First year information literacy class

On Monday, in the "lecture" session of the Information Literacy class for 1st year Information Management students I had invited Alex Peng and Pam McKinney to respond to a few questions I had supplied to them earlier. Alex is a successful graduate of this course and is now studying for a PhD in the Department (an information management topic supervised by my colleague Dr Miguel Nunes). Pam has been mentioned on the blog before, as the information literacy expert in the Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences. She graduated from our MSc IM course, and had a job at Sheffield Hallam University (the Other university in Sheffield) before joining CILASS. The questions I asked them were "How has being information literate helped you personally?", "Are you continuing to learn about information literacy & have your ideas about IL changed over time?" and "Have you any tips and favourite websites".

As you might imagine, I liked the way that Alex started off, by saying that "Based on my personal experience, I will strongly agree that information literacy skills are the most crucial skills that we should have in the information age." His tips at the end were about keeping track of the material you collect as you go along (rather than trying to go and find them again the day before submitting an assignment), using "different information sources for different purposes/ questions" and also organising material as you went along, so you could find it more easily.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Weston Park/ Sheffield University, Nov 2006, with a touch of Photoshop.

Virtual Learning Environments

Virtual Learning Environments – what’s all the fuss about? is a one day conference at Liverpool John Moores University, UK, 11 December, 2006. It aims to illustrate how VLEs have developed recently and will address the issues for the future. It includes an overview of e-learning; a presentation on SOLSTICE and Blended Learning; a critical perspective on VLEs and other talks and discussion. For more info go to http://www.bolton.ac.uk/learning/mmitnw/next.htm

Online

Indulging in nostalgia briefly, looking at the the Information Today blog covering the Online conference in London which ends today. I missed the very first Online (or IOLIM as it was then), but I attended all of them from the 2nd in December 1979 (I was of course very young then ;-) firstly on the British Library exhibition stands, then as speaker and/or UKOLUG Help Desk person and/or a member of the conference organising committee until a couple of years ago. Anyway, I couldn't go this year, so the blog has given me a flavour of what went on, as do a few other blogs like that of Phil Bradley who was involved in several sessions. (Added later) So nostalgic did I become that I rooted out the pdfs of Inform, the Institute of Information Scientists' newsletter I used to edit: here is the Jan 1997 issue where I did a long roundup of what was hot at Online 1996 including a very nice cartoon from Richard Wilson (the information scientist, not the actor).

Photo by Sheila Webber: London Eye, Sept 2004.

Last call for LILAC papers

Oops! forgot to get this out earlier. The call for papers for LILAC (Librarians Information Literacy Annual Conference) closes on Friday 1st December at midnight. Use the form at: http://teaching.lse.ac.uk/tech/
lilac/default.asp Keynote speakers include: Dr Christine Bruce, John Dolan, Sir J A Muir Gray, Professor Ross Todd.The conference Themes are:
Recognising the need; Advocacy, marketing and promotion; Practical approaches to Information Literacy; Information Literacy and citizenship; New areas for practice and research; Ethical use of information. The conference will take place in Manchester, 26-28 March 2007.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Christine Bruce (left) & Mandy Lupton.

ALIA Conference Papers

The Australian Library and Information Association Conference in September 2006 had a number of papers on information literacy, and there are some now available full text on the site e.g:
Search challenges as assessment tools: A collaboration between the library and the 21 st Century Information Fluency Project in Illinois by Dr David Barr, Bob Houston, Dan Balzer, Paula Garrett and Dr Carl Heine, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

Innovation in a podshell: Bringing information literacy into the world of podcasting by Jody Atkinson, Jaya Berk, Joanne Comerford and Sonja Olsen, Curtin University of Technology, Library and Information Service

Go to : http://conferences.alia.org.au/alia2006/
conference_papers.html
Photo by Sheila Webber: Centennial Park, Sydney, Australia, 2004.

Google & doctors

Bill Johnston alerted me to a story in the Metro free newspaper reporting on an article which showed that doctors could find some useful information on the internet to help diagnose illness and disease. I'm not sure this is something you could disagree with, in that with the very respectable sites from the US NIH and UK NHS etc. etc. of course there is some good information out there. However, it seems to have been interpreted in terms of "doctors only need to google symptoms, just like you could."

