Data data everywhere

The Economist is not somewhere I would expect to find an article which backs up what librarians are trying to do. Data, data everywhere, by Kenneth Cukier, talks about the explosion of data available and the problems it causes.

"the world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.

But they are also creating a host of new problems. Despite the abundance of tools to capture, process and share all this information—sensors, computers, mobile phones and the like—it already exceeds the available storage space.

It's a good short article which may be useful to you.

Read it here

Information Literacy 2.0 : hype or discourse refinement

When I came across the reference to this article (Sonja Spiranec and Mihaela Banek Zorica Information Literacy 2.0 : hype or discourse refinement Journal of Documentation 66(1) 140-153.) I feared the worst : another article splitting hairs about what IL is , and full of long words (pedagogies, praxis etc.). In fact I found myself agreeing with much of the content, despite remaining sceptical about the need for the term, "Information Literacy 2.0). I don't normally do long posts (or read long articles with big words...) but this article is so relevant to this blog that I have made an exception.

The authors start with a description of how the term IL has developed "in response to the issues that were necessitated by the developments within the information society". The Web was crucial in this development. Despite digitilisation and shifts toward virtual libraries the basic concepts of IL have remained the same, Web 2.0 has brought new landscapes which are user-centred and very much about participation. Services can be shaped by this participation. New types of information resources have appeared. "What will happen with information literacy now that both [information landscapes and education] have fundamentally changed with the appearnace of Web 2.0? Can information literact remain unchanged?"

When I scoped our book there was very little mention of "Information Literacy 2.0" on the web. The authors have used some of the same sources which I used. Most of them predate our book. The connection between IL and Web 2.0 was new then, and the case studies we included were largely trendsetters. The authors of this article have used the intervening time to accept the importance of the juxtapostion of IL and Web 2.0 and attempt to redraw the map of what IL can be.
In doing this they have been critical of the skills model of IL and moved toward the socio-technical model of Scandinavian authoes like Tuominen. In other words IL stems from particular groups and communities , evolving within subject disciplines, and is practiced by communites using their own technologies.
The authors refer to posts about IL2.0 saying "one could easily get the impression that IL2.0 is entirely about using Web 2.0 services ...as a medium of information delivery and a method of education". Perhaps the authors had seen this blog or read our book after all!! However we always knew it was more than just offering new methods of IL delivery. This happened to be the most attractive and easily understood part three years ago.
Then we move on to the paradigm shift (there always has to be one of these!)following recent developments in information landscapes and approaches to learning, and how this might affect IL.
Web 2.0 is changing what it means to be information literate : the blurring of authority following the erosion of information context (Yes, yes!)Web 2.0 "brought an end to the stability of information context by creating flat and fluid information spaces". This leads to increased emphasis on critical understanding of how information is generated. They say"Information Literacy 2.0 further presupposes the reduction of the contents related to the typical assumptions of information retrieval such as extensive introductions to Boolean operators". Totally agreed : we spend more time teaching how to evaluate what is found and less on the intricacies of search technique. In other words more on SCONUL 7 pillar no. 5 and less on no. 4. This is exactly what I predicted several years ago.
The authors are critical of the one size fits all approach to IL teaching - a mistake which I used to make years ago when having to teach students from many disciplines! The importance of the discipline and the recognition that information searching is seldom if ever done in a structured sequential way (the way we often teach it - for our convenience) are points very well made.I like we should "encourage students to stop seeing research/assignments as a process of collecting information and instead to see in terms of forming their own perespectives and creating new insights, which is in the core of IL 2.0 as well".
The authors note the widening of library instruction beyond what is contained in the library and subscribed to it and which is now widened to include blogs, Wikipedia etc. etc.
"The only way for educational institutions to control or influence information behaviour of students in these new realms is indirectly through IL programmes". Moving away from Booleamn operators toward tagging, issues of reliability etc. Totally agree. Just been teaching that all week to large classes of new Master level students!! I wish that was sufficient :and we were that important! However I am sure that the institution has duties regarding protection of privacy, plagiarism and academics have the key part to play by utilising the new technologies to enhance the educational experience. However I am bound to say that although Web 2.0 is now mainstream and here to stay, I do not think we are anywhere near the tipping point where the educational experience of the students has fundamentally changed. That tends to drive a stake through the whole argument of the paper.
Will we soon be talking about IL3.0? I don't accept we are talking about IL2.0 : merely that we have seen a merging of many literacies around a common core which is fundamentally about information in one form or another, and that Web 2.0 has enabled these artefacts to be created and shared by everyone. This requires a shift in the balance of the way IL is "taught" with more emphasis on evaluation and the ethical issues of re-use of material.

