I am very pleased to see a good review of our book on Providing Effective Library Services for Research has just been published in the November issue of CILIP Update – it’s the first review I have seen so it’s a big relief that it’s positive! Now I don’t need to feel worried about suggesting people buy it. Buy lots!
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA (Aug 2007)
I’ve just had a look at this new publication “In their own words” from JISC which looks at e-learning, its benefits, possibilities and challenges, from the perspective of the learner. It makes interesting reading, confirming much which we already know about wikipedia and Google use. I was a bit mystified by this statement though: ” .. library and learning centre staff would benefit from evaluations of how best to conduct and support research activites” It’s a bit depressing!
Yosemite National Park
I was recently asked to assess a Northumbria University RECAP Guide. RECAP (Researching the Challenges in Academic Practice) Guides are published by the MARCET Staff Development Centre at Northumbria and the guide I assessed is entitled “Priorities for CPD of academics at Northumbria University”. It reports on a small scale study to determine which development activities, formal and informal, staff had found most influential, with a view to build on successful formal events. It is available from MARCET
Newcastle Millenium Bridge
I have just received my advance copy of the book written by myself, Jo Webb and Pat Gannon-Leary. It’s very exciting to see my name on a real book and a first for me! Now we just have to hope that people find it useful and that you all buy lots of copies! The book cover says “This book will inform and advise all those who work with researchers in libraries, combining practical advice with an exploration of fundamental issues relating to the relationship between research and libraries”. As you can imagine, it’s a riveting read!
A friend (thanks Heather) sent me the details of this site. Becta is an organisation which aims to improve learning through technology and they produce some excellent publications, which often give a broad overview of an area. This one, entitled “Emerging technologies for learning[volume 2 2007] includes the following chapters:
Emerging trends in social software for education
Learning networks in practice
The challenge of new digital literacies and the ‘hidden curriculum’
How to teach with technology: keeping both teachers and students comfortable in an era of exponential change
Games in education
Ubiquitous computing
Part of my herbaceous border (for Caitlin!)
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
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,
Whilst preparing for short session on blogs which I was running for library staff here, I discovered that my blog has had a complimentary mention on the Facet publishing blog!
I’ve just come across a report entitled “results of the online tool use survey undertaken by the JISC funded SPIRE project”. It has some interesting data on which social software tools people are using.
I am looking forward to reading this new book, edited by Susie Andretta and published by Auslib Press. With contributions form many well known British and Australian authors the book provides IL perspectives from both countries.
Mount Cook, NZ