• Metro. (2006) "Doctors urged to Google for cures." Metro, 9 November.
  http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=24627&in_page_id=34
• BBC News. (2006) "Google 'aids doctors' diagnoses'" 1o November http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6132856.stm
• The original article is: Tang, H. and Ng, J. (2006) "Googling for a diagnosis: use of Google as a diagnostic aid: internet based study" British Medical Journal. 10 November. doi:10.1136/bmj.39003.640567.AE

As interesting as anything else are the responses on the BMJ site (e.g. "This is research?") http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/
abstract/bmj.39003.640567.AEv1?hrss=1
Photo by Sheila Webber: Late blackberries, Nov 2006.

Aslib Engineering Group 2006 AGM and Information Literacy Presentation

The 2006 Aslib Engineering Group AGM will be held at the Defence College of Management and Technology on the afternoon of 13 December. There will be two presentations on information literacy, followed by a tour of library facilities at DCMT. Talks are: Developing a Bespoke Online Information Literacy Tutorial: the DCMT Experience (Ruth Hunn, DCMT Library, Cranfield University) and Information Literacy at Imperial College London (Debbi Boden, Imperial College. Contact Rachel Daniels: r.j.daniels@cranfield.ac.uk by 4th December.

Photo by Sheila Webber: More reflections, Nov 2006

Fly the web: power to the user

A half-day event, Fly the web: power to the user, is organised the the University, College and Research Libraries Yorkshire & Humberside section on 1st December 2006 at Leeds Metropolitan University. "Web2.0 and Library 2.0 are terms becoming increasingly commonplace. This half day event will give an overview of the new concepts and technologies being introduced, as well as some guided hands-on experience of using them." There are talks from Brian Kelly, UKOLN (Overview of the new technologies) and me (I'm talking about Blogs and blogging in libraries) and there is a hands on session from Dave Pattern, University of Huddersfield. There is also an optional session on the implementation of RFID. Cost: £ 20.00 per person (plus VAT), including refreshments. For further information please contact: Helen Coman Tel: 01484 473679

Photo by Sheila Webber: Reflection of an autumn street, Nov 2006.

LIMES and IL

On Thursday I was one of the participants in an event convened as part of the Library Information Management Employability Skills (LIMES) project. LIMES "aims to facilitate skills development by creating learning and teaching materials, that reflect current employability skills in the Library and Information Management sector, and embed them in the curriculum." As part of this they are encouraging the creation of material for lecturers to use in their teaching of library and information management students. LIMES has identified a few areas of particular interest, namely marketing, cataloguing & indexing and information literacy. The event I attended was aiming to create a Community of Practice for information literacy, and there were both lecturers and practitioners there.

We discussed possible areas where new material was needed to support both education in information literacy and education for how to teach information literacy. As part of the latter discussion, we debated the extent to which people can be taught about how to teach IL during their courses. I, and other colleagues in information departments, felt that there were limits to the extent to which we could cover this, at least in the compulsory part of the curriculum (bearing in mind there are only 2 semesters of teaching in our Masters courses). Obviously, though, we aim to make students aware that this is a key role, introduce them to some of the issues (e.g. we have 2 practitioner speakers, talking to our students about IL in a university and a corporate setting, in a couple of weeks time), and also address it directly to some extent (I already described the search/teach exercise in the blog). It's difficult though: there are so many skill and knowledge areas that librarianship and information management students are expected to cover in the compulsory part of the course. Students also come in with a wide variety of first degrees and experience, & a wide variety of career goals (IM students, in particular, mostly don't go on to work in "libraries").

The event was held in Birmingham central library, a very active library which is in a central square that currently hosts a Christmas market with a German slant (see photo above: actually this was the only sunny part of the day!). See http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/limes/CONTENT/index.htm for more about LIMES

Moira Bent's blog

Yesterday I attended a event to do with the LIMES project (more in my next entry) which was also attended by Moira Bent, who I have mentioned before on this blog. Moira is was awarded one of the Higher Education Academy's National Teaching Fellowships, and she is using the money associated with this to pursue a project concerned with developing university teaching staff's interest in IL and to pursue her own interests and research in IL.

Anyway, she alerted me to the fact that she has her own Information Literacy blog at http://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/moira.bent and it is well worth looking at. It has an entry about the LIMES event yesterday, and in particular it has entries on her month-long study tour of Australia. Plus she has some really nice photos, especially of birds and animals.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Ice plant (sedum) and autumn leaves, Nov 2006.

