The Norwegian scholars, Audunson & Nordlie (2003) also highlight three main categories of information literacy: they describe
• technical capabilities or what one might call computer literacy;
• intellectual capabilities related to traditional literacy; and
• communicative competency that presupposes technical as well as intellectual capabilities, and at the same time transcends them.

For each dimension they also distinguish several levels of competence, from basic competence to super-user competence to in-depth competence and consider information literacy as the sum of different 'literacies'.

Hepworth concludes: 'Gradually we are seeing increasingly detailed descriptions and greater consensus about what is meant by information literacy; however different communities tend to describe the phenomenon in slightly different ways with varying degrees of comprehensiveness' (Hepworth, 2000b: 23).

David Bawden, who attempts to relate information literacy to the full context of all the other relevant literacies, argues that the term 'information literacy' has been widely and confusingly used in the literature (Bawden, 2001). Bawden and Robinson also find it helpful to distinguish between 'skills-based literacies', such as computer or library literacy, which essentially indicate a competence in handling information in a particular setting or context or format, and more general capabilities. These wider conceptions of information literacy stress capabilities beyond a simple competence in retrieving or communicating information. They highlight that to deal with the complexities of the current information environment, a complex and broad form of literacy is required. It must subsume all the skill-based literacies, but cannot be restricted to them, nor can it be restricted to any particular technology or set of technologies, and understanding, meaning and context must be central to it (Bawden, 2001; Bawden & Robinson, 2001).

Muir & Oppenheim (2001), following the world-wide developments on national information policy, also have to conclude that information literacy 'has no agreed definition' and 'a number of people have offered their views on what they think information literacy is'. In the UK context, a need for an agreed definition of the term 'information literacy', and the need to distinguish it from 'information skills', is highlighted as well.

Finnish researcher Reijo Savolainen suggests the umbrella term 'information-related competences' that covers information literacy, media competence and library skills and adds: 'Because new labels describing specific kinds of literacies are continually introduced, reflecting the developments of ICTs, the attempts to develop an exact classification of information-related literacies seem to be futile' (Savolainen, 2002).

However, despite of the continuous concern about the term since 1990s, information literacy is still the most commonly used phrase to describe the concept (Bawden, 2001).

Source for photo: http://www.gicentre.org/~dbawden/