Information literacy skills training of staff and students in the Unisa Library: challenges and opportunities

Information literacy skills training has, especially over the last decade, become a core function of academic libraries and librarians throughout the world. The growing number of expensive electronic information sources that libraries subscribe to makes it essential for them to justify this expense by ensuring that their users are effectively trained in how to use the databases. The University of South Africa, as a large distance education institution, has a significant amount of remotely situated students, which makes proper information literacy skills training even more important, since this then empowers them to use the library’s resources wherever they are. The University of South Africa (Unisa) Library has its main campus in Muckleneuk, Pretoria. Over the past decade or more, information literacy skills training has been a core function of this library, and has proved to be very successful. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the different types of training conducted by the Unisa Library, both for staff and students, looking specifically at how (training methods, format of material etc), for whom (target groups) and by whom (trainers/presenters) the various types of training are conducted, and the frequency of the different types of training. Training of this kind, particularly since it usually involves large groups of staff and/or students, obviously presents Unisa’s librarians with many challenges as well as opportunities. Among the challenges are the following: