Call for proposals:Teaching beyond the curriculum

There is a call for proposals for an online conference with opportunities for publication. Teaching beyond the curriculum will be held 15-17 November 2023 and abstracts are due 5 October 2023. The organisers are Glasgow School of Art, United Kingdom; the University of Louisiana, United States; and Wenzhou-Kean University, China.
"The number of ways we have thought about education over time is vast. From Socrates to John Dewey, and Jean Piaget to Paulo Freire, our understanding of learning has evolved and morphed. The concepts and theories we manage range from learning for learning’s sake to vocational training; from a liberal arts education to on-the-job training; and from student centered learning to research informed teaching. ... 
"In considering the education sector as now operating ‘beyond the curriculum’, this conference examines how our teaching has morphed in recent years. Its premise is that we always have, and increasingly need to do more than ‘simply teach’.
"In teaching students to be ‘information literate’, we provide them with skills for life. In encouraging critical thinking, we help navigate a changed tomorrow. In focusing on transferable skills, we prepare them for complex futures. Through community engagement, we open students to socially conscious models of work. In the new tech-classroom, we do this by combining contemporary tools with established bodies of knowledge."
More info at https://amps-research.com/conference/teaching-2023/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Greenwich Park, August 2023

Creators in the Academic Library: Instruction and Outreach

A new book is: Watkins, A. & Kuglitsch, R.Z. (Eds.) (2023). Creators in the Academic Library: Instruction and Outreach. ACRL. US$72.00 (ALA members $64.80); ISBN 978-0-8389-3970-3
There are 17 chapters, including, for example:
- Creative Research and Digital Visual Literacy: Teaching Students to Search for Images Online
- Highlighting Engineers Diverse Information Sources Through Customized LibGuides For Engineering Design Courses
- Creating Information-Literate Musicians in the Academic Library
Information at https://www.alastore.ala.org/content/creators-academic-library-instruction-and-outreach
Photo by Sheila Webber: kingyo, August 2023

Webinar: Perspectives on Generative Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education

On 14 September 2023 at 08.45-10.00 UK time there is a free webinar Perspectives on Generative Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: what do we know, what skills are required and how we can support students.It is organised by OneHE Mindsets Information Digital & Media Literacy thematic network. Speakers are Professors Helen Partridge and Phillip Dawson of Deakin University, Australia, and Dr. Allison Wylde of GCU London, UK.
"Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in Higher Education are moving beyond the deficit model towards investigating how we can support our staff and students develop the AI literacy they will need in their education, in the workplace and as citizens. In this panel event we will be discussing what we know about how our staff and students are using GenAI, what are the skills involved and the support needed to better enable our students to interrogate and co-create with these tools, how is AI likely to or already changing our learning design and how do we need our policies around academic integrity and assessment to adapt."
Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/perspectives-on-generative-artificial-intelligence-in-higher-education-tickets-699624474637
Photo by Sheila Webber flowerbed with coleus Greenwich Park August 2023

Research support training @ces43

Claire Sewell has generously made her training materials about research support available on open access. "The training materials on this site are aimed at educating academic librarians in areas such as Open Access, publishing and data management but could be adapted for use with the research community." Go to https://researchsupport.hcommons.org/
Photo by Sheila Webber, June 2023

Webinar: Critical Perspectives on Data Literacy: The Role of the Information Literacy Librarian

On 13 September 2023 at 10.00-11.00 CET (which is, e.g., 9.00-10.00 UK time), organised by IATUL SIG Information Literacy, there is a webinar Critical Perspectives on Data Literacy: The Role of the Information Literacy Librarian. The speakers are Dr Sharon Wagg (University of Sheffield Information School) and David Thomas (Durban Uni of Technology, South Africa) More details at https://www.iatul.org/special-interest-groups/sig-il-activities-and-projects.html together with a link to the webinar (no need to register)

