Evaluating Information Literacy Activity at a National Level: Sheila blogs from #ecil2017

John Crawford's talk on Evaluating Information Literacy Activity at a National Level: an Introductory Study is the next one I'll liveblog from the European Conference on Information Literacy in Saint-Malo. Crawford's context was Scotland. He started by drawing attention to initiatives in Scotland, such as the Scottish Information Literacy Community of Practice. The last slide shows some of the initiatives, and he namechecked the CILIP Information Literacy group as funding some small scale research projects.

He identified that literature which provides guidance on evaluating IL at a national level is sparse. Some points were drawn from the document that Lau and Catts drew up (see second slide), sponsored by UNESCO (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/towards-information-literacy-indicators/). He also drew some points from two papers in Library Trends, one by Woody Horton and one by Andrew Whitworth (see below). The first slide shows what the Community of Practice had done in line with Horton's "commandments". There has been mixed success e.g. they achieved a visit with a government minister, but the minister proved to be much more interested in digital literacy than information literacy (see first slide).

Horton, W. (2011) Information Literacy Advocacy—Woody's Ten Commandments. Library Trends, 60(2), 262-276. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2011.0044
Whitworth, A. (2011) Empowerment or Instrumental Progressivism?: Analyzing Information Literacy Policies. Library Trends, 60(2), 312-337. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2011.0039