I picked up a reference on the plagiarism list today about this paper in Nature which is suggesting that as many as 200,000 of the 17 million articles in the Medline database might be duplicates, either plagiarized or republished by the same author in different journals. I haven’t really addressed the issue of re-publication with staff and students I talk to – I’d be interested to know if other people have.
Bramley and Pippin “helping” me work – well at least keeping me company!
The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce) is starting a new series of lectures on education with a talk by Michael Young, Professor of Education, Lifelong Education and International Development, Institute of Education, University of London. The lecture promo says “Our schools curriculum is still built around a nineteenth century classification of subjects. Does an information-driven curriculum equip young people adequately for adult life in the 21st century, or do we need new curricula that develop skills in a more systematic and progressive way? Can we develop the potential of every pupil by reforming the content and the method of what we teach them?” There is an online discussion thread, which makes interesting reading, or if you live in London, you can book for the lecture itself -it’s free.
Death Valley
I see that the LILAC programme is now available. As usual it seems they have worked hard to include some interesting keynote speakers. Jo Webb and I are going to do a symposium session on the wednesday morning on “researcher’s learning lives” in which we plan to draw on some of the research from our book to examine how researcher’s learning needs change throughout their research life.
Grand Canyon.
I was interested to hear the news item on Radio 4 this morning about the growing problem of plagiarism in schools. It echoed the findings of my own survey, in which teachers also expressed concern about students copying and pasting from the Internet. However, many of them also said that they rely on the Internet as an information source for students, so it’s a difficult situation. Nearly all the school students I spoke to identified wikipedia as their main information source and very few had any understanding of the issues surrounding quality. I’m hoping that one of the outcomes of my project will be some practical ways in which my library can work more closely with local schools to help with this issue.
Me at Yosemite
I am looking forward to the CONUL/SCONUL seminar in Dublin next week. Jo Webb and I will be giving a talk entitled “Information Literacy in a researcher’s learning life”, based on a paper we (and Pat Gannon-Leary) recently submitted to the New Review of Information Networking.
Moon rising over the Grand Canyon
Some people might recall a programme called EduLib which ran several years ago in the UK, aiming to develop teaching skills for library staff. Having attended the original course in 1998, Christine Purcell from Durham University and I set up some cascade workshops which we entitled LibLearn (Library staff facilitating learning). We ran collaborative workshops for both professional and para-professional staff from all 5 academic libraries in NE England.
This month, we have rejuvenated LibLearn and are running a series of workshops for library assistants. LibLearn 2008 aims to help library staff understand how they can encourage students to become independent learners. It looks at learning styles, attitudes and habits, communication and enquiry skills. The first workshop seemed to be very well received so we’re hoping the next two will be too.
Bryce Canyon, USA Aug 2007
A colleague (Marian) Just forwarded this article to me. It makes interesting reading – arguing that the skills needed to play fantasy football are similar to those needed to become information literate and describing a lesson plan where this has been achieved in the University of Dubuque, USA. The author reports much more positive responses from students to both the idea of research and to librarians after the workshop.
Zion Canyon, USA Aug 2007