Articles

Thanks to Chris Armstrong for alerting me to the following two articles produced by authors in and around Aberystwyth. Here are the references plus parts of the abstracts:

Lonsdale, R. and Armstrong, C. (2006) "The role of the university library in supporting information literacy in UK secondary schools." Aslib Proceedings, 58 (6), 553-569 "Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this research is to report on the findings of the CrossEd-2 study which investigated the role of the university library in delivering information literacy skills relating to the use of e-resources to secondary schools in the UK. Methodology - A quantitative survey of all university libraries in the UK was undertaken using an e-mail questionnaire to identify the incidence of current collaboration. A return rate of 36 per cent was achieved, and the data provided information on the types of collaboration taking place in a total of 20 universities. These were categorized and used to select a survey population of six university libraries for the qualitative study. Data collection for the case studies was by means of face-to-face and telephone interviews with university librarians, using semi-structured interview schedules."

Foster, A. E. (2006) "Information literacy for the information profession: experiences
from Aberystwyth." Aslib Proceedings, 58 (6), 488-501.
"Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to report on the rationale and key learning processes for students of librarianship and information studies (LIS) at the Department of Information Studies, University of Wales Aberystwyth. Its purpose is to raise awareness of
the ways in which professional training can incorporate research, and ultimately inform professional practice, and to describe the way in which recent research can be used to shape the curriculum. Methodology - A literature review, identification of key principles for curriculum development, and discussion of processes is provided. Key learning outcomes for the course are put forward and the approach taken to them described."
The home page of the journakl is http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/journals/ap/ap.jsp

Photo by Sheila Webber: Weston Park, Sheffield, Nov 2006.

ICT Literacy

The Educational Testing Service has published a presentation in which it summarises some of the results from students taking their ICT Literacy test (which covers aspects of information literacy). Data is taken from the results of over 6,000 test-takers in 2006. They emphasise the extent to which students failed to achieve full scores: presumably partly to demonstrate the value and rigour of their (priced) test, but the presentation could also provide useful data for people who wish to argue that students are coming into university with insufficient information literacy.
ETS. (2006) 2006 ICT Literacy Assessment preliminary findings. http://www.ets.org/Media/Products/ICT_Literacy/
pdf/2006_Preliminary_Findings.pdf see also http://www.ets.org/ictliteracy/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Weston Park, Sheffield, Nov 2006.

Information: Interactions and Impact conference

The Information: Interactions and Impact (i3) will be held at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland, from 25th to 28th June 2007. There is a call for papers: abstracts should be submitted by 22nd January 2007.
"i3 is concerned with the quality and effectiveness of the interaction between people and information and how this interaction can bring about change in individuals, organisations, communities and society. The conference will look beyond the issues of use and accessibility of technology to questions about the way interaction with the information and knowledge content of today’s systems and services can make a difference to people’s lives. The aim is to bring together academic and practitioner researchers with an interest in: the quality and effectiveness of user/information interactions (e.g. information literacy); patterns of information behaviour in different contexts; impact of information or information services on people, organisations, communities and society (e.g. social, learning, cultural and economic outcomes of engagement with information). "
The conference website is at http://www.i3conference.org.uk/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Tivoli Gardens, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Oct 2006.

Internet Librarian International 2006

This took place last month in London, UK and you can find some of the presentations on the website including ones from the session on Information Literacy, Virtual Learning and Social Technologies from David Ball, University Librarian, Bournemouth University (UK) and Kara Jones, Subject Librarian, University of Bath (UK). There are also useful presentations from experts like Karen Blakeman (on Out-Googling Google: Finding What Google Misses. Go to http://www.internet-librarian.com/presentations.shtml
Photo by Sheila Webber: Ljubljana, Oct 2006.

Swedish conference papers

Thanks to the Feltänkt? blog for alerting me to a the papers from the 2006 Mötesplats inför framtiden conference which was held in Borås, Sweden, in October. Unfortunaely for me almost all the papers are in Swedish, but I can tell that a few of them are about information literacy. You can find the conference papers linked from here http://www.hb.se/bhs/motesplats/B&I%20konf2006/papers.htm

Photo by Sheila Webber: Newly reopened Mappin art gallery (now called the "Weston Park Museum"), Sheffield, Nov 2006.

Pathways and possibilities

The ALIA Information Literacy Forum will be holding a one-day event as a pre-colloquium to the NLS2006 Pathways and Possibilities symposium. The Information Literacy Forum satellite event will be held at the University of New South Wales Library, Sydney, Australia, on Thursday, 30th November, 2006. Presenters include Christine Bruce, Leanne Lovegrove (Indigenous students and the "aunty" model of information literacy), Sarah Graham and Clare Glanville. Go to http://www.alia.org.au/groups/infolit/ for more information.
Photo by Sheila webber: Doyles, Sydney, Australia, July 2006.

