Category Archives: General information

IL for administrators

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This ACRL webpage caught my attention at the same time as an article by Mark Hepworth and Marian Smith entitled “Workplace information literacy for administrative staff in HE” published in the Australian Library Journal 2008 57(3) 212-236. I haven’t had time to read Mark and Marion’s article yet, but I note that it is making comparisons with the JISC i-skills model. IL for admin, technical and secretarial staff in HE is an area which I am currently thinking about, as I am in the process of setting up some workshops for the admin staff in the Faculty with which I liaise, probably starting with something very practical, like an EndNote workshop, but hopefully also covering some broader IL skills and concepts. I’d be interested to know if any other libraries are developing anything similar or have experienced an increased demand for this type of help.


Coypu in the Carmargue, France

Hollywood Librarian

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I missed my yoga to go and see the NE screening of this film – was it worth it? It is billed as being a documentary about how libraries and librarians have been depicted in films. Well, it made a promising start, explaining the role of libraries throughout history and some of the film clips were entertaining (even spotted the Durham County Library book bus, from Billy Elliot, I think), but I thought it degenerated a little bit into too many clips of librarians saying how much they love their job. (I love mine too!). I liked the systems guy who talked about his job being about connecting content with questions and I learned that there are more libraries than MacDonalds branches in the US. Also that Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in a library basement and that the US spends more in Afghanistan and Iraq in a day that it does on libraries in a year.
I think I learned too much about the Salinas library closures due to tax cuts – a very similar thing happened when I was working in Quincy, MA in 1980 and it had some tragic effects then too, so I’m not unsympathetic, I just think the film laboured the point too much. I couldn’t quite work out who the film is aimed at – 96 minutes is a long time, I think half of that would have been sufficient to get the message across!


Oyster catchers in WA (photo from Darryl, WA)

Chinese School

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I have been fascinated by the recent BBC 4 series on life in 3 chinese schools in the rural town of Anhui. The programmes give an insight into the teaching styles in China and some of the challenges faced by Chinese students. They are good background for anyone involved with teaching international students in the UK. If you’ve missed them, you can download this week’s on i-player. The BBC/OU Open net website has a lot more info about the Chinese education system too.


Pippin “at work”. Maybe he can make more sense of my data than I can!

http://www.open2.net/chineseschool/index.html

Study Leave again

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I have neglected the blog a little bit lately, as I’ve been too busy being a liaison librarian to think about my NTF project. However, I shall be on study leave again after Easter, so hopefully will have more time to blog. I hope there are still a few people out there reading the blog – if so, do send me an email!

Blog gap

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I know quite a few people used to read my blog – you’ve all probably stopped looking at it now! Apologies to everyone for the long gap in the blog, I’ve just had so much to do! Hopefully I’ll get back on track now and start blogging again a little more regularly.

No time to blog

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I haven’t had much time to blog recently because it’s such a busy time of year and I’m spending most of my time involved with information literacy sessions with students, which is what it’s all about really. I’m finding that this year I’m spending more time talking to the students about what it means to be information literate and actually engaging them in discussion about how thinking about this is going to help them. I’m quite surprised by how positive the response has been!


Grand Canyon, Aug 2007

The impact of IL

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One thing I am very interested in is how we can measure the difference that information activities make. I have looked at quite a few diagnostic tests, and while they are good for ascertaining levels of understanding and skills attainment,they are quite specifically about IL and probably predispose the particpant to select the correct answers. Whether the IL activities have really made a difference to learning attitudes and habits is more difficult to measure. I have read a few papers about this recently and particularly like the ideas in “Direct assessment of IL using writing portfolios” by Scharf in the Journal of Academic Librarianship 2007 33(4) 462-78.
I am hoping to use this technique in a project I’m working on with Dr Bleasdale, a chemistry lecturer here at Newcastle. Basically, I will look at one of the first pieces of chemistry coursework and assess IL levels evidenced in them. A variety of IL activities will take place over the year and then I will examine a further set of chemistry coursework at the end to see of there is evidence of better IL understanding.
If there is anyone reading this who has other suggestions for measuring impact, I’d be very pleased to hear from you – email me and I’ll add your comments to the blog.

Spring in Durham (no rain!)