Researchers summer school

Hello to all the researchers I met at the NE Universities researcher summer school at Beamish Hall yesterday.

Pippin helping with paperwork

 We talked about profile raising, esteem and impact. One resource I forgot to mention is MyRI, a useful open access online resource which helps you to learn more about bibliometrics - ways to track and measure your research output.

Now you know the name of my cat and you have boosted my blog stats too!

Flavorsme

I'm finding it difficult to keep up with all the different social media applications which are around these days. This week, thanks to Jenny, I've discovered flavorsme, a neat way to keep basic info and links about yourself all in one place.

Information for Learning workshop for academic staff

I'm looking forward to a workshop my colleague Julia and I are facilitating next week. It's called Information for Learning and is based in part on some work I did in Cardiff last year and with some visiting Nigerian lecturers here in Newcastle earlier this year. The idea behind it is to encourage academic staff to think about how and where IL fits into their teaching. Julia, another colleague, Jenny, and I are working on a small project to create an online resource for our staff and students based in Singapore, so the workshop will enable us to test what we've already created and draw on the experiences of teaching staff who are already working with international partners. The workshop is just for staff here at Newcastle, but I thought readers of the blog might be interested in what we're doing, so details are below. If there is anyone else who is doing something similar, we'd be delighted to swap experiences with you.

"Information for Learning – international perspectives

v  What information skills do our students need to help them to function in the modern world?

v  Are our perceptions of ‘good academic conduct’ in information literacy transferable to different countries and cultures? What adaptations might we need to make?

v  How can we work together to embed good academic practice in the use and handling of information into our teaching?

Nigerian visitors

This workshop helps you answer these questions, by introducing a collaborative, internationalised approach to embedding information literacy, which also supports parity of teaching and learning experiences in overseas partnerships. We will demonstrate an existing online module for developing the information literacy skills of students, explain the concepts behind the Information for Learning resources currently on offer for staff and introduce you to the new SCONUL Seven Pillars of Information Literacy model. All of these materials will be used to create a new online framework, initially for the staff and students in Newcastle University in Singapore (NUIS) in the School of Marine Science and Technology – though its future application could be much broader."

E-learning IL resources

Mark Hepworth asked recently on the IL mailing list for examples of IL e-resources. For folks who didn't see Ruth's reply, there are some e-learning resources on the Information literacy wesbite  and  here too. 

Ruth's keen to have more examples, so if your materials are not already linked to on the IL website, send  the details to r.e.stubbings@lboro.ac.uk and Kanwal.Virdee@uwl.ac.uk.

The Cambridge Curriculum for Information Literacy

Heron near Falkirk Wheel (thanks Kathy)

Last week I was interviewed by Jane Secker and Emme Coonan as part of their research for their Arcadia Fellowship. It was nice to be called an "expert witness" - not sure I agree with that description, I'm more just an enthusiastic amateur! The project is fascinating. Jane and Emma are aiming to understand the information needs of future undergraduate students on entering UK higher education and so develop a revolutionary curriculum for information literacy that can be used with them. The curriculum aims to be flexible so that it can be can be used and adapted in a variety of settings and will support face to face, blended and online learning provision. I really enjoyed our chat. Having the opportunity to reflect back on my own NTF research was useful too.One of the useful outcomes from my NTF work was encouraging me to think about how the way in which teachers perceive IL affects how they integrate it into their teaching - if they think of it as skills, or even just using the library, then they may not address the underlying attitudes, understandings and behaviours which need to be taught alongside the skills

E-Books and E-Content

Falkirk wheel again (courtesy of Kathy)

I was disappointed to miss the e-books and e-content event last month due to illness, so I'm pleased to see all the presentations are now available. Over the last couple of years I have been using some of my NTF fund to buy a range of different e-book readers. In my little collection I have: a bebook, a cybook, a sony touch, sony pocket and sony prs505, an iriver story, a kindle, an archos and an ipad. So far not one of them is an outright winner for me in terms of academic library use (well, maybe the ipad...). I feel the Sonys should be, as at least it's possible to add non DRM controlled EPUB documents onto them, so a few subscribed titles maybe. Certainly they seem to be the best bet for using with public library ebooks. I do like the Newcastle City Library pages, and the Overdrive summary page of different devices. Sony's are not so easy to read PDFs on though. We loan a few sony readers out to our users and they are very popular, but it's frustrating that they don't work with all our ebook content. I must say I like the option via Amazon to email a PDF to your kindle and have it reformatted - that's much better for EJ articles, but really only works for a personal reader, not loanable equipment. I know other folks are experimenting a lot with readers now - I'll be interested to know your experience if you'd like to leave me a comment.

Social media: re-conceptualising information literacy?

The Falkirk Wheel (courtesy of Kathy) - lots more Scottish photos to come!

Helen Partridge from QUT is giving a talk today in Manchester  about her research on the issues, challenges and opportunities social media brings to the information world. It promises to be a thought provoking discussion. She gave the same talk last month and there were some very interesting blog posts about it - see Neil's Random Letters and Emma Wood's Librarian Identity. There'sa  twitter tag for today's talk too: #infolit