Saturday, February 28, 2009

A couple of recent articles

Tanni, T. and Sormunen, E. (2008) "A critical review of research on information behavior in assigned learning tasks." Journal of Documentation, 64 (6), 893 - 914.

Hjørland, B. (2008)"Information Literacy and Digital Literacy." PRISMA.COM, 4(7), 4-15. http://prisma.cetac.up.pt/4_Information_
literacy_and_digital_literacy_BIRGER_HJ%C3%B8RLAND.pdf
(a theoretical discussion paper)

Photo by Sheila Webber: Snowdrops, Feb 2009.

Friday, February 27, 2009

LTEA 2009

There is a call for papers for the LTEA (Learning Through Enquiry Alliance) 2009 Conference. It will be held at the University of Reading, UK, 14-15 July 2009. Deadline for submissions is 20 March. Themes are: 'High-impact experiences' and 'academic challenge' in the first year; Differentiated Learning - stretching the most able, supporting the less able; Enquiry and Academic Literacy; Technology-enhanced Enquiry; Enquiry-Based Learning and Policy - where now? For the Academic literacy stream it says "Developing academic literacy, the creation and the communication of knowledge, is crucial to success in HE. Much enquiry-based learning involves the development of these skills, be it through developing appropriate research skills hunting down information (Information literacy), critically evaluating that material and presenting the results in an academic style appropriate to the medium." Hmm, I would have said ALL of that was information literacy ;-)
More information at
http://www.reading.ac.uk/cetl-aurs/
LTEAConference2009/cetl-aurs_LTEAConference2009.asp

Photo by Sheila Webber: Frozen lake, Budapest zoo, December 2004.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Wadsworth Guide to Research

I notice that Tuesday's ACRL blog post was discussing the desirability of librarians working with academics on facilitating information literacy. One of the prompts was that a couple of non-library academics in the USA (Rochelle Rodrigo and Susan Miller-Cochran) have published a book, The Wadsworth Guide to Research.
I wondered what "Wadsworth" meant, but it simply appears to be the series imprint. I found a sample chapter at http://www.wadsworthmedia.com/marketing/
sample_chapters/1413030327_ch09.pdf
and other details are on the publisher's site here. Its key target appears to be academics teaching US rhetoric and composition classes, but I think it could be useful outside the USA, and it is certainly (from the sample chapter) more visually engaging than similar books I have seen.

I also found a video of Rodrigo and Miller-Cochran making a presentation (Use Wikipedia and YouTube in Research! Debunking the Library vs. Internet Research Dichotomy) in Second Life at http://media.nmc.org/2008/11/debunking-dichotomy.mov It is nice to see people being sensible about the uses of the internet and encouraging an evaluative approach, rather than a blanket condemnation of wikipedia etc.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Iced berries, Budapest, December 2004

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Spanish presentations

For those of you who are Spanish or Catalan speakers, there are presentations (and a Youtube video) from a conference on information literacy held in Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona) on 22-23 January 2009; Seminario Alfin 09. There were 125 participants, and presentations related to both educational and public libraries. To find all the links go to: http://www.alfinred.org/entidades/
iiseminarioalfinvilanova

Photo by Sheila Webber: Statue of Pío Baroja, Madrid, 2004

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Online workshops

An online programme of workshops and discussions is offered by the (American) Teaching and Learning and Technology group. In May there is an online workshop on Information Literacy: Assessment, and before that sessions include one on clickers (personal response devices used in class) and one on MERLOT (the database of peer reviewed learning objects/plans).
Some sessions are open to all, others to members only. The calendar is at http://www.tltgroup.org/calendar.htm
Photo by Sheila Webber: St Mary's church, Hailsham, Feb 2009

Access to Knowledge

I was not familiar until recently with the acronym A2K, but this means Access To Knowledge and is a phrase used by proponents of open access. If you are interested in this area you may be interested in:
1. A mailing list Copyright & A2K Information Service(formerly Denise Nicholson's Information Service): subscribe to "Copyrightanda2kinfo - Copyright & A2K Issues" at
http://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/copyrightanda2kinfo

2. A2K network at http://a2knetwork.org/ "This is the home of Consumers International's (CI's) global projects to promote Access to Knowledge (A2K) for consumers" "CI's work on Access to Knowledge (A2K) is predicated upon the fact that intellectual property rights (IPRs) are a consumer issue, not just an issue for business." They are funded by the Ford Foundation and Open Society Institute (OSI).
Photo by Sheila Webber: Spot the robin, Feb 2009

Friday, February 20, 2009

New articles

(All from priced journals)
Crawford, J. and Irving, C. (2009) "Information literacy in the workplace: A qualitative exploratory study." Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 41, 29-38.