Thanks for staying with this : I hope you have found it interesting! What a way to spend a Friday afternoon, writing this...

Pic is of a "social learning space" years ago here at the library in Luton. Have things changed?

Mobile Reference : what are the questions?

Joan Lippincott (of Coalition for Networked Information) has a prepint version of an article here for Reference Librarian on a most topical subject.Here is the abstract :

"While many libraries are already offering some types of reference services geared to
users of mobile devices, they generally focus on the reference transaction and not on
some of the broader aspects of service, including availability of content for mobile
devices and relationship of the library’s services to mobile initiatives on campus. Asking
the right questions during the planning process can assist librarians in clarifying their
goals for the service, identifying units to work with on campus, and determining whether
the service is successful. This is a rapidly developing area and flexibility is key."

She asks : What is the current state of deployment of mobiles in your institution? What are your goals for providing services and what is your strategy? Who should you work with to take mobile reference forward? How do you measure success? What is your strategy for the next 2-3 years?

As normal with Joan's articles this is both a thought-provoking and practical short article.

Pic shows our LRC where I work, on a sunny day (like today).

A Day in the Life

On 25 January there was a round of "A Day in the Life Project 2010" where librarians share what they do in a day. In the past I have wondered how anyone had the time to document this, let alone whether it would interest anyone!

Now that the term has sort of calmed down I thought I would do it today!

I am a Business Librarian at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton, UK ("where the airport is...!"

This morning began well with the bus on time ; no professional articles to have to read on the journey (I always keep some by just in case I need a relaxing snooze on the way) ; and I could read about the 1920s and how Hugh Walpole went to the whole Bayreuth Wagner Festival for 3 shillings.

I have been teaching (sorry - facilitating student learning) almost solidly for the past 2 weeks so there's been a lot of e-mails, blogs etc to catch upon this week. This will be the day I will do it. Just 10 items in my delicious store marked "follow-up". This led me to register for Hootsuite. This might help me to schedule my tweeting and Facebooking. Then I was trying out mypictr, a tool for chopping pictures down to size. Next came changing my privacy settings on Facebook. As this seemed a good idea and it didnt take long I blogged about this on our Staff blog too. Don't usually spend much time on Facebook and I cant stand those games where you say where you have been and films you hanent seen and so on.

Answering student e-mails followed and ordering a book. Coffee time. Mainly spent talking about the Royal family and remembering how the Queen had kept Margaret Thatcher standing for 40 minutes when she was annoyed about the Grenada situation.

Back at the desk another book request had arrived. My colleagues know that book ordering is not my favourite occupation. Intransigent ordering systems can cause Father Jack impersonations (of Father Ted TV fame). Time to catch up with my blogging. This means looking at my Favoutites on Twitter which I have mainly captured from Tweetdeck on my iPhone while waiting for the bus etc. It's a marvellous facility (Tweetdeck, not the bus). The best of these go into delicious (I am godwinpeter on delicious) and I blog about a few of them. Will all this be done by lunch for I expect to help with a voluntary researching training session at 2.00. Will this be a mixture of first second and Masters' students, like the sessions I helped with yesterday?

Arranged to do a Desktop session for new Business School lecturer on Thursday. Next week will mean 7 sessions for new Business Masters students next week which I do as part of their Communications in Business unit. I shall give a short intro, using the Cephalonian method, then help them to learn how to evaluate material, using the CRAP test. They then do an assignment where they write an essay based on some sources (some good, some less good) which they also have to reference.

