Author Archives: Moira

Targeting “Academic Champions”: A Short-Term Solution for Integrated Information Literacy?

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This article by Claire McGuinness has just been published in the new online journal Communications in Information Literacy Claire argues that targeting individual academics in order to integrate IL into the curriculum will only ever be a partial solution and that aligning IL objectives with the overall academic mission of the institutions so that IL is recognized as a core educational value is a more sustainable approach. She outlines several strategies to achieve this. Our Newcastle IL Forum, whilst it is a “bottom up” approach, does still have the potential to develop in this way, I think.


Another of Meg’s NZ photos

http://www.comminfolit.or…pring2007AR3/14

Information, interactions and impact

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I’ve just been invited to present a short paper at the i3 conference at Robert Gordon University at the end of June. I hope by then that I’ll have analysed some of the data from my schools visits and this will be my first opportunity to tell people how I’m getting on. The conference has a wide range of interesting speakers, so I’m very pleased to have been asked to join them.


Bramley (on the right) went missing for 4 days over the weekend. Pippin is glad to have him home!

http://www.i3conference.org.uk/

Phenomenography: a conceptual framework for information literacy education

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The paper by Susie Andretta has just been published in Aslib Proceedings (vol 59, No 2, 2007, p152-168). Although it’s quite theoretical for a quick read, I found it very helpful in summarising some of the concepts of phenomenographical research. Phenomenography is about how people experience a phenomenon, so relating to IL, we can think about IL and learning as they are expereinced by the learner. This is the basis of Christine Bruce’s relational model which is informing my own research project. Through her 6 Frames model, Christine explores how people’s perspectives of T&L influence their interpretation of and attitude to IL


Another of Meg’s pics of NZ,

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0001-253X.htm

Library support for research – researchers’ views needed!

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Although it’s not directly relevant to info lit, I thought I’d add a plea to readers of this blog to help me to get in touch with researchers around the world. Over this last year, I have been involved in writing a book about research support and libraries (make sure you order a copy!)and as a result we have had a paper accepted at a conference in South Africa in August. I shall be on holiday then so sadly can’t go. Pat Gannon-Leary is presenting the paper but we are currently working on the data together.
We want to extend the research we did for the book by including more views from researchers outside the UK – if you have any contacts, or are a researcher yourself and can assist us by filling in the survey or passing it on, I’d be delighted to hear from you. More UK views will also be welcome of course.
If you can help, please email me moira.bent@ncl.ac.uk and I will reply with a copy of the survey.

Libraries without Walls 2007

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karen Senior, the Librarian at Bolton University and I will be presenting a paper at the LWW7 conference this year. It is based on the work we’re doing on library support for international students and is entitled Discrete Library Services for International Students – how can exclusivity lead to inclusivity?


This photo of Routeburn, New Zealand, was sent to me by Meg Upjohn, Chemistry Librarian at the University of Canterbury, Chrsitchurch, NZ

http://www.cerlim.ac.uk/conf/lww7/

Barnard Castle School

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I had an excellent visit to Barnard Castle School yesterday and enjoyed lunch in a very traditional dining room with panelled walls and good food! The students were very articulate in explaining to me how they use resources for their coursework (especially Wikipedia, of course) and we had some interesting discussions about how english and chemistry students approach their information needs. From originally telling me that chemistry only needs facts, the students persuaded each other that actually there are times when it also deals in opinions and shades of grey, for example when considering global warming but also when thinking about theories in general.

Caroline Shovlin in her School Library

NTF Symposium

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The NTF Symposium this week was an opportunity to meet and network with other National Teaching Fellows from around the UK. It was great to catch up with old acquaintances but I also met lots of new people and have great hopes of working with some of them in future in areas such as IL as a threshold concept in nursing and IL and transition. Arti Kumar from the University of Bedfordshire is writing a book about employability and tells me there is a chapter which addresses how IL can add value to employability. One to watch out for!

Christine Bruce at Durham Cathedral

Support for international students

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Yesterday I went to a meeting of a small Sconul Working Group of which I’m a member. We have been doing some work towards a report on support for international students in libraries. Up to now, we’ve elicited 50 responses from UK libraries to our survey and also done our own survey of library websites, with some fascinating results. We’ve got some great examples of good practice and innovative ideas and I’m hopeful that the report will be a really useful practical guide for UK libraries. If there’s anyone reading this who is involved with international students support we’d love to hear from you, so please get in touch with me.

Wombat walk, Australia Zoo, Brisbane