LIS Pedagogy Chat -Library Instruction with “Nontraditional” Students

Today (25 August 2023) at 14.00 US Eastern time (which is 19.00 UK time) there is the first online LIS Pedagogy Chat of the new academic year. Library Instruction with “Nontraditional” Students, led by Amy Spitz (College of Southern Maryland, USA) and Grace Therrell (University of Tennessee, USA)
"Students pursuing higher education have a wide range of skills, knowledge, and lived experiences. In this session, Amy and Grace will facilitate discussion on how we can best work with what are often called “nontraditional” students. “Nontraditional” students include adult students who are outside of the typical 18-24 age range coming straight from high school, but this term also can refer to students who have caregiver responsibilities, first-generation students, or returning students. We’ll unpack (and problematize) this term, talk about our instruction experiences, and explore how we can best meet the learning needs of students who bring a variety of lived experiences, knowledge, and preferences."
Register at https://www.lispedagogychat.org/schedule-registration
"LIS Pedagogy Chat is a community of practice for faculty and practitioners who teach in library and information science." The archive for LIS Pedagogy sessions is here https://www.lispedagogychat.org/archive
Photo by Sheila Webber: hydrangea, July 2023

US faculty teaching preferences

EDUCAUSE has just published 2023 Faculty and Technology Report: A First Look at Teaching Preferences since the Pandemic, based on a survey of 982 higher education academics in the USA. The greatest preference is still for face to face on campus teaching. Go to https://www.educause.edu/ecar/research-publications/2023/faculty-and-technology-report-a-first-look-at-teaching-preferences-since-the-pandemic/introduction-and-key-findings

Valuable consultation survey on Universal Access to Reliable Healthcare Information

There is a survey on Universal Access to Reliable Healthcare Information, run by HIFA (Healthcare Information For All) "a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information" (if you are engaged in this area, do sign up to join, it is a valuable forum). The survey is run in association with the World Health Organization. The survey is for those involved in health information in any way - one of the self identification options is "I help people to find healthcare evidence (e.g. library and information professional)" - so do fill it in and publicise it.
The survey is here https://fsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eeWw52ROqAZI1V4  https://www.hifa.org/news/hifa-global-stakeholders-consultation-launch-event-21st-august
This is the HIFA website where you can find out more https://www.hifa.org/ and The Scholarly Kitchen has interviewed Neil Pakenham-Walsh (HIFA coordinator) to mark the launch of the survey https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2023/08/21/universal-access-to-reliable-healthcare-information-an-interview-with-neil-pakenham-walsh-of-hifa/

#Chatbot Arena

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, are running Chatbot arena. You type your prompt into 2 search boxes, and it runs them against 2 different chatbots. Afterwards it shows the results from the 2 chatbots, asks you to say which results you think are best and tells you which chatbots they were. The chatbots include ChatGPT-3.5, ChatGPT-4, Claude-v1 and numerous open source chatbots. Interesting to see the results from 2 chatbots, and also to see what chatbots are available. The arena is at  https://chat.lmsys.org/?arena and the chatboard leaderboard at https://huggingface.co/spaces/lmsys/chatbot-arena-leaderboard. You sometimes have to reload to get access.
Image created by Sheila Webber with Midjourney AI, using prompt: battle arena, cute, fighting chatbots --ar 16:9

NATO Media Literacy Resilience Webinar Series

There was a series of recorded webinars (about an hour each) organised by the Centre for Media Literacy (USA) and NATO "exploring Resilience through Media Literacy, to help create a dialogue between NATO personnel, and media literacy researchers and practitioners." The videos are:
- Propaganda: Media Literacy's Role in Resilience
- News Literacy: Empowering Global Citizens in a New Information Era
- Mental Health and Social Media: Wellness Strategies from the Schoolroom to the Armed Forces
- Pandemics: Health, Hopes, and Hoaxes
- Education Systems & Media Literacy Building: Foundational skills for democracies now and the future
- NATO Delegations & Media Literacy in Governments: Leading the Way for More Resilient Global Citizens
The channel for them is here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL25yT8rDU4buJhIMGZz0pMSQUAamM3dCR
Photo by Sheila Webber: plums and cherries at the farmers market, July 2023

LiLi conference recordings and notes

Recordings and useful notes from the sessions at the 2023 10th Annual LILi (Lifelong Information Literacy) Conference held on 27-28 July 2023 are available (thanks to Esther Grassian for the alert).
The recordings are on the conference website https://lili.libguides.com/lili2023/ (one per half-day)
- 27 July https://youtu.be/dxNLc1KmgPg
- 28 July https://youtu.be/G7sV_c3Kacc
Google Shared Notes documents which were open to attendees during the conference for editing;
- 27 July https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ORAmBEszrldeDM0lS3UbWSQlG9uyuyXXXAxhiFXTNmQ/edit?usp=sharing
- 28 July https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VZoVtgbmgx_WMSPuTd1DYL1UXrzIQsw23C8JIWrxKHE/edit?usp=sharing

