What's your major? Each major is an academic discipline. An academic discipline is often defined as "a branch of learning or knowledge; a field of study or expertise; a subject" (Oxford English Dictionary) — what's being studied, in other words. But a discipline is also who is doing the studying:
Your degree not only confers upon you a mark of your expertise in a subject area, it also ushers you into a community of scholars and professionals who study and/or work in that subject area. In fact, it is that community which determines what goes into your degree, and recognizes your degree as a mark of your expertise. Without the community, your degree would not mean much!
Each discipline has the same goal: knowledge. But because areas of study differ, the raw data and methods used to uncover that knowledge can vary quite a bit. For some disciplines raw data comes from direct observations, for other disciplines data may be collected by looking at artifacts or writings, and for others yet raw data may come from abstractions of logic. Each discipline has their own methodology for how that raw data is pieced together into new knowledge. This in turn influences the way that each discipline perceives the world. In other words, disciplines have their own unique cultures, even their own worldview!
Remember, a worldview is the set of presuppositions, beliefs, and values about the fundamental nature of reality, which provides a framework for how we interpret and interact with the world. It's the lens through which we look at reality. It's not only people who have worldviews, but also institutions, organizations—any community.
The shared culture of a discipline influences the assumptions, attitudes, ways of thinking, and values through which the discipline's members process knowledge. For example, the disciplinary community chooses which voices are deemed worth listening to, and which markers define who receives that recognition. A degree is one marker. Publishing in a scholarly journal is another. But there may also be markers which are unspoken. A scholar who has been mentioned favorably by a major figure might be seen as more authoritative, for example, while one who expresses ideas which go against current disciplinary assumptions might be seen as less important and less deserving of being listened to. It is imaginable that these disciplinary markers create both positive self-regulation and negative silences. Each discipline has its own biases.
Even with these imperfections, disciplinary communities establish cohesive norms which allow for patterns to develop across each individual field. When new individuals join a discipline, the disciplinary culture works to shape them. As students, you are actively learning how your chosen discipline views the essence, creation, and communication of knowledge.
While having unique disciplines strengthens the depth of engagement with a topic, the resulting methodologies don't always encourage dialogue between them. Disciplines train participants to use specific language, conceptualization, and standards to maintain consistency within their practice, but these things don't consistently translate well between learning communities. This can lead to gaps in the knowledge generated, redundancy, and misunderstanding. People need to make a conscientious choice to engage with one another, preventing silos from forming in the first place.
Information literacy can help address these silos. Information literacy is an interdisciplinary practice, and the library is a connection point for all areas of study.
Your academic discipline is not the only community of information that you belong to! You belong to many communities, both in real life and online—family, religion, teams, extra-curricular groups, gaming groups, social media groups, and so on. Each of those communities has its own perspectives, which influence their members' worldview and ways of processing information. And each community has its own qualifications for who is recognized as being able to speak knowledgeably or with authority, whose voices are deemed important . . . and whose are not.
