Las VI Jornadas CRAI : presentations

Most of the powerpoints from the conference Las VI Jornadas CRAI tratarán: Las competencias en información en las nuevas enseñanzas universitarias (held in Pamplona, Spain) are online at http://www.craipamplona2008.org/
index.php?section=22 - you will see the links after the name and titles of the speakers. They are in Spanish apart from my talk (this is the same ppt as I posted to Slideshare and blogged about a few weeks ago). The powerpoint from Carla Basili is not online (it was presented in Italian) but she has directed me to an English-language version of the paper she presented, namely "Theorems of Information Literacy" at
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00013509/

Photo by Sheila Webber: young leaves in Yamaguchi Park, Pamplona, May 2008

Pamplona report: 2

This is the second report the Las VI Jornadas CRAI in Pamplona, Spain. Yesterday at the Pamplona conference there were two sessions: mine and one from Carla Basili (Ceris-CNR, Rome). Carla’s talk was titled Information literacy policies in European universities. It was given in Italian, so again I am relying on my minimal skills in that language, with my understanding mostly derived from her powerpoint.
She started by explaining the background of ENIL (http://www.ceris.cnr.it/Basili/
EnIL/index.html ), the group she started with the aim of providing a focus for some European activities. In particular she mentioned the ENIL observatory (http://www.ceris.cnr.it/Basili/EnIL/
gateway/gatewayhome.htm and a diagnostic questionnaire (http://www.ceris.cnr.it/Basili/EnIL/questionnaire.html) translated into 12 languages.
She spent some time on reflecting on the different discourses about information literacy. She put forward two different Italian phrases, one of which puts more emphasis on the “process” of becoming an information literately aware person “Alfabetizzazione all’informazione processo di emananzione politica…” (may be spelt incorrectly), the other of which conveys more the state of being information literate.

I’ll observe that this issue of how you describe the concept – which words you use – is a very interesting one. In the English language the is the information skills vs. i-skills (etc.) vs information literacy debate. In some countries, France and Spain I believe, there have been debates about which words to use to translate information literacy: some using “literacy” words and some “competencies” words. In Spain the “literacy” phrase (i.e. alfabetización informacional) seems to be dominant now. I think that the phrase you choose does have implications for how you will conceive of the subject and go about teaching it.

Carla Basili identified three perspectives: a disciplinary approach (seeing the discipline as being “La cultura dell’informazione”; a socio-political approach (focused, as already indicated, on becoming information literate) and a cognitive approach (focused on individual competencies). If I understood correctly, towards the end of her talk she was advocating an approach to information literacy that took account of these three approaches: education about the value of information, as well as some theoretical understanding (e.g. of information retrieval) and practical skills. She proposed three levels of education.

One thing she wants to develop as a base level is a European Driving License for Information. This is a place where I disagree, as outlined in the talk I did at the IFLA conference a few years ago (see An International Information Literacy Certificate: opportunity or dead-end? at http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla69/papers/199e-Webber.pdf). However, I do agree about seeing information literacy as a disciplinary area, and it is interesting to debate where it fits and what it means for educating European citizens. Carla raised some important issues. Obviously I won’t have done her speech justice so (as with the talks in Spanish) I welcome any contributions from other people at the conference who will have understood better than me.

Photos by Sheila Webber: Yamaguchi Park, Pamplona, May 2008.

Pamplona

I am in Pamplona, Spain, shortly to give a talk at the Las VI Jornadas CRAI . I was invited by Rocio Serrano (pictured) who graduated from our MA Librarianship programme and is one of the organisers. She is now one of the deputies in the Science library at the University of Navarra.
Unfortunately my Spanish is very poor: I can follow some written words (e.g. on powerpoints) but not conversation, therefore I am not getting the most from the conference. A big theme of the conference is the Bologna Process (of harmonisation of Higher education in Europe so that mobility etc. is easier). Some countries have been making big changes to their university curricula and strategy because of this, though in the UK Bologna has been rather ignored (partly because it was closer the the model to start with and partly because hmmmm we're British ;-(