Singh, S. (2009)"Catalytic role of information literacy in educational change: a case study of University of Delhi." Library Management, 30 (3), 163-175. (Thanks to Hazel for spotting this one)

Walsh, A. (2009) "Information literacy assessment: Where do we start?" Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 41, 19-28. (Identifies different modes of assessment described in the literature).
Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheffield, Feb 2009 (it isn't actually snowy anymore)

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Empowering 8

The Society for the Advancement of Library and Information Science (SALIS), in collaboration with UNESCO and B.S. Abdur Rahman Crescent Engineering College, organized the International Conference on Knowledge Networking in ICT Era 22-24 January 2009 in Chennai, India. It included a special session on information and media literacy, and several presentations have been put together in one pdf, plus some short papers at the end, in particular focusing ion india and information /media literacy. The web address is: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/
28265/12341778449special_session_presentations.pdf/
special_session_presentations.pdf

An information literacy framework that I was reminded about was the Empowering 8 framework. This was developed through workshops in Sri Lanka and India in 2004/5. The 8 elements are: Identify, explore, select, organise, create, present, assess, apply. Empowering 8 is mentioned also in the following:

Wijetunge, P. and Alahakoon, U. (2005) "Empowering 8: the Information Literacy model developed in Sri Lanka to underpin changing education paradigms of Sri Lanka." Sri Lanka Journal of Librarianship & Information Management, 1 (1), 31-41. http://www.cmb.ac.lk/academic/
institutes/nilis/reports/InformationLiteracy.pdf


Wijetunge, P. (2008) "Improving Information Skills of the Postgraduate Students of NILIS University of Colombo: A Case Study." DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, 28 (2), 18-27. (NILIS was set up to train teacher-librarians) http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/
index.php/djlit/article/viewFile/273/180


Seneviratne, W. (2007) "Framework to measure Community Information Literacy among rural citizens in Sri Lanka: building of a CIL Model." Sri Lankan Journal of Librarianship and Information Management, 3 (1), 14-24.
http://www.cmb.ac.lk/academic/institutes/nilis/reports/wathmanel.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheffield, Feb 2009

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Scottish podcast

There is a podcast of Philip Pothen interviewing Christine Irving and John Crawford at the Further Education college librarians' conference in November last year. They talk about their work on information literacy. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/
stories/2009/02/
podcast71johncrawfordchristineirving.aspx

Another recent item on the JISC news site is that 2 of their projects are shorted for learning awards:
- Lexdis, which "collects ideas for e-Learning, provided by students using Assistive Technologies." http://www.lexdis.org/
- Simple, "simulation environment for professional learning - an open-source, open-standards transactional learning environment (TLE 2.0). " http://technologies.law.strath.ac.uk/simple2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=38

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Use of internet in Europe

Some recently released statistics from Eurostat give an idea of Internet access and use in the 27 European countries in 2008. Overall one can see that penetration is greatest in Nordic countries & the Netherlands. The press release highlights that "Nearly 30% of individuals use internet banking; 60% of households have internet access ... 48% had a broadband internet connection." As you might expect, the trend in various things is upwards, but (to generalise) with all countries increasing usage, so the countries with lower access are not really catching up much. The UK is in the middlre band of usage, I would say. "The lowest levels 9of internet access) were registered in Bulgaria (25%), Romania (30%) and Greece (31%)."
Basic stats at
http://europa.eu/rapid/
pressReleasesAction.do?reference=STAT/
08/169&format=

Detailed statistics at
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/
page?_pageid=2973,64549069,2973_64554066&
_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheffield Botanic Gardens, Feb 2009

Monday, February 16, 2009

Multimedia for Information Literacy Wiki

Another potentially interesting wiki in early stages of development. Chris Sweet has put together the Multimedia for Information Literacy Wiki, and some others have contributed too. It does already have some links and short descriptions of Youtube videos etc. "The concept behind this wiki is to help consolidate a variety of multimedia resources that will assist the teaching of information literacy. In this wiki you will find links to videos, online tutorials, comic strips, info lit blogs, handouts and more! ... It is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather the best of what is freely available on the web." http://infolitmultimedia.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
Photo by Sheila Webber: Camellia, glasshouses, Sheffield Botanic Gardens, Feb 2009

