Departmental research seminar

Last Friday (30th March) Dr Christine Bruce (Associate Professor, Faculty of Information Technology, Queensland University of Technology, Australia) kindly agreed to give a research seminar in the morning, and to be one of the speakers at a research event in the afternoon. That's her (right) with me (left): I forgot to take any photos during the day, so it was left until after the meal on Friday evening (thus my glazed expression).

I had invited people particularly concerned with IL research at Sheffield to the morning event (e.g. students & staff doing IL projects and dissertations, and members of the CILASS Information Literacy Network). Participants had posed questions in advance and Christine responded with her thoughts and stimulated discussion around the questions. These included questions about Web 2.0 and information literacy, developing pedagogies for information literacy, and the issue of whether you can call information literacy "information literacy" in the workplace.

The afternoon was a free event, open to anyone, and there were about 30 people there, researchers, students and librarians. Christine talked about Information literacy: models from research. She discussed the nature and agenda for information literacy research, and give an insight into the models which have emerged from research by staff and students at Queensland University of Technology (see previous post). Then Professor Nigel Ford and I talked about Information Literacy research in the Department of Information Studies, and the UK research agenda. Here is the presentation powerpoint in pdf form: http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/30-3-2007-webber-ford.pdf

After a refreshment break, Bill Johnston (Senior Lecturer, Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, Scotland) and I talked about Conceptions of information literacy of UK Chemistry and English academics. This presentation was based on research findings from the Arts & Humanities Research Council project “UK academics’ conceptions of, and pedagogy for, information literacy”. Here is the presentation powerpoint in pdf form: http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/30-3-2007-webber-johnston.pdf. Finally, Nigel Ford and Andrew Madden had a conversation around research findings from the Arts & Humanities Research Council project Understanding the dynamics of information seeking: analysing searchers' strategic changes over time, funded February 2005-July 2007.

I felt rather zonked by the end of the day, since I was the prime organiser (with assisstance from Phussadee Dokphrom, one of my PhD students). However, I intend to follow it up with some more events focusing on IL and information behaviour, as there is a lot going on in this area here.