Explicating the trends of information literacy studies in the higher education context: A pilot study

This study aims to explicate the trends of information literacy studies in the higher education context. As a pilot study of a larger study, 1,711 articles published from January 1988 to May 2017 were selected and analyzed in terms of publication year, themes, published journals and authorship. Analysis of publications by year demonstrates four distinct periods of information literacy research with different publication patterns: development period (1988–2001), 1st proliferation period (2002–2008), maintenance (or stand-still) period (2009–2012) and 2nd proliferation period (2013–2017). Results on themes, published journals and authorship of the sample articles show not only the general patterns but also their possible association with the four periods of information literacy research. This study contributes to providing a holistic picture of information literacy research particularly in higher education. Copyright © 2017 by Association for Information Science and Technology