New articles: IL in legal workplace; Self-efficacy; Supporting health literacy; IL discourse

The latest issue of priced publication Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (vol 55 issue 2 2023) includes the following
- Reaching into the basket of doom: Learning outcomes, discourse and information literacy by Alison Hicks and Annemaree Lloyd (Open access)
- Information literacy in the legal workplace: Current state of lawyers’ skills in Pakistan by Muhammad Asif Naveed and Naveed Abbas Shah
- Information literacy self-efficacy versus performance: Secondary students by Jen R. Spisak
- Starting from ‘scratch’: Building young people’s digital skills through a coding club collaboration with rural public libraries by Wayne Kelly, Brian McGrath, Danielle Hubbard (Open access)
- Librarians’ support in improving health literacy: A systematic literature review by Evgenia Vassilakaki and Valentini Moniarou-Papaconstaninou
Go to https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lisb/55/2

Photo by Sheila Webber: Bees on lavender, July 2023

Call for proposals: Handbook of Research on Information Literacy in Academic Libraries

There is a call for chapter proposals for a book to be published by IGI: Handbook of Research on Information Literacy in Academic Libraries, edited by Sabelo Chizwina and Mathew Moyo. Proposals are due by 14 September 2023.
More details at https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/6687
Manuscript formatting and submission guidelines are at http://www.igi-global.com/publish/contributor-resources/before-you-write/
Photo by Sheila Webber: My hydrangea, August 2023

School Librarians and AI - a Power Hour

There is an online training session featuring expert Phil Bradley on 25 August 2023: School Librarians and AI - a Power Hour. Cost is £35.
"This Power Hour will attempt to sort the facts from the fiction. You’ll learn how to use ChatGPT (and its competitors Claude and Bard) effectively and gain an understanding of prompt engineering and ChatGPT plugins. Phil will demonstrate some of the AI search tools that are appearing and discuss how internet search is changing. You’ll also have the opportunity to take a look at some of the other tools in the AI world, which will enhance your creativity, and make your working lives easier. You’ll see tools that will help create written content, presentations, avatars, videos, images and more, and get a clear idea of how best to use them. At the end of the hour delegates will have gained a good overview of how AI can be used in school libraries, how it’s evolving and lists of tools that can be used to supplement and assist you in your workplace activities. It’s a perfect short cut to get you on top of AI quickly and effectively. The session will be recorded, and you will have access to it for three months."
Book at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/school-librarians-and-ai-a-power-hour-tickets-681485400177

Image created in haste by Sheila Webber with Midjourney AI. Prompt was AI, librarians, power, Phil Bradley --ar 16:9 - I tried "schools" instead of "librarians" and that was just creepy, with "librarians" it's difficult to get away from books (but I thought that was better than creepy children), and I added "cute" to get away from sinister, vast book lined spaces that are about to swallow you whole. At least this looks vaguely jolly-wizard-school

Call for proposals: Spring Forward

The USA intiative Forward Libraries is organising an online Spring Forward Conferencein March 2024. Submit ideas by 29 September 2023. They are calling for proposals for "synchronous, interactive sessions like lightning talks, panels, roundtable discussions, or skill-building workshops; asynchronous content like podcasts, recorded videos, articles, and more; social/networking opportunities like virtual happy hours, crafting circles, work-with-me sessions, other fun and collaborative activities"
"We know the past few years have been a time of difficult change, but challenging times can lead to reimagined and reinvented library services, partnerships, and spaces. So we want to know: What’s changed for the better at your library? What new things did you try that took root? What old initiatives needed pruning before they could blossom?"
Example topics include: Advocacy and Fighting Book Bans; AI in Libraries; Assessment; Cataloging; Collection Development; DEIA in Libraries; Engagement and Outreach; Instruction and Research Help; Hiring and Job Searching; LIS Education and Professional Development; OER and Open Pedagogy.
More details at https://www.forwardlibraries.org/initiatives/conference
Photo by Sheila Webber: textile summer pole in the breeze, June 2023, Gothenburg