Information literacy in a core module - poster

My Department has an Advisory Panel of people in the information & library sector. We had a day for them a week ago and as part of the learning and teaching exhibition I created this poster which highlights elements of the module Information Resources and Information Literacy, which is core to our MA Librarianship and MSc Information Management courses.
The poster highlights the module's assessment and some key aspects of the way it is delivered.
- I described one of the activities, the Search/Teach exercise, in more detail here:
Webber, S. (2008) "Information Literacy Education for Masters Students: the Search/Teach Exercise" IN: Kohl-Frey, O. and Schmid-Ruhe, B. (Eds.) Advanced Users: Information Literacy and Customized Services: Konstanz Workshop on Information Literacy. Konstanz: University of Konstanz. (Bibliothek Aktuell; Sonderheft 17) http://www.ub.uni-konstanz.de/kops/volltexte/2008/5905/
- The activity creating posters about uses of information literacy in future careers was described briefly by Pam McKinney here: http://cilass.group.shef.ac.uk/?p=292

Friday, February 13, 2009

Australian online papers

There are a lot of papers from the Australian Online conference (held last month in Sydney, Australia). Themes included collaboration, Knowledge Management, the future of the library/information profession, Web 2.0. A couple of papers are:
- Natalie McDonald, Peter Keenan. The stuff beyond Google: information literacy in a corporate setting. "This paper gives a case study on how an information literacy program titled 'Beyond Google' was rolled out at the New South Wales Business Chamber. The program came up with a number of surprises including users perception of their effectiveness in searching the internet and their search strategies." (this is a 7-page paper including list of topics covered, feedback, lessons learned)
- Kate Davis, Jessica Meehan, Cheryl Aubrey & Travis Le Couteur. Conversation, community and kids: blogging for youth at Gold Coast City Council libraries (about planning & setting up a youth blog)
Go to http://www.information-online.com.au/ and click on Programme 2009 on the left.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Snowman, Sheffield Botanic Gardens, Feb 2009

Thursday, February 12, 2009

ICS conference

There is a call for papers for the 10th Annual Higher Education Academy Subject Network for Information Computer Science Conference (aimed at educators in teh computing and information fields), at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK, 25-27 August 2009. This year there is an information and libraries track, and they are particualrly encouraging relevant themes, including information literacy. Deadline for receipt of papers, workshops and posters is 17 April 2009. More information at http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/events/10th-annual-conf/index.php
Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheffield, Feb 2009

ASK: the Assignment Survival Kit

CILIP University College and Research Group North West section present: ASK: the Assignment Survival Kit. A practical approach to information literacy on 16 March 2009, Manchester Metropolitan University. Alison Pope and Julie Adams will talk about this prize winning tool and there will be a hands on session. For a place (there is a fee) contact Shirley Ward, S.Ward@bolton.ac.uk

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Skills for Scotland: information literacy, libraries and learning

Skills for Scotland: information literacy, libraries and learning is an event on 19 March 2009 in Glasgow, Scotland. Sessions are:
Information literacy, libraries and learning (Rhona Arthur, Assistant Director SLIC/CILIPS)
Information literacy meets Web 2.0 (Peter Godwin Academic Liaison Librarian, University of Bedfordshire)
Are we having fun yet? Developing interactive lectures and presentations (Andy Jackson, Teaching and Learning Librarian, Dundee University)
Access Apps (Margaret McKay, e-advisor: Accessibility and Inclusion, JISC RSC-SW Scotland)
Promoting information literacy in the workplace: the Scottish Government information literacy strategy (Jenny Foreman, Information Literacy manager and Lesley Thomson)
Plus case studies on prisons and the health sector.
http://www.slainte.org.uk/events/
EvntShow.cfm?uEventID=1916
for more information
Photo by Sheila webber: Snow in Regent Court, Sheffield Uni, Feb 2009

Extension of Call for Papers for i3

There is an extension to the Call for Papers for the Information: Interactions and Impact (i³) Conference taking place at The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, 22-25 June 2009. the extension is until 22 February. Go to http://www.i3conference2009.org.uk for more detail

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

EU kids online & release of study on parents & internet

Whilst looking at the previous site (Safer Internet Day), I also found the EU Kids Online site http://www.eukidsonline.net/ (a project based at the London School of Economics), which includes a lot of interest. There is a press release giving a summary of findings from a report released today about the extent to which parents in different European countries worry about and monitor/control children's use of online.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/
EUKidsOnline/SID09EUKidsOnlineWeb.pdf


Other resources include a searchable database of research, and a report published last year:
Hasebrink, U., Livingstone, S., Haddon, L. (2008) Comparing children’s online opportunities and risks across Europe: Cross-national comparisons for EU Kids Online. London: EU Kids Online (Deliverable D3.2). http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/
EUKidsOnline/Reports/D3.2_ISBN.pdf

I haven't had time to look at it properly but it seems to have a good summary and analysis of the risks and benefits, as well as statistical comparisons.

