Over the last fifty years, IL has evolved from a “niche” library practice and skill into a concept connected to democracy, social justice and human rights. Yet much discussion in the field still revolves around definitions, frameworks and competences, while broader social and political realities shaping information practices receive less attention.  

If IL is to be socially relevant and “fit for the future”, its value cannot lie only in conceptual refinements, but in its ability to respond to the conditions affecting our lives.  

Today, those conditions are changing rapidly. Artificial intelligence, growing inequalities, declining trust in institutions, the commodification of knowledge, workplace insecurity and the devaluation of human work are reshaping the conditions of our time. In such a context, the question of what IL does is far more urgent than how it is defined. 

This becomes particularly visible in the contemporary workplace. Here, IL is often treated as a functional skillset serving employer needs, organisational performance and corporate profit.  

However, research in critical workplace information literacy argues that such instrumental approaches can overlook the true character of the workplace and reduce workers to instruments of neoliberal “values” of efficiency, productivity and competitiveness, rather than treating them as active subjects of their own lives.  

This research suggests that workplace and workplace information are never neutral. The workplace is confrontational and shaped by power: power determines the flow of information, who has the right to know and whose authority is legitimate. Workers therefore need more than technical skills; they need critical consciousness to understand how information is connected to inequality, control and decision-making in everyday working life. Too often, mainstream IL approaches frame problems such as exclusion and insecurity as individual skills deficits and place responsibility on individuals to constantly adapt and self-manage. A critical perspective instead recognises that these problems are structurally produced through unequal power relations and institutional conditions. Workers need to recognise that their struggles and their (in)ability to confront these problems are not personal failures, but consequences of broader social and economic systems. Only then can they develop the agency needed to challenge these conditions. Awareness and action are inseparable. 

From this perspective, to support social justice and a more equitable workplace, IL must move from being a “way of knowing” the information landscape to a “practice of knowing and transforming” it through action. In other words, it should support what Paulo Freire described as the ability to “read the world“: recognising how power operates and affects our (working) lives and using that awareness as a basis for collective transformative action. 

The need for such a transformative agenda is not limited to the traditional workplace. It is equally relevant in our “knowledge factories” – universities and academic libraries as IL’s institutional habitat, today shaped by neoliberal governance, market-oriented reforms, AI and digital transformation.  

While mission statements often celebrate their civic and democratic role, in practice this role is constrained. Universities are under intense pressure to demonstrate measurable impact and support agendas centred on competitiveness, entrepreneurship and innovation. In effect, they increasingly operate as corporate entities, while libraries are often positioned primarily as neutral, frictionless service providers. As a result, more critical approaches within librarianship and IL may become difficult to sustain, especially when they challenge dominant institutional logics and priorities.    

These tensions are receiving growing attention within emerging critical library and information science (LIS) research, including the recent research project KRIK, which examines how transformations in higher education affect academic librarians’ professional roles, identities, and civic mission. KRIK starts from the premise that librarians do not exist outside politics and society and that for them to act as empowering, civic agents, they require professional autonomy, adequate resources and decent working conditions.  

Both critical workplace IL research and projects such as KRIK challenge the assumption that IL and libraries are inherently democratic and empowering. Civic engagement and critical practice do not emerge automatically; they require institutional support and space for agency, not only rhetorical endorsements.  

This also requires rethinking the purpose of IL itself. IL should not be understood only as a functional competence, a set of skills we possess to serve the economy and navigate information landscape, but as a social and democratic practice, an “action literacy” – a way of acting in the world so that social justice and human rights are not just written in policy but lived in practice.

To build a discipline fit for the future, we must step outside our academic silo. LIS should engage in stronger interdisciplinary dialogue with fields concerned with labour, social justice and critical social theories. If IL is to be socially relevant, it must be bold and willing to address more directly the structural conditions shaping contemporary information environments. 

Pawley’s opening question therefore really is fundamental to IL’s future relevance. 

Namely, if IL is to be a “discipline for the future,” its success should be measured not only by the elegance of concepts and frameworks, but by its ability to respond to real-life problems – by its ability to improve people’s lives. Only then can we answer Pawley’s question with confidence: IL is for everyone – in workplaces, civic spaces and everyday life – and its purpose is not merely helping people navigate information landscapes but helping them participate more fully in building a more just and democratic society.  

As Paul Zurkowski, a founder of the concept, once asked: what good is being information literate if information and wisdom is not used for good?