A Comparison of Evidence-Based Practice and the ACRL Information Literacy Standards: Implications for Information Literacy Practice

Nancy E. Adams is Associate Director, Penn State Hershey George T. Harrell Health Sciences Library; e-mail: [email protected]. © 2014 Nancy E. Adams, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC Evidence-based practice (EBP), like information literacy, is concerned with an individual’s knowledge, skills, and attitudes relating to using information. EBP is now a professional competency in fields as diverse as social work, nursing and allied health fields, and public policy. A comparison of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education with the commonly accepted EBP model shows congruence, but the two models diverge in their use of authority of the producer as a marker of information quality and in their relative emphasis on formulation of the research question and application of information.