Photo by Sheila Webber: it's tiring being a snowman, Western Park, Feb 2009

Safer Internet Day

Today is Safer Internet Day. There is information on the day at http://www.saferinternet.org/ww/
en/pub/insafe/index.htm
, organised by Insafethe European internet safety network with support from the European Union. The event concentrates on two themes: social networking and cyberbullying. Apparently native-language versions of a TV ad warning against cyber-bullying will be shown in European countries and there are associated events. If you click on Library at the top of the page there is a database of links to resources on the topic. There are also are pages of resources to download, including some cyber-safety quizzes and brochures including "what would you do in this situation" scenarios. I didn't look at all the material, but most of these items were not available in English yet, but were in other languages (e.g. German, French, Greek).
They also advertise a safer internet "fair" taking place online 10-24 February at http://www.sidfair.org/sinfer/index.html. I think this is one of those events where people are still frantically putting up the exhibition booths as the first visitors stream into the hall (e.g. if you select United Kingdom as your country, the news consists of "test to link"). Thus today all I could see was a film in another European language and the start of a news story about mobile phones. I am sure more will follow.

Monday, February 09, 2009

New book: Going beyond Google

Devine, J. and Egger-Sider, F. (2009) Going Beyond Google: the invisible web in learning and teaching. London: Facet. ISBN 978-1-85604-658-9
This concentrates on the idea of the "invisible web", databases etc. that may not be finadable via internet search engines. Sections include "use of the invisible web at the reference desk; use of the invisible web in Blackboard; techniques for teaching the invisible web."

Whilst writing this post I deleted the information about one of the author's first name by mistake and whilst searching to find out what it was I also discovered:
1) That this book is also published by Neal-Schuman Publishers in the USA (the authors are American)
2) That there is a presentation from them including useful links, updated Jan 2009, at http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/library/invisibleweb/default.htm
3) That there is a journal article that seems to summarise some key points: Devine, J. and Egger-Sider, F. (2004) "Beyond google: the invisible web in the academic library." The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30 (4), 265-269. ("This article analyzes the concept of the Invisible Web and its implication for academic librarianship. It offers a guide to tools that can be used to mine the Invisible Web and discusses the benefits of using the Invisible Web to promote interest in library services. In addition, the article includes an expanded definition, a literature review, and suggestions for ways in which to incorporate the Invisible Web in reference work and library promotion.")
I found all this through the first page of hits on their names on Google ;-))
Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheffield Botanic Gardens, Feb 2009

UK workshops supporting researchers

These workshops are run by NoWAL in partnership with the SCONUL Working Group on Information Literacy. They are aimed at staff working in library and information services who support researchers.
16 March 2009. "One thing" about writing for publication. Manchester. Trainer: Moira Bent.
23 March 2009. Developments in scholarly communication. Manchester. Trainer: Bill Hubbard
28 April 2009. Metadata for library staff and academic staff support. Liverpool. Trainer: Stephanie Taylor.
There is a discount if you book on all 3 courses. http://www.nowal.ac.uk/general_programme.php?

Photo by Sheila Webber: Helenium, Sheffield Botanic Gardens, Feb 2009

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Online courses

The Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development has online courses including:
Engaging learning with Social Software; 22 April - 22 May 2009
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/
online/social_software/index.html

Dealing with Student Plagiarism; 22 April - 22 May 2009
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/
online/plagiarism/index.html

Photo by Sheila Webber:Snow head, Feb 2009

Friday, February 06, 2009

Project Information Literacy report

A progress report from the American Project Information Literacy is available at http://projectinfolit.org/progress/ It is called Finding context: what today’s College Students say about conducting research in the Digital Age and has findings from group discussions with 86 students coming from 7 US colleges or universities. It is talking about "those activities that commence upon receiving an assignment and continue through collecting research resources until the writing of the final paper." rather than actual research.
They asked students about everyday iunformation seeking as well as information seeking for academic work. They identify four types of context that the students need to have in order to work better: "Big picture" (i.e. the subject background); "Language" (jargon etc.); "Situational" (e.g. what is wanted from an assignment) and "Information Gathering" (understanding how to find their way round relevant sources). I think that a lot of this ties in with existing information behaviour research, but it will be interesting to see whether the Project Information Literacy material gets wider coverage.

