Research Support services in UK Universities

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.

Young panda at Chengdu, July 2010

Managing student expectations of university

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.

international students and libraries: maximising potential

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

Elsevier webinar

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!

Rebuilding the seven pillars

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.

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.

Mendeley

 I've spent a little time today playing around with Mendeley.

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.

UEL talk on International student support

Even though it's almost 3 years since we wrote the SCONUL guidelines on library services for international students, we do still receive invitations to talk about them and Marie Scopes and I are off to the University of East London on Thursday. I have been collecting feedback from folks who have used the guidelines and hopefully we will be able to add some links to the SCONUL site soon to sites which have been developed using some of the ideas in our report. Once we have given our talk, I'll add a set of the slides to my blog too.

NE and Yorkshire network for information and data handling

Panda at Chengdu, July 2010

I've been pleased to be involved with Laura Jeffrey's initiative to develop a network of folks who support researchers in developing information and data handling skills. With support from RIN and Vitae, Laura is inviting interested people to a launch meeting on 14th Feb from 10.30 to 3.00 in the Research Beehive here at Newcastle University. There is more info on the RIN website
It's a great opportunity to get a mix of people together to think about how we can work more closely to support researchers so I do hope we get a good response.

New Old blog

I haven't added any posts to my old info lit blog for over 6 months now, so I thought I would start 2011 with the usual good intentions to start again! I've finally decided to move from the Newcastle hosted blog to Blogger, partly because it is easier for me to access from anywhere to add posts, but mainly because folks couldn't leave comments on my old blog, which was very frustrating. The first few posts are "old" new posts which just never got added to the old blog!


I'll carry on including photos, as they seem to be popular and make it more fun for me too.

Here I am in the Forbidden City in Beijing, July 2010.