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| Probably the last panda pic |
One of the nice things about the RIN Info Handling Group is the wide range of different folks who are involved. It was nice to meet Nicola Siminson from JORUM there last week. Nicola explained to us that JORUM are developing widgets that can be placed on websites in order to make searching for resources easier. She also drew our attention to the plagiarism tutorial from Leeds University which received a highly commended in the JORUM Learning & Teaching Competition
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| Panda on a stump |
Laura Molloy from the Digital Curation Centre also alerted me to a series of seminars they are running in Glasgow and Cambridge as part of the Incremental Project. This project is looking at the challenges of short and long term electronic data management. Following on from the HATII project the University of Glasgow has implemented a digital curation training programme for its researchers based on the Digital Curation Centre
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| I promised Laura another panda! |
I thought readers of my blog might like to have some information about the DaMSSI project, which I have a connection with because I’m a member of RIN’s Information Handling Working Group. RIN is collaborating with the Digital Curation Centre and JISC to co-fund a new Research Data Management Skills Support Initiative (
I like to catch up with my reading when I have to travel by train, so the RIN Info Handling Group meeting on friday in London was a good opportunity and appropriately, one of the reports I read was the RIN report on research support services. No real surprises in their findings or recommendations, though they do recommend that libraries review the scope for embedding information specialists into research teams (maybe a bit of an ideal, given the library:research staff ratios!)
I like their simple research lifecycle model, which divides activity into 4 segments: idea discovery, funding/approval, experimentation, results/dissemination. This could easily be used in conjunction with the new 7 pillars model when it is launched in April, I think.
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| Young panda at Chengdu, July 2010 |
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| Luongyang caves, China, July 2010 |
One of the key issues we face in supporting international students ( in fact all students) relates to managing expectations, so I was interested to see a new report from the 1994 group on this topic. It comprises a set of case studies in the areas of capacity building, academic experience, social experience and professional services, all of which offer opportunities for library involvement. It made me wonder how many libraries are really involved with this kind of outreach activity in their institution. One of my colleagues is working with a member of academic staff in this area, developing on line taster courses for prospective masters students. The taster course includes an IL element as well as subject content and I think it’s a great idea.
I’m on the train on the way to London to meet some folks at UEL where Marie Scopes and I are participating in an event on international students and libraries. We have been asked to talk about the SCONUL guidelines, which we have done several times before. I have been gathering some feedback on how they have been used since they were published, as well as adding to our examples of good practice.
I’ve added links to a few library websites on the end of our presentation which you can find here
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| Here’s a happy panda at Chegdu, China, July 2010 |
A new experience for me last month! I was invitied to participate in a Scholarly Persepctives webinar for early career researchers. The other speakers were Alan Johnson from Australia and Riana Coetsee from South Africa. I talked about information literacy, the RDF and 7 pillars to >800 invisible listeners from around the world. A very spooky experience!
As a member of the SCONUL Working Group on Information Literacy I have been working recently on updating the original 7 pillars model to make it relevant to today’s information literacy environment.
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| Red Panda, Chengdu, July 2010 |
We are redesigning the visual imagery as well as simplifying the names of the pillars.
However for me, the key is that each pillar will now include aspects which encompass attitudes and behaviours relating to IL as well as skills and competencies.
Each pillar is underpinned by a clear framework which clarifies all the different aspects and the new model should be able to be used as an umbrella model for all the different parts of IL, such as digital and media literacies.
Ruth Stubbings and I will be launching the model by introducing the Research Lens at the LILAC conference in April.
I’ve spent a little time today playing around with Mendeley.
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| Sleepy panda, Chengdu, July 2010 |
I was looking at it as an alternative to EndNote – we have developed very extensive support for EndNote over the years but I’ve been aware of all the free alternatives and thought it was time to find out more. I must say I’m quite impressed with my first experience of this tool. It works as a web tool and also as a desktop application and both sync together, so it’s very easy to see info wherever you are. I loved the way it harvested pdfs from my desktop and plonked them into a folder for me! I shall use it to share some of my databases of references once I have them all updated.
I guess a lot of folks have stopped following my blog, as I haven’t written anything for a long time! However, new year,new start, so I am planning to start blogging again. Although I’ve stuck with the Newcastle hosted blog for > 4 years, I have decided to try moving to a different host, partly so that I can add posts more easily from anywhere I happen to be and partly so that folks can leave comments.
So this will be my last post on this blog – you’ll find my new blog here