Photo by Sheila Webber: warming homemade soup, Feb 2009

Thursday, February 05, 2009

LIANZA papers

Some interesting papers from the November 2008 LIANZA (New Zealand Library Association ) Conference have been archived in LIANZA's online library. They include: Helen Mandl and Margie Jantti Far from common - innovative approaches to designing information rich learning and research spaces (about the uses of and activities in the new University of Wollongong Library complex) I also noticed Kathryn Greenhill's Building Scripted Objects to go in Second Life libraries. Go to
http://opac.lianza.org.nz/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl
Get a complete list of papers by entering the search words LIANZA Conference Papers 2008

Photo by Sheila Webber: Western Park, Feb 2009

Information Literacy: what next

From Thomas Hapke's blog post at http://blog.hapke.de/?p=243 he links to a number of items including his own powerpoint on Slideshare (in German) Informationskompetenz: wie weiter (Information Literacy: what next). He identifies the most important things to reflect on as regards information literacy as: Curiosity and doubt; Reflection and learning about information (e.g. social and ethical implications of its use); Intellectual property and privacy issues. He links Information Literacy, Web 2.0 and e-learning as being intertwined and complimentary. There are some intersting references at the end of the powerpoint (again, mostly in German)

Photo by Sheila Webber: Iced frond, Feb 2009

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Work Literacy

I came across the Work Literacy blog "Work Literacy is a network of individuals, companies and organizations who are interested in learning, defining, mentoring, teaching and consulting on the frameworks, skills, methods and tools of modern knowledge work." Skimming through the last entries it isn't anything radically different, in that it is discussing various Web 2.0 and communication/work tools. However, it is useful to find a blog that is discussing them from a workplace perspective rather than an educational one. http://www.workliteracy.com/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Washing line, yesterday

IADIS conference

There is a call for papers for the IADIS International Conference e-Learning 2009 takes place in Algarve, Portugal, 17 - 20 June 2009. It covers technical and non-technical aspects of e-Learning. One of the thematic areas is e-Skills and Information Literacy for Learning. Deadline for submissions has been extended to 9 March 2009. http://www.elearning-conf.org/
Photo by Sheila Webber: View from front door, yesterday.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) is an area on the EDUCAUSE website that has a number of areas. There are various publications in the Resources section and today I will highlight the 7 Things You Should Know About...pieces "which provide quick, no-jargon overviews of emerging technologies and related practices that have demonstrated or may demonstrate positive learning impacts." The latest 3 are about Alternate Reality Games (Jan 2009) (ARGs "weave together real-world artifacts with clues and puzzles hidden virtually any place, such as websites, libraries, museums, stores, signs, recorded telephone messages, movies, television programs, or printed materials", Lecture capture (Dec 2008), and Flip camcorders (Nov 2008) Other 2008 topics include Zotero, Google docs, Second Life.
http://www.educause.edu/eli/16086
http://www.educause.edu/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutSeries/7495
Photo by Sheila Webber: Snowdrops snowed in, Sheffield, Feb 2009

International Workshop on Information Literacy, Bangladesh

The International Workshop on Information Literacy (IWIL 2009) takes place 22-26 June 2009 at the Independent University, Bangladesh, Baridhara, Dhaka. It is organized by Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) and sponsored by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). http://lib.iub.edu.bd/iwil.html
Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheffield, Snowy twigs, Feb 2009

Monday, February 02, 2009

6th Annual Georgia Conference on Information Literacy

There is a call for papers for the 6th Annual Georgia Conference on Information Literacy, which takes place on September 25-26, 2009, in Savannah, USA. Themes are Defining information literacy in a digital age, effective ways of developing IL in learners; partnerships; IL across disciplines; Evaluation of IL initiatives; Intellectual property in the digital age. Deadline for proposals is 15 April 2009. More info at at http://ceps.georgiasouthern.edu/
conted/infolitproposals.html

Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheffield, Feb 2009

Learning and information literacy in Web 2.0

An event on 19 March 2009 in London, UK, is Learning and information literacy in Web 2.0. Includes topics: The digital environment; Implications for information behaviour ; Developing information literacy in the Web 2.0 environment More info at
http://www.cilip.org.uk/training/
training/2009/tl/
Learningandinformationliteracyinweb2.0.htm

Photo by Sheila Webber: Snow from the front door, Sheffield, Feb 2009