The main reason that Bill Johnston and I have come over to Australia was to deliver half a day on the CRIG annual seminar in Melbourne. CRIG (CAVAL Reference Interest Group) is a special interest group for librarians in Victoria which focuses mainly on information literacy. This year the title of the conference was Lifting the Lid: Information Literacy and Academics – Challenging the Assumptions of Librarians. Bill and I found ourselves actually becoming merchandise, since the logo featured us "lifting the lid" and this appeared on bags, posters etc. and on the mugs that were the presents to speakers! (see the logo on a laptop in this photo. A younger, slimmer version of me is represented on the left.)Bill and I had 2 sessions in which we concentrated particularly on talking about the discoveries from our project on UK academics' conceptions of, and pedagogy for, information literacy. We were talking about the implications for librarians, including how it might challenge certain assumptions e.g. the assumption that the lecturer was information illiterate and the librarian information literate. In the second session Bill was talking about looking at information literacy from an educational development perspective, and I was looking at it from a marketing perspective.
The conference was held in Storey Hall, pictured on the right, which is a refurbished hall from the 1890's, and is now part of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). The day was attended by about 140 librarians, mainly from Victoria, but some from other States and a couple from further afield.At the moment I can't upload our presentation, but I'll upload at least some of it when I get back to the UK.
