efforts. Afterwards, IL researchers made an effort to evaluate the practical effectiveness of various services or programs provided by schools or libraries that aim to improve students’ IL skills. As a result, studies related to IL focused on the subject of assessment. Furthermore, such a research trend has been common in IL research ever since its genesis. Sproles, Detmering, and Johnson (2013) stated that such a trend can be traced back to librarians and their consistent determination to affirm how much their efforts helped improve students’ IL skills. In addition, the topic of assessment includes sub-categories such as the need for assessment, types of assessment, and amount of assessment.

Fourth, betweenness centrality was high for the keywords “e-learning,” “digital literacy,” and “social media.” Of the keywords listed above, the keyword “e-learning” was high in frequency, degree centrality, and betweenness centrality. As mentioned above, betweenness centrality indicates that there is a heightened possibility that these keywords would be expanded into different areas of research. The information environment has changed rapidly through the introduction of smartphones and the emergence of social media that ensued quickly thereafter. The term IL evolved to mean literacy for all information delivered through various media due to the advent and changes of various information media platforms. As mentioned above, these changes are detailed in the documents of ACRL and SCONUL. For example, according to the ACRL, “learners who are developing their information literate abilities understand that different methods of information dissemination with different purposes are available for their use” (5). In addition, according to SCONUL, “information literacy is an umbrella term which encompasses concepts such as digital, visual and media literacies” (3). In LIS fields, IL is viewed as a basic term and the terms digital literacy and media literacy that appeared through the advent of diverse information delivery media were regarded as subordinate concepts of IL. For such reasons, the keywords “digital literacy” and “social media” might not be high in frequency and degree centrality, but they are high in betweenness centrality.

The changes within the information environment were reflected in the keyword “e-learning,” which was high in frequency, degree centrality, and betweenness centrality. Information environment changes significantly influenced the information medium but also the educational environment. Transitioning from a face-to-face offline learning environment to an online learning environment affected the method of library user education and IL instruction delivery. As a result, it is assumed that such changes were reflected in IL research.

Next, the study results of the case of Korea will be reviewed below.

First, unlike other countries, the keyword “school libraries”-related research was high in frequency and degree centrality in Korea’s case. Efforts to establish an educational system for IL instruction in elementary, middle, and high schools have been made steadily in Korea. In 1998, a high school textbook for IL instruction called “Information and Media” was developed. In 2003, an elementary, middle, and high school version of the textbook “Information and Libraries” was developed. Furthermore, the Korea Library Association (KLA) designed the “Library and Information Life Curriculum Standard” for students in 2007 (Committee on School Library Curriculum 2007). Such efforts continued to 2010 when school librarians and faculty engaged in creating textbooks for elementary, middle, and high school students based on the KLA’s “Library and Information Life Curriculum Standard.” As a result, in Korea’s case, the interest in the subject of IL was focused on the elementary, middle, and high school levels. In addition, most studies related to the subject of IL have been done by scholars whose major is school libraries in Korea. That is why the keyword “school libraries” was high in frequency and degree centrality.

Second, unlike other countries, the keyword “public libraries” was high in frequency and degree centrality in Korea. According to Kim’s study (2015), in which reviewed IL-instruction-related research published between 1976 and 2014 has been reviewed, a significant proportion of IL instruction research centered on school libraries and academic libraries. Kim insisted that this reflects the poor environment of public libraries in Korea. However, findings of this study proved that the keyword “public libraries,” like the keywords “school libraries” and “academic libraries,” is high in frequency and degree centrality. This finding can be explained for the following two reasons. First, the Presidential Library Board since 2009 has been releasing the “Comprehensive Library Advancement Plan” every five years. The recently released third version of the plans for 2019 through 2023 targets all kinds of libraries, identifies points of improvement from the previous plan, and serves as a guide to present a comprehensive blueprint for how libraries will change in response to the shifts in the environment. The first through third versions of this plan underscore the importance of bridging the information gap for the vulnerable and providing tailored information services according to age. Public libraries can play an important role in achieving such goals. In other words, public libraries can bridge the information gap and create a foundation for lifelong learning through enhancing IL skills for the public and especially for the vulnerable. In this regard, studies on “public libraries” have relatively increased in the past decade more so than any research field in IL. On the other hand, domestic public library users are declining year to year. A viable solution to this problem can be an education service that targets users. In this context, it is assumed that IL research shows heightened interest in public libraries in Korea.

Third, the start of IL instruction can be traced back to library education in the nineteenth century. Through library education, users were taught how to use library facilities, materials, and services (Kim 2015). Library education or user education is viewed as one of the many services that the library provides. In addition, Korea has yet to break away from the traditional way of viewing IL in terms of library user education. For reasons mentioned above, it is assumed that the keywords “library education,” “information services,” and “user education” are high in frequency and degree centrality.

Fourth, the keyword “reading education” is high in frequency and degree centrality. In general, IL instruction includes reading education and library user education (Lee 2012). According to Lee (2008), if library education is an area of IL instruction that focuses on utilizing text-based information, its educational content and objective are in line with reading education and IL instruction. In addition, Lee (2008) continues to state that reading education that centers on schools is closely related to the string of processes that aim to enhance IL skills. As a result, the high frequency and degree centrality of the keyword “reading education” is related to why the keywords “school libraries” and “library education” are high in frequency and can be traced back to the fact that the research on IL has been done mainly by the researchers whose major interest is in school libraries.

Based on the above 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. The subject of IL was indeed regarded as research topics inherent to specific disciplines. Many researchers agree that the objective of IL instruction can be achieved effectively through collaboration with everyone involved. However, they cannot help acknowledging that there is a wide range of institutional and real difficulties. In addition, there is little in the way of field examples of IL instructional programs. Therefore, it is very difficult for researchers to try to assess the effectiveness of IL instructional programs, so the attention of the field must come first.

Second, as mentioned above, the research related to the subject of IL has been carried out by a few researchers who majored in school libraries. Therefore, in addition to researchers in the LIS field, researchers in various fields need to have an interest in the subject.

In general, academic research is closely related to the changes in the environment that influence the subject of the research. From this perspective, the above recommendations will be meaningful when the environment around the subject of IL changes. However, it is also true that related research trends can lead to changes in reality. Therefore, researchers must always try to understand previous research trends and recommend future directions of the subject.