IL in Public Libraries in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

The following report was sent to me by Mary Nassimbeni, Centre for Information Literacy, University of Cape Town, mnassimbeni@ched.uct.ac.za. It is based on a report by Francois Hendrikz, Director of the Mpumalanga Provincial Library Service who initiated the project. You can also download this entry: http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/witbank.pdf (Photo by Sheila Webber: Dahlia, Blackheath, Nov 2006)

Information Literacy Campaign in Public Libraries in Mpumalanga Province of South Africa

Introduction: The Mpumalanga Library and Information Service in collaboration with the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Information Literacy presented the first of three planned information literacy (IL) workshops from 27 until 30 June 2006. The workshops are part of a pilot information literacy campaign made possible with the funding from UNESCO’s Information for All Programme. This campaign is the first of its kind in Mpumalanga (and probably South Africa) where public librarians are being given the opportunity to develop their information literacy skills and to apply them in their libraries. From the response received from the participants is it clear that the campaign will contribute toward skills development and a better understanding of the challenges faced by public librarians in the field of information literacy.

Project goal: The overall goal of the project is to raise awareness of information literacy in the public library service and to establish, in the first instance the necessary skills of 30 public librarians in Mpumalanga so that they may improve their service delivery and raise the profile of the public library by enskilling library users in a variety of information literacy interventions.

Project objectives: 1. To introduce the theoretical concept of IL to the Project participants.
2. To provide them with the opportunity of designing a practical information literacy campaign for their library during the introductory workshops.
3. To allow them to implement their information literacy campaigns in at least 15 libraries over a three month period.
4. To provide the opportunity for participants of the Project to learn from each other’s practical experience through sharing their experiences and lessons learnt during a follow-up workshop after a 3-month period.
5. To measure the impact of information literacy campaigns in the libraries through library user feedback and through monitoring visits by officials from the Provincial Library Service.
6. To identify best practice and spread the lessons learned to other libraries in the province.
To address the above goal and objectives the introductory training workshop was held between 27 and 30 June 2006.

Purpose of the introductory workshop: The workshop was designed to provide an opportunity for gaining an understanding of the role and potential of information literacy education in public libraries. Its specific focus was on how to plan for and implement an information literacy campaign in a number of selected public libraries in Mpumalanga. It introduced participants to information literacy and information literacy education with specific reference to the contribution that public libraries can make to their users and potential users (e.g. school learners) and their effective use of information

Proccedings of the workshop: 1. The workshop was presented by Associate Professor Karin de Jager and Associate Professor Mary Nassimbeni from the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Information Literacy
2. The 28 participants included 21 public librarians from ten Municipalities and one Department of Correctional Services. Seven staff members from the Provincial Library Service also attended.
3. The presentation was a mix of theoretical input, discussion with participants, a visit to the local Public Library and practical hands-on exercises. It involved: Practical examples to illustrate IL programmes; Discussion with participants during brainstorming sessions to elicit ideas about possible campaigns; Group work to start designing an IL campaign; Participants’ learning from each other during discussion, planning and report back sessions; Learning materials and handouts made available to all participants.

Outcomes of the workshop: At the end of the workshop all participants:
Appreciated the value of IL education in a public library setting; Had a greater awareness of how IL relates to the work they already do in their library; Drafted an outline of an IL campaign that they would like to implement in their library; Received advice on to proceed with planning and implementation when they return to their library; Understood the guidelines of how to monitor and evaluate their campaigns.
Participants were given three months until September 2006 to refine their project plans and to start implementing their projects, during which time they received support from staff of the Provincial Library Service

Conclusion of the first phase: Evaluation of the workshop showed that it achieved the objectives of the first phase of the Project. All participants enjoyed the exposure to IL, new knowledge and the practical and interactive nature of the presentations. We are now ready to proceed with the next phase of the project, and hope to be able to report findings of our research in 2007.

Public Libraries in the Learning Society

The PuLLS project (Public Libraries in the Learning Society) end of project conference takes place on 24th November 2006 in The Hague, Netherlands. Libraries from the UK, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Spain developed and tested a model for supporting lifelong learning and developing information competencies amongst EU citizens.The conference will report on findings from the project and have presentations from other speakers. Registration is free, but numbers are limited: go to http://www.pulls.dk
Photo by Sheila Webber: Prairie garden, Sheffield, Oct 2006.

