Having just read the CIBER report, I was pleased to see Ian Rowlands was our second keynote speaker. Ian emphasised that not all of the “Google generation” are addicted to technology, in fact only 20% are “very wired”, 60% are “fluent” and 20% are “digital dissidents”, turning thier backs on technology. He cited the Ofcom report which states that silver surfers use the internet at least 4hrs a week more than GGs (certainly true in my house!). Ian also talked about power browsing – people viewing rather than reading and buzzing around rather than settling on websites. he feels that abstracts are becoming increasingly important and that maybe in the future full text will become redundant for most people.
One of the issues Ian touched upon was that young people no longer have a mental map of the library as an interconnected holistic organism and no sense of the interconnectedness of the internet. He didn’t link this to their information literacy though and to me that’s part of what being information literate is all about, understanding your information environment. In fact, I was disappointed that in the discussion afterwards, many of the perceptions of information literacy which were expressed seemed to demonstrate an information skills perception (and most of the people there were university librarians or deputies, so this is a bit worrying!)

Edinburgh Castle peeping through buildings

http://www.sconul.ac.uk/events/agm2008/

I was invited to the SCONUL conference to help run a workshop on research support (I did a short presentation based on our 7 ages of research model) and was delighted to have the opportunity to listen to some eminent speakers.
Lorcan Dempsey, gave the first keynote on “The network reconfigures the library” making the point that we can no longer expect users to build their workflow around the library, we must now build our services around the user workflow and define our services based on what people are doing.

Photos of Edinburgh in the next posts…

Caitlin (my daughter) abseiling off the Tyne Bridge to raise money for her upcoming trip to Lesotho

http://www.sconul.ac.uk/events/agm2008/

I have just received my copy of the LWW7 conference proceedings, edited by Peter Brophy, Jenny Craven and Margaret Markland and published by Facet. I have blogged about the conference itself (see Sept 07 entries)and the proceedings contain 24 papers (including the one Karen and I gave on international students) from around the world. There are more details on the Facet website and a list of papers and slides on the CERLIM website

http://www.facetshop.co.u…&Category_Code=

Last week I attended the first day of the National Teaching Fellows symposium in London. The afternoon was taken up by a demonstration of teaching applications in Second Life – it was interesting to note the audience reactions! People seemed to either love it or get quite annoyed by it! As yet, I’m not sure which group I fall into, I’ve never got beyond orientation island myself, I just don’t seem to have the patience to learn what to do!
Anyway, there were a couple of useful sites mentioned: John Kirriemuir has written a snapshot of UK HE and FE developments in Second Life for Eduserve and SimTeach is a forum for educators using Second Life, with a wiki, blog and mailing list.

Fisherman tending nets, Heraklion harbour

Judging by the feedback I’ve had from earlier posts, there are quite a few people who are waiting for these Guidelines to be published and here they are at last! The task group with which I have been working was very pleased to be asked to do this research and we do hope that people find the Guidelines helpful. They are based on a survey of libraries and library websites both in the UK and elsewhere, as well as a review of the literature. The body of the report summarises some of the issues and challenges libraries face when trying to provide equitable services, drawing on case studies to illustrate particular points and highlighting key concepts throughout the text. The appendices contain lists of examples of good practice on library websites, key concepts, “special touches”, lists of glossaries, writing skills ideas, suggestions for staff training, job descriptions and more!
Karen Senior and I will be doing a presenation and workshop based on this work at the SCONUL Access meeting in June too.
If you do look at the report, please do email me and give me some feedback.

The Venetian Fort, Heraklion (view from my hotel window)

http://www.sconul.ac.uk/g…al_students.pdf

The slides from the presentations at the SCONUL/CONUL seminar on Information Strategies for Researchers, held in Dublin in January, are now available on the SCONUL WGIL website

view from lecture room at TEI Crete

http://www.sconul.ac.uk/g…acy/events.html

I have mentioned Peter and Jo’s book a few times recently. Now you can attend a workshop, run by Peter Godwin and Jane Secker, which supplements the book and blog :

Information Literacy meets Library 2.0: a hands-on workshop for librarians

SCONUL Working Group for Information Literacy in conjunction with CILIP CSG Information Literacy group and LSE Centre for Learning Technology

Thursday 3rd July, Room H102 (and S169), London School of Economics, Connaught House

The programme covers use of Web 2.0 technologies in teaching and knowing Peter and Jane, promises to be a fascinating event.

http://infolitlib20.blogspot.com

Picked up from the elearning mailing list – it looks like it might be an interesting day and a useful group to know about. It is being organised by the Learning and Teaching Institute at Chester:

The University of Chester in collaboration with the University of Hertfordshire is pleased to announce the second meeting of the Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes SIG group, on 17th April 2008 at the University of Hertfordshire.

The day is designed to be as practical as possible (you can see the draft programme on our wiki (http://podcastingforpp.pbwiki.com/April%20event
invite key podcast08).

Please email DianeTaska (d.taska@chester.ac.uk) to book your place. There will be a maximum of 50 places, allocated on a ‘first come first served’
basis. There will be a maximum of 2 people from any 1 institution.

As this is a SIG group, and we are trying to build up a database of ‘good practice’ we would like everyone who attends the day to contribute an
‘artefact’: This could be
A sample podcast
A pdf/word document on ‘how to’
A poster on podcasting (that may have been produced for other events – let’s not re-invent the wheel)
The novices could produce a word document on ‘how they would like to use a podcast’.

http://www.chester.ac.uk/…d_teaching.html

Just a final comment. If you are interested in knowing more about our model, it is being published next month : Bent, Moira. Gannon-Leary, Pat. Webb, Jo. Information Literacy in a researcher’s learning life: the 7 ages of research New Review of Information Networking 13(2) 2007 (in press)

Here are the slides from our presentation:

PPT

Here are the group answers to questions from our workshop:
What is research?
* Finding stuff out
* Things you do to answer questions
* A framework/ accepted practice to answer questions
* A process of discovery
* It’s forward and backward facing
* It’s creation of new knowledge
* Something which attracts funding
* Collecting, analysing, disseminating.

What are researchers?
* Anyone who does research
* people wanting info in depth
* People looking for novelty
* People paid to do research
* Truth seekers
* Writers/ Disseminators
* Scholars
* Systematic enquirers

Who are your researchers?
* Teaching faculty
* Colleagues
* RAs
* Doctoral students
* Masters students
* Undergrads (some dissention here)
* Practitioners
* The public – for spec coll/ family history
* Research scientists in a research institute

What are your researchers’ learning needs?
* research methodology – how to do it
* Awareness of needing to know
* Updating skills for older/ experienced researchers
* issues around level and experience
* Effective use of sources, inc people
* Supervisors & librarians – skills assessment