This article presents the findings of a two-round Delphi study exploring expert perspectives on information literacy (IL) in Croatian primary and secondary education. The study examined which IL competencies and pedagogical approaches are considered essential, how school librarians perceive their instructional role, and what systemic challenges influence the implementation of IL. A total of fifteen school librarians participated in the study. In the first round, participants responded to 11 open-ended prompts addressing themes such as teaching strategies, assessment, curriculum integration, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. In the second round, they evaluated 26 synthesised statements derived from a thematic analysis of the initial responses. The results reveal strong consensus on the need for a developmentally aligned and cross-curricular IL framework, encompassing skills from basic information seeking to independent inquiry and ethical information use. While school librarians are seen as key facilitators of IL, their efforts are often limited by time constraints, insufficient resources, and a lack of formal collaboration with teaching staff. Participants also expressed concern over students’ increasing reliance on generative AI tools, which may impede critical thinking and encourage superficial engagement. The study underscores the need for national IL standards, stronger institutional support for school librarians, and greater attention to the pedagogical and ethical implications of AI in education.

The issue of information literacy (IL) in contexts where people do not have easy access to libraries and to sources of information has not received much attention in IL research. In particular, rural areas in developing countries where there are no public libraries and travelling to town to access information is arduous and time-consuming need a different approach to IL than what is recommended for societies served by public libraries. This article reports on the findings from 52 semi-structured interviews conducted in January 2023 with villagers in two remote and marginalised areas of Bangladesh where an Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) project had been conducted in 2016-2019. The findings presented in this paper are based on a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts with a particular focus on the interrelationships between IL and information preservation. The interviews revealed an improvement in IL among the participants in the ICT4D project, as well as among those who had not participated in the project, but had benefited from it indirectly, particularly in relation to preserving information that is useful to them. The authors argue that an important component of IL programmes in marginalised rural communities should be information preservation literacy, that is an awareness of and the skills to keep information that can be useful later on.

This article is part of a study that synthesised the origin, evolution, current state, and future trends of information literacy (IL) in Latin America. For this special issue, the first part (the past) is presented as a recognition of the pioneers of this topic in the region; this will be followed up by a future article that will present IL’s current and future developments, following the same methodology and structure. This study employed a quantitative and qualitative review of documents published by Latin American authors to map out IL's development in the region, which was structured around four pivotal “moments” in the development of IL in Latin America: 1) beginnings (1997–2007), which is presented in this article, and marks the initial phase of IL's introduction and early development in Latin America, characterized by foundational texts and the organisation of critical events that set the stage for IL's growth in the region; and three other moments that will be presented in the future article: 2) advances–positioning (2008–2019) pre-pandemic, 3) main trends (2020–2023), and 4) some perspectives (2024–…). The beginnings presented in this article recognise the work of the librarians, professors, researchers and institutions that introduced IL in our region: without these foundations, it would not have been possible to reach the current developments (present) and the emerging perspectives (future).