PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR INFORMATION LITERACY PROGRAMMES FOR HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS - LEARNING FROM STUDIES IN HUMAN INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR (HIB).

A selection of aspects, identified from the literature on human information behaviour (HIB) (healthcare as well as other contexts) is explored with regard to offering practical advice on how these can be incorporated into information literacy programmes for healthcare professionals. The aspects explored are based on the author's interpretation of selected literature and include: awareness of information needs and the value of information as well as the ability to express information needs; healthcare professionals as persons-in-context; the importance of affective issues in the daily tasks of healthcare professionals and the role of emotions (e.g. being anxious, frustrated, bored or unmotivated); importance of personality and learning style on information needs and the success of information seeking; importance of everyday-life information needs and how this may overlap with task-related information needs; and the realities of barriers to information seeking and how to deal with these. The intention is to highlight issues normally not considered in reports on training in information literacy. Apart from practical advice on the various aspects, it is argued that library and information (LIS) professionals should sensitise healthcare professionals to the complexity of human information behaviour and the need to understand their own information behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]