Helsinki

Well, I've just arrived in Helsinki with Ruth Stubbings. We are going to meet lots of Finnish librarians on Monday and Tuesday; they have asked us to talk about how we devised the new seven pillars model and chat about the role of models in general. We are both sitting here in our room in the university guest house, typing away on our notebooks, how sad are we?

Hopefully we will manage some sightseeing tomorrow, the city looks spectacular ( from what I've seen in the dark) and we may even peek into a library or two along the way...

PS Here's Roo on the ferry to Suomenlinna sea fortress

Research Supervisors and Information Literacy

It's good to see the RIN report on the role of supervisors in developing information literacy has now been published.

"The key findings in the report include:

• Research supervisors’ practice, and research student satisfaction, varies enormously between different supervisors, research groups, departments and institutions. There is also great variation across different elements of information literacy.
• Research students are consistent in looking to their supervisor as a source of information and guidance.
• There is a minority of supervisors who are not engaged in developing their research students’ information literacy.
• Many supervisors have confidence in their ability to advise their research students on information literacy, though this does vary across the different elements.
• Developing their research students’ academic writing ability is a key activity that supervisors undertake.
• Supervisors are not always aware of departmental, school or institutional training and support available for their students, and sometimes find it difficult to identify what training and support is available.
• Supervisors are not necessarily completely up to date themselves with information literacy skills and knowledge.
• Training for supervisors is a polarising issue; many supervisors highlight overlong, overly generic or not useful training as a disincentive to attend further courses.
• differences in students’ perceptions of their supervisor(s) role and success in providing support across university mission groups, subjects and mode of study are relatively minor. Instead there are major differences at the individual, research group and departmental level.

The report sets out four broad recommendations:

• Making it easy for supervisors to keep up to date on what training, support and resources are available for both themselves and research students; for this purpose, providing supervisors with clear information, specific to their needs, on the range of appropriate offerings and development.
• Improving development opportunities for supervisors, in particular by encouraging peer support between supervisors, notably through seminars and mentoring
• Encouraging supervisors to support and discuss their research students’ skills assessments, for instance through mechanisms, jointly considered by supervisors and students, that could be used as a basis of planning development opportunities.
• Finally, the evidence and findings lead to questions about the usefulness of the term ‘information literacy’ for supervisors, and how it is conceived within researcher development. In light of the understanding of the supervisors’ role and their attitudes offered by this report, institutional stakeholders can review their approach and ensure that a clear institutional position on the use of the term and concept is agreed." (RIN website)

Library Guides at Newcastle

We've been having fun at Newcastle over the last few months, creating a series of subject guides on our web pages. We've subscribed to the LibGuides software from Springshare (and I have to say they were very good about allowing us a lengthy trial period and being patient while we sorted out the paperwork). It's not very expensive and enables the creation of a pretty flexible set of web pages, very quickly. We're still developing them and have yet to discuss how consistent we want them to be, but we are delighted with their impact so far. They're an excellent way of drawing together a few key resources at subject level. Mine are still fairly basic (here's my Agriculture Guide), but my colleague Lucy is adding a lot of interesting content (here's her Arts Guide)

The lonliness of the long distance researcher

Just thought I'd mention a new article. This article by Pat Gannon-Leary, Elsa Fonthaina and myself was published last month in Library Hi Tech, v29(3):

"Prior research has highlighted the isolation felt by some researchers engaged in academic writing. This article aims to examine whether such isolation might be partially overcome by membership of an online community of writers (CoW), hosted by higher education library services. A review of the literature was followed by action research based around the authors' own long distance collaborative writing task in order to explore the issues at first-hand. Case studies of existing online writing communities known to the authors but not currently hosted by libraries were also undertaken. Themes emerging include the importance of finding a medium for a CoW that is familiar and comfortable. Motivators to join a CoW include demands that academics be research active. Demotivators may include lack of trust and reluctance to share." (Emerald/Library Hi Tech abstract)

Too much teaching!

Can we ever have too much information literacy related teaching? A few years ago I'd have found this difficult to believe, but now I'm feeling more than a little overwhelmed by the hours which I could devote to it. I haven't managed to write my blog for quite a while because I have been teaching around 25 hours a week for the last few weeks. then there's preparation...
I try to work with academic staff to integrate IL into the curriculum, so I know my workload would be even higher if they weren't doing some too. What's the solution? I'm giving more "lectures" to large groups of 100+  backed up with optional workshops, less than ideal. We're also making more of the skills element avaialble as online tutorials, but I feel uneasy about doing this without some subjective context around it.
I wonder if the increase in demand is because at last there's a wider understanding of the importance of IL or just that we simply have more students. Is this happening elsewhere too? I'd be interested to hear

A Guide to teaching information literacy: 101 tips

 "A Guide to teaching information literacy: 101 tips" has been written by Helen Blanchett, who works with me at Newcastle, Jo Webb, with whom I co-authored the research support book a few years ago and her husband, Chris Powis, published by Facet, 2011. They're all experienced teachers and excellent writers, so I've no doubt it will be well worth reading:

"This book is a much-needed sourcebook to support library staff in the delivery of information literacy teaching, by providing practical guidance on tried and tested ideas and techniques for sessions. Full of hints and tips grounded in learning theory, it is a practical reference tool designed to be dipped into as needed when planning teaching and training. Where applicable the activities are mapped to models of information literacy, with guidance on adapting ideas for different levels and contexts. Advice is given on activities in the following areas such as: designing sessions; preparing sessions; delivering sessions; different types of sessions; teaching by topic; creating teaching / support materials; assessing learning; evaluating teaching sessions; and, e-learning. This easy-to-use book is an invaluable source of inspiration for any librarian involved in teaching information literacy, whether they are new to teaching or experienced but in search of fresh ideas. "

Another IL landscape

Carrying on from my previous post about the New Curriculum for Information Literacy, Jane and Emma have also devised an IL landscape. This landscape is looking at concepts and terminologies relating to IL and demonstrates how IL is an overarching concept which links together digital, media and academic literacies. It's a neat way to present the links which I'm sure will be helpful when discussing the concepts, for example, with academic staff.