Today was my last day in Australia – I’ll be heading home tomorrow, trying to devise a plan to come back again! Please keep reading the blog – I have lots more pictures and once I return I shall start my research project properly, so hopefully will still have some interesting posts now and then.
For now here are some pelicans I met at Point Peron, plus a skink which crossed the road just near them.
The TAFE seems to be similar to a UK FE college, so yesterday we went to sample the skills of the catering students. The meal was wonderful, but we were the only people under 70! I was even charged the senior’s rate for my meal – great to get a bargain but I hope they didn’t really think I was over 60!
Ladies who lunch
It’s fascinating to see how different libraries organise and label their learning spaces. many badge computer clusters as E-zones or E – libraries and at both Curtin and UQ libraries I saw small booths (the kind of thing you’d find in a pub in the UK), room for 4 students round a table, boxed in, with a PC at the end for group use. They looked like an attractive idea.
A few people said they enjoyed the crane ship so here’s another view of it
One the reasons I was keen to visit Curtin was to find out more about their innovative podcasting project. As well as an introductory tour, they produce a regular 3-4 min weekly podcast on a topic of interest. The title above links to the podcasts. Although they don’t yet know how students are using or benefiting from the service, they have recorded over 5000 downloads since September.
It was interesting to discover that any library staff who are interested have been able to be involved and that recordings are made by the staff who write the scripts, so that lots of different voices are involved. There will be some interesting logistics involved in continuing the podcasts into a second year as they need to produce new ones for students who have started using them this year, but also repeat the original set for new students.
Jaya and Constance were also interested in our plans to produce some foreign language versions of our podcast tour.
Sunset over Port Kennedy
Curtin has a very extensive IL programme, involving a lot of collaboration with academic staff. I have an excellent example of an embedded programme in Health Sciences as well as some useful documentation demostrating how the activities are documented.
I was interested in the staff development, which involves a session every fortnight on topics of interest, either run within the library or with invited speakers.
LATN is a collaborative network of 5 australian technical libraries and as a group they have been involved with supporting “offshore” students, especially in SE Asia. There seem to be a lot of collaborative initiatives in Australia – it would be good if we could do more of this locally.
I wasn’t able to take any photos inside Curtin Library, but here are Kerry and Diana with some of the spectacular flowers and the library behind them.
One of the interesting aspects of many of the australian university libraries I have visited is that they have a designated separate provision for researchers and academics. In UWA it’s called the Scholars Centre and at QUT it was the Research Centre. These areas are often linked to services like ILL and archives and provide bookable desks, lockers etc and at QUT, for example, direct access to liaison staff. Some useful ideas, I think.
Here is a picture of an “Ibis tree” – well a tree which had a lot of Ibis roosting in it anyway!
When filling in their wandering minds sheets, several of the staff at UWA picked up on the idea of threshold concepts, which I touched upon in the talk I gave to them. The notion of “Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge” originated with Jan Meyer and Ray Land and I think gives an interesting way of thinking about IL – can we change the way in which staff and students perceive IL in a permanent way?
Follow the link above to find refs to Meyer and Land’s original work.
This pic is nothing to do with libraries; it is a huge crane transporter leaving Fremantle yesterday.
UWA Library has a range of IL resources and approaches. They are working towards embedding IL into the curriculum and have some great examples in Medicine and Law. However, Like Murdoch, they are also providing some core first year on line units : IRIS, as well as a more generic InfoPathways, which you can see at the link above. IRIS is compulsory but not directly assessed; if students don’t complete it they will have a fail recorded on their academic record.
STIL gives access to skills for librarians who are teaching IL, similar to the LibLearn programme we ran at Newcastle and Durham a few years ago.
The new journals area at UWA
UWA Library must have one of the best locations an acadmic library can have! It is situated in the middle of a beautiful campus with the Swan river just over the road. These 2 pics were taken from the same spot, looking in opposite directions. The library is the red roof just visible in the middle of the picture.
I had a great time meeting staff here as they were so friendly and interested in my project and they have given me some fascinating feedback on my Wandering Minds sheets. This was also one of the best lunches (though they’ve all been good because of the company!). This is me and my dessert!
