Balancing act

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Since my study leave ended last week and I returned to work, I am faced with the dilemma of balancing project work with picking up the strings of my real job as liaison librarian while at the same time having a home life. For now, I think the Christmas shopping is winning! However, I know there a few folk out there (my “blogees”!) who have been reading the blog regularly – you range from friends and family, colleagues from Newcastle and the libraries I visited, plus quite a few info lit friends from the UK and elsewhere. Although I won’t be posting as many items from now on, I do plan to keep the blog goig at least for the next 2 years, which is the life of the NTF project, so do keep reading it, if only for all the photos I still have. (Jack, one of our Library porters, didn’t believe I’d taken the photos – I’ll take that as a compliment, rather than amazement at my unsuspected skills!)


The sea at Chrsitchurch, NZ

Newcastle Info Lit Toolkit Launch

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Today saw the official launch of the Newcastle Info Lit toolkit. The toolkit contains a variety of resources, suggestions and guidance for academic, library and educational development staff to use in order to integrate information literacy into the curriculum. Based on the SCONUL 7 pillars model, the toolkit allows staff to select basic, intermediate or advanced level activities, which may be online tutorials, Blackboard quizzes, lecture notes and slides, worksheets, discussion documents etc. There is information on meeting specific skills outcomes on module outline forms as well as how to design a whole programme with embedded information literacy.
The next stage in our project will be to evaluate the impact of the toolkit, as well as continuing to develop and add to it. We’ll be looking at attribution statements and a rating system too.
I took my camera along to the launch but was far too busy talking to manage to take any photos!
Here are some flowers from Christchurch Botanic Gardens instead!

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/il_toolkit.php

The watching wall

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The Watching Wall at CPIT Library

I’ve started to write up my notes from my study visit now, so will start to post items relating to the trip which I didn’t mention at the time.
A nice idea from Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology Library is the Watching Wall – a bank of TVs which are tuned to international channels. Surrounded by beanbags and couches they provide a place where students can watch TV programmes from around the world – great for international students to feel they are keeping in touch with home. Students use their own headphones or can borrow them. They can also watch dvds here.

SCONUL Working Group on Information Literacy

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The SCONUL WGIL is the group which produced the 7 pillars model of IL, on which we are basing our IL toolkit at Newcastle. I am delighted that I have recently become a member of the Working Group, as I hope this will enable me to make a real contribution to IL in the UK.

There are some useful links to publications on their website.


Kookaburra in Queensland

http://www.sconul.ac.uk/g…ation_literacy/

Schools and IL

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Staghorn fern growing on a log

The issue of ALISS Quarterly which I mentioned yesterday also has some interesting articles on IL in schools:
School librarians and the Google generation by Sarah Pavey
Information literacy, the link between second and tertiary education: project origins and current developments – John Crawford and Christine Irving

ALISS Journal article

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Turtle dove nesting in hanging basket, Port Kennedy, WA.

The latest issue of the ALISS Quarterly Journal, Volume 2, No 1, October 2006. p27-32 has an article by myself and Sophie Brettell entitled “What’s wrong with a good idea? An Information literacy toolkit in practice”.
It’s part of an info lit themed issue which also includes the following articles:
“The challenge of the google generation to informatin literacy” by Peter Goodwin, “Creating an Ipod library tour” by Maria Mawson et al. and “From Montaigne to Orwell – the development of Learning objects at Birkbeck College” by Wendy Lynwood and David Flanders

Extending armpits

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While I was trying to extend my armpits in yoga last night (at my height you try everything!) I started thinking again about people as individual learners and how important it is in IL terms to try not to generalise but to create IL programmes which cater for many different needs. In part this follows on from a conversation I had the other day about understanding the learning process – the better we appreciate how people learn the better we are able to facilitate the process.

A Galah by the road in Rockingham, WA.

LIMES: Library Information Management Employability Skills

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The LIMES project is aiming to produce resources to support learning and teaching for students of library and information management courses. Yesterday, I was invited to a meeting in Birmingham to discuss the formation of a Community of Practice around information literacy. Participants included academic and library staff. The aim (I think) was to foster better communications so that students graduate with the skills they need for their first professional library post. We tried to identify gaps in the current system which we could work togther to fill.
There was a feeling amongst the practitioners present that students need to understand more about teaching and learning so that are able to participate effectively in information literacy programmes as well as enquiry work when they first start working in libraries (exactly the kind of topics which EduLib covered 10 years ago in trying to fill the same gap!). However the academic staff still didn’t feel this was appropriate as part of their current courses.
However, we did agree that a register of both academic and library staff who were prepared to run a variety of “training” sessions across the divide would be useful, as well as a database of people willing to share their teaching materials.
I also plan to follow up on the material which Debbie Boden provides for the library staff at Imperial, as this may be helpful for our staff development at Newcastle.

Yellow eyed penguin near Dunedin, NZ

http://www.ics.heacademy….NTENT/index.htm

Coals from Newcastle?

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While I was away, I gave a talk in many of the libraries I visited. I called it “Coals from Newcastle: a Geordie view of information literacy” and told people about the Info Lit project we’ve been working on in Newcastle over the last year, as well as my plans for my own NTF research project. As I’ve already mentioned in the blog, I was made very welcome in every place I visited and have come home with a tremendous range of ideas, information and paperwork [the less said about the weight limit on the flights the better – I had to leave my posh case behind as it weighed too much empty and return with a more practical, but less smart holdall in which to carry all the material (and shopping) I’d gathered]. Over the next few weeks I shall be collating all this information into a more manageable form- probably a series of themed reports, plus a presentation for my Newcastle collegues, as well as some blog entries. I also persuaded people to participate in my research, so I have some data to analyse too.
The next step in my project is to start to work with local schools, running interviews, focus groups and surveys with staff, students and librarians. I am delighted that so far 7 schools have volunteered to participate, so I shall be contacting them and arranging initial meetings shortly.

It’s very nice to be home (still a little jet lagged, I think), but I shall continue to decorate the blog with photos from my trip for some time to come!

Here is a view of the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand – it is one of only a few glaciers which are moving so quickly that they actually penetrate down into the temperate rainforest near the coast. Amazing!