These curriculum changes have provided opportunities to raise the profile of information literacy and the role of the library. I did attend one session where I think I grasped a reasonable amount. Fransesc Xavier Grau Vidal talked about the strategy at his university, the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. He emphasised the increased competencies focus, with undergraduates being expected to acquire basic professional competencies, and Masters students more specialised professional competencies. His university is drawing up lists of transferable skills (with reference to various framworks etc including the Prague declaration on information literacy!) - examples are (if I understand correctly) "learning to learn" "Applying critical thinking, logic and creativity, demonstrating innovative thinking" "Ability to work independently, responsibly and using initiative".

These are similar to goals we have for our own "Sheffield graduates". Grau Vidal explained they also have core competencies, including ones relating to information and information technology, and (again if I've understood) there is cross tabulation between the two sets - so, for example, the skills and knowledge related to critical thinking and information work can be specified. The idea is that programmes should then apply these competencies to their own curricula and specifiy objectives specific to their subject, relating back to the university list. All programmes would either to have a dedicated module on information skills, or to combine them explicitly in core modules.
The work part of the day finished with an interesting tour of the Science Library (I will blog a little more about that). The second pictures shows part of the nice green campus.

Las competencias en información en las nuevas enseñanzas universitarias

Next week I will be talking at annual university library conference Las VI Jornadas CRAI and this year the theme is Las competencias en información en las nuevas enseñanzas universitarias (Information Literacy in the new world of university teaching). It takes place on the 12-13 May in Pamplona at the University of Navarra. The first day has presentations in Spanish, focusing on issues such as Spanish Universities' response to the Bologna process (of aligning higher education Europe) and information literacy as transferable skill. I and Carla Basili are presenting in English on the second day. Further information at http://www.craipamplona2008.org/index.php?section=27
Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheffield, May 2008

Some recent articles

Pages Pinto, M. and Vinciane Doucet, A. "An Academic Portal for Higher Education Information Literacy: The e-COMS Initiativ." The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33 (5), 604-611 "The e-COMS portal is generic and transversal, and is valid for all university students who need to acquire skills and training in information literacy, particularly in relation to the management of e-learning content. This initiative is a pioneer project in the field of library science and documentation in Spain, and is aligned with the commitment of the Spanish University Library Network (Red Espan˜ola de Bibliotecas Universitarias) to promote the creation and integration of useful teaching materials, to promote information literacy in students and to participate in autonomous learning. This is the philosophy behind the design of the e-COMS academic portal, freely available at http://www.mariapinto.es/e-coms ." I have not explored this portal, since my Spanish language skills are poor, but it is indeed accessiblee at that address for Spanish speakers.

Maybe, C. (2007) "Understanding our student learners: A phenomenographic study revealing the ways that undergraduate women at Mills College understand using information." Reference Services Review, 35 (3), 452 - 462. "This research project aims to provide an understanding of Mills College undergraduate students' experience of using information, which Mills librarians can use to develop effective information literacy instructional pedagogy. Using a phenomenographic methodology, 18 undergraduate students at Mills College in Oakland, California, were interviewed and the transcripts were analyzed to reveal the ways that undergraduates experience using information.... Four distinct ways that Mills undergraduates experience information use are revealed in the paper." (An interesting study, though I note that it only seems to have one phenomenographic dimension of variation, which seems suprising ;-)

Mokhtar, I.A., Majid, S. and Foo, S. (2007) "Information literacy education through mediated learning and multiple intelligences: A quasi-experimental control-group study." Reference Services Review, 35 (3), 463-486. "This paper aims to present the findings of a study that investigated the impact of information literacy (IL) teaching approaches, which are grounded in pedagogy, on students' level and applicability of IL competencies. A quasi-experimental control group study was carried out with 476 students, aged from 13 to 15 years old, from four secondary (high) schools in Singapore ... The results of the group reports and project evaluation done by three independent and neutral teacher-examiners, as well as those from the pre- and post-intervention tests, found that the application of either mediated learning (or close coaching) or multiple intelligences helped students perform better in the learning and application of IL skills."

