Book Review: Information Literacy Cookbook: Ingredients, Recipes and Tips for Success

A search in the Library of Congress’s catalogue for English books with ‘information literacy’ in the title published between 2000 and 2007 results in more than 90 records. Information literacy has attracted a remarkable amount of attention during the last decade and much has been published by different groups including academics, librarians and information professionals and for various audience groups such as students, academics, information professionals and so on. So is there a need for a new book in this area? The difference between the book ‘Information Literacy Cookbook’ edited by Secker, Boden and Price and much of the existing work is that, as the editors stated, it is ‘written by practitioners for practitioners’. All of the editors and authors of this collective work are information professionals and librarians who have the experience of working in different sectors of the library world. Their aim is to ‘create something that would be of day-to-day use by practitioners’. Each of the chapters deals with a different information environment from school libraries to further education institutions. Therefore, each chapter could be read on its own meaning that this kind of book is not one that has to be read from cover to cover.