LOEX call for papers ends today

Thanks to Vivienne Bernath for alerting me to the fact that the LOEX (US Information Literacy conference) call for papers ends ... today! The conference is held in San Diego, USA, 3-5 May 2007 and the theme is Uncharted Waters: Tapping the Depths of Our Community to Enhance Learning. If you have any last minute great ideas wing to this website http://public.csusm.edu/acarr/loex/index.html
Photo by Sheila Webber: Bilbao, Spain, Oct 2006.

Open University free material

When I was at the SCONUL Working Group on Information Literacy meeting last Friday, Jo Parker of the Open University mentioned that there was a new OU free content site. It is worth exploring at http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/ with material on study skills (including use of the internet and learning-to-learn) as well as other topics such as business and education. I spotted several sections relevant to me and my students.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Autumn leaf, Sheffield Botanic Gardens, Oct 2006.

As we may think: email me if you'd like a copy!

Recently an article of ours was published. I am allowed to distribute pdf copies to friends, but not to just post it to the web (according to the copyright agreement) - so please email if you'd like a copy, s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk. The paper was based on the keynote Bill and I did at the WILU conference inCanada last year.

Johnston, B. and Webber, S. (2006) “As we may think: Information Literacy as a discipline for the information age” Research strategies, 20 (3), 108-121.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Weston Park, Sheffield, November 2006.

Blogging, inquiry

Continuing the themes of blogging and enquiry from the post below, the lastest issue of the US-based SOS for information literacy project's Educator's Spotlight digest has articles on "Blogging: A Tool for Information Fluency" (in schools) and critical literacy ("Dr. Daniel Callison, Professor and Executive Dean at the School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, discusses how mastering the skills of critical literacy can prepare students to apply the inquiry process as a means for social and political action.")

Photo by Sheila Webber: Congress Square, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Oct 2006.

Blogging

Early this morning (well, early for me) I attended an "Inquiry Based Learning cafe" event organised by CILASS (Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences). It was held in the CILASS room in Bartholme House (see right, taken on my way there). Sabine Little was talking about blogs and blogging. She had "blogged" her PhD and is a key person in the CILASS blogs, so gave her personal experiences as well as a more general overview about blogging, and blogs in inquiry based learning. One thing she mentioned are two colleagues in the English Department who are asking their students to blog a class, and the lecturers themselves also blog reflectively after classes (all in WebCT I think), thus modelling behaviour for the students.

It was a small group, but diverse, so I was sitting next to people from Music and Dentistry! The CILASS blog is at http://cilass.group.shef.ac.uk/ and it includes an entry about this session. The CILASS student blog is at http://cilass-student-blog.group.shef.ac.uk/

IL in secondary schools

Newly out from the research group at Robert Gordon University is a report of research funded by Scottish Executive Education Department. :
Williams, D.A. and Wavell, C. (2006) Untangling Spaghetti? The Complexity of Developing Information Literacy in Secondary School Students. Aberdeen: The Robert Gordon University and Edinburgh: ScottishExecutive. http://www.rgu.ac.uk/abs/research/page.cfm?pge=37291

This is a detailed case study of an intervention by a teacher and librarian, which draws some interesting conclusions.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Chandelier in the square (in the open air!), Ljubljana, October 2006.

WILU 2007

York University in Toronto, Canada will be hosting the Workshop on Instruction in Library Use in May 2007 (WILU2007). Currently, a call for proposals is being issued. Would you consider bringing this conference and call for papers to the attention of the readers of information Literacy Weblog?Information about the conference is available at http://www.yorku.ca/wilu2007/. Keynote speakers are Fay Durrant, Patricia Iannuzzi and Rick Salutin. The theme of this conference is Teach Every Angle, aiming to encourage "delegates to think beyond the traditional boundaries of theory and practice to progressive and alternative approaches to information literacy". A link to the call for papers is on the lefthand menu as well as information about the conference and its history.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Autumn horse chestnut leaves, Botanic Gardens, Sheffield, Oct 2006.

Research beyond Google

Jimmy Atkinson wrote to alert me to his Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources. Obviously there are lost of lists of resources out there, but it includes some good links and was put together recently: http://oedb.org/library/
college-basics/research-beyond-google

Photo by Sheila Webber: This street art from Ljubljana seems to be about someone realising they have run out of credit on their mobile (or is the battery flat?) - very zeitgeisty.