It's lunch time and the teaching for today has been cancelled - room double booked. I can catch up with the blogs. As I munch the Marks and Spencer sandwiches I glance through blogs by Elyssa Kroski, Meredith Farkas (how does she write such long posts - I do admire her frankness so much -bet she can touch type - wish I'd learnt..) Then I read that the ACRL Instruction Section (IS) Ilene F. Rockman Publication of the Year Award has gone to an article entitled "Information Literacy and Reflective Pedagogical Praxis."As it says this "expands upon dialogues within Composition and Rhetoric to examine information literacy pedagogy.” Gosh, that sounds heavy I say to myself (or words to that effect) -wonder what praxis is??
Should have looked it up on Kngine, new search engine I've come across : Phil Bradlkey doesnt rate it so I put it on the backburner. (like the praxis article).

Keep glancing at my internal e-mails : hoped to take Thursday off to sort out choir music for Easter, but have 2 appointments now. Only using 9% of my e-mail space - following a purge last week where I pressed the wrong button and erased loads. Remarkable how little we really need from the past - it's just a comfort blanket most of the time.

Keep finding stuff to pass on to other staff - like the LibX extension for Firefox, EBSCO Mobile version, the Library Minute series from Arizona State (how dare they get the same idea as our own Just a Minute Library videos!)
The 39 Social Media Tools I'll use today -really good article : great! I am using a few of them but there so many more ideas to follow up.

I'm sure there are other things I've missed (I learnt many years ago that it is not possible to document all our thoughts/actions).
Wonder how weird this will sound in 20 years time! Twenty years ago I still had a typist and we used paper to communicate. Forty years ago when I was at University there was no public photocopying!We used to make notes....wow

Pics are of me in expansive mood ; our Social Learning Centre ; our LRC in the summer ; a pod in our Social Learning Centre where we sometimes teach groups.

Web 2.0 integration in Information Literacy instruction

Sheila Webber has just drawn attention to this article :
Luo, L. (2010) "Web 2.0 Integration in Information Literacy Instruction: An Overview" Journal of academic librarianship, 36 (1), 32-40. "Survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted in this study to examine the adoption of the Web 2.0 technology in information literacy instruction. Findings suggest that librarians use Web 2.0 tools in three different levels, and overall it has a positive impact on teaching and learning" The 3 levels were: using them themselves, using them to deliver material, and a more interactive level.
Sounds really interesting : another one for me to get on interlibrary loan!

Chopping up YouTube videos

Phil Bradley drew attention to this via Twitter.
It's a simple tool that allows you to select a video from YouTube and then chop out the section you want to use. Link can then be sent to Facebook, Twitter, Delicious for sharing, or you could embed it on a web page or as part of a Powerpoint.
For example the "What is Information Literacy" from Otis College has some good general stuff, but you would not want to use all the video as it is specific to Otis. http://www.tubechop.com/chop/yeopJX5jJV8


Pic is my ideal break : coffee and cinnamon roll.

Blogging toward Information Literacy

It's great to see case studies using Web 2.0 to teach information literacy : it's what this blog was set up for and updates the book!

Blogging toward information literacy : engaging students and facilitating peer learning, by C.Chan and D.Cmor (Reference Services Review, 2009, 37(1) 395-407) is a very interesting account of using blogs to develop information literacy with a group of 88 students on a first year politics course at Hong Kong Baptist University. The authors are quite cautious about the applicability elsewhere - too cautious I reckon because there are some really good ideas here. Students are required to post answers to weekly library research questions posted on the blog. The intention was that they learned from each other's posts.They used Blogger. Over the term 8 different resaerch questions wee used and each student was required to attempt one. (they are listed in the article).76 out of 88 posted on the blog, because they were told this was compulsory as part of the course. Only 20% said they only posted once. Only 16% said they visited it 5 or more times. In the assessment of usefulness 94% said they found it very useful or somewhat useful. It's a well structured article and I think others could try out the structure and perhaps improve on the results.

Pic is of part of our new Social Learning Space at our Putteridge Bury site.