Photo by Sheila Webber: Bookshops beside the Retiro, Madrid, October 2007.

European meeting

At the moment I am attending the European Regional meeting on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning in Madrid, Spain. There are about 20 participants, from 11 different European countries, plus the representative of UNESCO (Misako Ito) and Woody Hortin from the USA. The meeting is being hosted by the Spanish Ministry of culture. Yesterday we mainly each gave presentations about developments and issues to do with information literacy in our various countries. My head is now buzzing with information and ideas (also my fingers are buzzing since I was the minute taker yesterday, as the only native English speaker apart from Woody!)

I will blog some of the information over the next week or so - I have rather limited access to the internet at the moment during this meeting and then I am with my mother again for a couple of days where I don’t have access.

I took the most notes yesterday about the Spanish contribution. I have mentioned a number of initiatives at various points on the blog, but here they all are in one place. The Ministry of Culture is very supportive (in the welcome address to us, it was stressed that Spain has a commitment to libraries and information literacy and saw access to knowledge and information as a foundation of democracy). Most encouraging! The three people to contribute were Cristobal Pasadas Urena, Jose A. Gomez and Isabel Cuadrado. The key actions from the Ministry of Culture & the Spanish IL community were:
- The meeting held in Toledo in 2006 with theme “Libraries, Learning and the people” in which information, documentation and education professionals came together http://travesia.mcu.es/S_ALFIN/index.html. There were presentations and discussions around the issues of: definition and conceptualisation (including which phrase is used for the subject); the application of IL (e.g. best practice); evaluation of IL; integration of IL into society. The key output was the Toledo Declaration on IL. This Declaration emphasises the central role of libraries and the need for information literacy education. It can be noted that this is not purely library-focused declaration, it is rather education focused.
- Creating a logo (the ALFIN logo) which could represent the concept, and which also includes the definition.
- The website http://www.alfinred.org/ - the website which is a focus for IL development in hispanic communities. The Alfin blog is incorporated in this.
- Online training for librarians. A pilot project started last year. A course was delivered this year on “multiple literacies” (multicultural, digital etc.)
- Institutional collaboration. Last March a work group on IL was created with representatives of different library sectors.

Keeping on a Spanish note, the article by Bill Johnston and I "As we may think" has been translated into Spanish for one of its journals.

ALFIN Red

Another thing I have almost missed out on is a website building on the already excellent ALFIN (Spanish) information literacy blog. ALFIN Red at http://www.alfinred.org/ arose from a declaration on Information Literacy in Spain that called for the creation of a forum for development and discussion of information literacy. This site has been created as a project for 6 months, finishing officially in September. The site is still principally focused on the blog with some additional documents: I couldn't explore the "intranet" section, though. (All material in Spanish)

A recent post on the ALFIN blog links to a series of Spanish articles on information literacy which are available as e-prints:

Campal García, Mª F. (2006) "Dossier: Practicando ALFIN." Educación y biblioteca, nov-dec. (156), 48-141. http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00010964/

Photo by Sheila Webber: Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, 2006.

A couple of recent articles

Johnson, A-M. and Jent, S. (2007) "Library instruction and information literacy: 2005." Reference Services Review, 35 (1), 137-186. This is their annual annotated bibliography - 288 items this time, divided into broad categories (Academic/Public/School/Special/All types). As usual there are loads more academic-sector articles than public library ones (131 vs 2!), and bias towards US material. Still very useful though, obviously.

Gómez-Hernández, J.A. and Pasadas-Ureña, C., (2007). “La alfabetización informacional en bibliotecas públicas. Situación actual y propuestas para una agenda de desarrollo”. ("Information Literacy in public libraries: current situation and proposals for a development agenda")Information Research, 12 (3). http://InformationR.net/ir/12-3/paper316.html In Spanish.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Strawberry flowers, May 2007.