Finnish Information Literacy

The other English-language speaker at the Slovenian information literacy confernce on October 19th was Kaisa Sinikara, Director University of Helsinki Information and Library Services , who was talking on "Information literacy between the theory and practice: experiences of the Finnish University Libraries". She talked about their strategy to bring information literacy to the attention of policy makers and to integrate it into curricula. They seem to have caught the attention of the Ministry for Education, since the Development Plan for Education and Research 2003-8 "stresses the importance of the willingness of libraries to contribute to the development of teaching and study methods, and thus, for their part, to ensure that university and polytechnic gruduates have good information literacy." (quoted from Kaisa's paper in the proceedings)

I mentioned a while ago the national Finnish university information literacy project, and they have some material available in English at http://www.helsinki.fi/infolukutaito/english/index.htm. This includes the Recommendation for universities for including IL competency in the new degree structures (the new degree stuctures are the 3 year (undergraduate) +2 year (Masters) structure that it part of the Bologna agreement on standardisation of higher education in Europe. This restructuring process is taking place in many European countries and had provided an opportunity to get information literacy into the curriculum. The Finnish recommendation targets 1st year, final year undergraduate and Masters, and makes some recommendations of what should be taught. It must be said that in the UK Bologna has not had so much impact as (except in Scotland) we already have 3 year UG degrees, and the likelihood of us moving to 2 year Masters (from the current one year) is practically nil, unless all universities were forced to do it.

The same basic information is available on the above site in Swedish, and there is obviously more information available in Finnish (use the tabs at the top of the site to change languages), including information about the seminar that takes place this Thursday 3 November Informaatiolukutaidon opintosuunnitelma: hankkeen päätösseminaari which includes a contribution from Christine Bruce.

Photo by Sheila Webber: (l to r) Stanka Jelenc, Kaisa Sinikara, Primož Južnič by the famous three bridges, Ljubljana, Slovenia, October 2006.

Visibility, LAMS sequences and other activities

I spoke too soon in my last post as Monday and Tuesday were heavy teaching days, mostly related to information literacy, that left me zonked..... On Tuesday Yazdan Mansourian was talking about his research to our Information Resources and Information Literacy class (taken by 70 Masters students). As part of this session we had one of the first stages in an action research exercise. We are drawing on his research, and in particular his model of web search visibility, to develop a reflective tool that will help people think about, and improve, their web searching skills. I'll probably be blogging more about this and Yazdan has blogged a little about it too.

Also on Tuesday my colleague Professor Nigel Ford and I were available in the labs for consultation as the same Masters class continued their work on our "Search/teach" exercise, in which they are developing guides and resource links for specific databases (LISA, Google Scholar and Web of Knowledge). By next week they have to have published the guides to WebCT and in the lab next week they will evaluate each other's guides. As part of the class, as I mentioned a little while ago, Nigel and I agreed to develop some sequences in LAMS, as part of the DeSILA project where Sheffield Uni is trialling use of the LAMS educational software.

I have now produced 2 LAMS sequences for this class (on teamwork - they are working in groups - and on evaluating a guide - in fact the guide to LAMS itself). However it has been something of a struggle because of technical problems, e.g. continual error messages with the Preview function that enables you to see what the sequence will look like to students. LAMS seems rather poorly documented, frankly. Grrr, lots of time wasted. We are working with version 1 at present, which has less functionality than v2, but one would suppose it would be more stable. One of the educational limitations of LAMS is the strictly sequential approach you (and the learners) have to take, which seems to make it suitable for smaller, clearly defined tasks.

The last part of Tuesday was taken up with presentations from Masters students (our Libraries, Information and Society module) on topics to do with the information society: New literacies, the flexible workforce, discontinuous technological change, and digital divides. Some very interesting presentations. In particular I learnt a lot about bar codes and the potential uses of RFID! On Monday, amongst other things, students in my 1st year Information Literacy class were also doing presentations on their response to the question “Given the continuing increase in the spread of HIV/AIDS, have people become complacent about HIV/AIDS? If so, what are the reasons that explain that complacency?”. My colleague Dr Kendra Albright is a research specialist in this area so she was joining with me to plan and support the exercise and give formative feedback. Again, some good presentations.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Tivoli Gardens, Ljubljana, October 2006, (drybrush effect).