Information Literacy among Post Graduate Students of the University of Ghana

Abstract

Information has become so important for decision making in today's world. The problem of information used to be scarcity of information but in the current century it has become abundance of information. This is as a result of the development of various media of information, for example information from books and the internet. The development of information communication and technologies has escalated the problem of information that is, too much information for people to choose from for decision making. Information literacy is the surest way of helping solve the problem of choosing the right information from the abundance of information from various media. The purpose of the study is to investigate the information literacy levels among post graduate students of tertiary institutions, specifically the University of Ghana. The survey method was used to collect data for the study. The number of students involved was 151 in number giving an overall response rate of 56.98%. The variables considered in this study include: concept identification, search strategies, search tools, evaluation of information and the legal and ethical use of information. Most students knew how to identify concepts whereas most of them were not skilled in the use of search strategies, search tools and the evaluation of information. However, some of them knew about copyright issues. This result shows that the majority of the post graduate students are not information literate. The study recommends that information literacy education should be introduced into the curricular of the University of Ghana as a full course which needs to be credit bearing. Information literacy should also be integrated into the research method course that is offered by every department and school. More library professionals should be employed to teach the course more effectively and efficiently.