I had a great time this afternoon at Murdoch University Library, where I met several staff, including the University Librarian Margaret Jones and the IL coordinator Merrilee Albatis. The photo shows Merilee by one of the art exhibits.
Murdoch is a small university, with about 9000 FTE students, but they are doing some very interesting work in IL. I particularly liked their LITE programme, which is a WebCT based programme followed by about 90% of their foundation students as a compulsory assessed unit. This is an excellent way of ensuring that students have basic library skills right from the start.
Jenny, the Science Liaison Librarian also explained to me how all liaison staff have a space in their respective schools and spend time there on a weekly basis, maintaining a high level of contact with staff. I’d like to explore how we could do more of this at Newcastle.
Last but not least, Murdoch has a lovely cafe, situated in a courtyard in the middle of the library (this is for Jill!)
The cafe
We already have lots of links to the brilliant UQL Endnote pages, so I couldn’t visit here without paying homage to their creators! Sadly, I didn’t meet John East, but Noela and I had a great chat (commiserating together) and have agreed that we will keep in touch and help each other as much as possible (this might be more of a one way transaction…..)I’m sure this will be a great help to us in Newcastle.
A possum in Brisbane city centre
The UQL Cyberschool is a very exciting initiative and an excellent example of university and school collaboration. As well as providing a focus for IL for schools and access to lots of free resources, the cyberschool staff facilitate database trials and help organise appropriate subscriptions for schools, dealing with both the schools and the vendors. They also run training for teachers and librarians and suggest lesson plans to encourage teachers to incorporate the use of electronic resources into the classroom activities. I think this is the kind of thing we should all be doing!
Rainbow lorikeet in the garden (did I mention there were koalas in the garden the other day!!)
Proof!
I had a very full and interesting day at UQ Library yesterday. Newcastle staff will remember Keith Webster, who is now the UQ University Librarian and Director of Learning Services. Keith made me very welcome and I enjoyed dinner with him and his wife Berenika during a spectacular thunderstorm (what was that about nice weather over here??)
UQ is a large Library with >2.5 million books and over 46,000 EJs. They also have 60 liaison librarians, so a little different to Newcastle!
Deb Turnbull is the IL coordinator. Although UQ is so much larger I did feel that their approach to IL is very similar to ours.
Note how the writing really is on the wall – it’s very effective.
Thank you to everyone who has been emailing me about my blog – It’s great to hear from you and to know at least some people are reading it! I’ve added some more pics to last week’s posts so do go back and look.
This is me at Australia Zoo, where Steve Irwin was based, a very emotional place to visit at present.
Judy and the QUT “cat”alogue
Yesterday I spent a fascinating day with Judy Peacock, the IL Coordinator here at QUT. I’ll be adding a photo of her as soon as I can download the next bunch, so keep checking back on the blog. I’ll also be writing a more detailed report on our discussion for my colleagues at Newcastle as there are lots of ideas we can learn from.
The IL programme at QUT has 3 levels. Level 1 is a generic support level which students can access if they feel they need it, Level 2 involves cooperation between library and academic staff and Level 3 is embedded into the curriculum.
I was very interested in the work Judy and the Liaison Librarians are doing with Key Performance Indicators for IL as it involves a detailed analysis of the approach, intentions and content of individual units (modules), looking at opportunities for embedding IL into them.
The work on staff development for teaching is also something which I hope to follow up. Some of it is based on Edulib, so relates to the Liblearn work Christine Purcell and I did a few years ago, but there are other elements about peer learning and curriculum design which would be new for us.
Schools outreach is another area on which I have gathered useful info and which I hope will inform the outcomes of my project
Another report from RGU on their work with teachers and IL has just been published:
Williams, D.A. and Wavell, C. (2006) Untangling Spaghetti? The Complexity of Developing Information Literacy in Secondary School Students. Research funded by Scottish Executive Education Department. Aberdeen: The Robert Gordon University and Edinburgh: Scottish Executive.
“The study took the form of a case study focusing on how the teacher and librarian deliver information skills through an information activity with a small group of students in their second year at secondary school. Data was collected through field notes of lessons observed by the researchers and recorded post-lesson reflective discussions with the teacher and librarian. ”
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