With the development of information technology, many scholars have studied “information literacy” since the 1990s. In 1974, Paul Zurkowski, the former president of the Information Industry Association, proposed to the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science that information literacy refers to a person’s ability to master information tools, acquire relevant information, and solve practical problems through training (Wang, 2017). Subsequently, research on the definition of information literacy was concentrated on the relevant conferences and documents of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), national policies of some developed countries, and personal publications. With the popularization of information technology and the Internet, after 2000, research on information literacy began to shift to the practical application level, that is, to equip citizens with the foundational competencies of information literacy through education and training, which means information literacy transformed from the skill level to the competency level. According to the Alexandria Proclamation of 2005, information literacy refers to the ability of people to recognize their information needs, locate and assess the quality of information, store and retrieve information, use information effectively and ethically, and apply information to create and exchange knowledge (Catts & Lau, 2008).
The earliest research on information literacy in China did not appear in the field of education. Xiong’s (1989) work focused on the information literacy of business operators and is the earliest retrievable paper on information literacy in China. Wang’s (1999)Information Literacy Construct is the first relevant monograph in China, and the writer believed information literacy is a kind of ability to obtain, use, and develop information that can be cultivated through education.