The study underscores the limitations in existing concepts, models and standards of information literacy (IL) in order to justify the call for the newly developed workplace IL model (WILM) which was used as the conceptual framework for this study among academics in Nigeria. The study aims to observe the practices in the academia through which undergraduates are prepared for life after school (workplace). In comparison, while workplace nuances make classroom learners strikingly different because ‘knowledge sharing’ of experiences and abilities is a virtue in the workplace, the learners in the classroom are nurtured to possess library and information searching skills to enable them excel in their academic endeavours. As a practice research, this qualitative case study relied on the purposefully selected nine (9) Heads of department for in-depth interview and un-obstructive observation as modes of data collection. The data analysis was recursive, constantly comparing and subjected to the ‘third eye’ of the external audit. The findings have established that the strategy of preparing undergraduates for the workplace should be a project beyond classroom skill acquisition; more attention should shift to how abilities may be cultivated through some practices in the academia that are reported in this research. The research recommended a re-conceptualisation of IL for the workplace and concluded that future research should investigate how industry experts could share information literacy skills outside of the classroom.

Keywords: Information literacy, classroom, workplace, undergraduates, Nigeria.