Hexagonal thinking

This is an interesting technique to stimulate discussion and learners' abilities to reflect and construct an argument. It is explained in the post Hexagonal Thinking: A Colorful Tool for Discussion (11 September 2020) by Betsy Potash.
You give people a list of words (names, concepts etc. that you think are associated with the topic you are teaching) and learners get into groups and place them on hexagons, arranging them so that they feel they are connected meaningfully together. If you are using physical hexagons, you can give people a pile of hexagons with the words written on them, if it's digital you can have the hexagons blank, and you have to put the terms onto the hexagons. Finally, learners highlight a few of the connections and write an explanation explaining each of those connections. Potash's post explains this clearly, with examples, and there is also a podcast at the top of the page.
For an information literacy class you could take it further and ask the learners also to find references that show the connections between the terms. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/hexagonal-thinking/
You can get her Google Slides deck which includes a template you could use at https://nowsparkcreativity.com/free-hexagonal-thinking-digital-toolkit and the image shows a quick example I threw together - the task for the learners is to move the hexagons and place the terms in meaningful relationship onthe hexagons. You have to give your email and agree to subscribe before you get the slides - this does mean you then get automated emails from Potash, but they are at least about educational ideas, and you can of course unsubscribe.

Information Literacy in Malaysia, China, USA

The IFLA Information Literacy Section newsletter, Summer 2023, is published. It contains four articles:
- The Action Plan on Improving Digital Literacy and Skills of the Whole People in China: To Build a Digital Inclusion Society by Qiong Tang and Yufan Wu
- NILA: Malaysia’s National Information Literacy Agenda by Nor Edzan Che Nasir
- Information Literacy at an Independent High School by Sarah Hernandez (USA)
- A Visual Arts Competition to Celebrate and Share Undergraduate Research by Merinda Kaye Hensley (USA)
Go to https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/2662

Nasir provides the definitions agreed for Information Literacy and an information literate individual in Malaysia
"Information literacy is the ability that empowers individuals to identify, evaluate, manage, create and disseminate the needed information in various mediums and formats ethically to support lifelong learning."
"An information literate individual has the ability to:
i. Identify information for current needs
ii. Build an effective and efficient information searching strategy
iii. Evaluate critically the information obtained in order to retrieve quality information
iv. Manage information in various mediums and formats systematically
v. Use information ethically by understanding the issues related to the use of the information
vi. Create new knowledge based on the information obtained to support lifelong learning
vii .Disseminate and share information responsibly with other individuals and the civil society through various mediums and formats
Image created by Sheila Webber with Midjourney AI, July 2023

Call for chapters: Teaching the Whole Student: Compassionate Instruction in the Academic Library

There is a call for chapters for a book to be published by ACRL and edited by Elena Rodriguez: Teaching the Whole Student: Compassionate Instruction in the Academic Library. Deadline for proposals is 15 September 2023.
"Compassionate instruction ... creates space in the classroom for the “whole student” to be seen and supported. It encourages their success and well-being by taking into consideration that there are both known and unknown challenges that affect and impact their ability to succeed, and it helps remove barriers, so students do not face challenges in a silo." The call for proposals is here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N9vX1iJqbzqnkYomGifTEC826VcPYQLzBwU1snfTtnk/edit

Image created by Sheila Webber on the AI image generator Midjourney, using the book title as a prompt. This was the one that most prominently featured a human being: all the generated images had rows of books stretching to infinity, and most didn't have any humans at all. This may mean that academic librares need to stop putting photos of bookshelves on their websites, if they want to change their image.

Making lifelong learning a reality: a handbook

I don't think I covered this 2022 UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning publication Making lifelong learning a reality: a handbook  https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000381857 (this is the English version, it also links to the French and Spanish versions).
It starts by defining LLL and explaining why it is important (including its relevance to Sustainable Development Goals) and then has chapters on creating LLL policy, implementing a LLL strategy and finally an example of LLL implemented at city level.
Since one of the UNESCO declarations has declared that information literacy is part of "the basic human right of lifelong learning" I think this handbook is relevant to IL. However, frustratingly, the term information literacy" is (from a quick search) only used once, in passing.
Nevertheless, examples are given where IL is relevant e.g. the example of knowledge sharing - "Lifelong learning villages in Mali" (p96). Certainly the statement at the start of the book seems to me intertwined with IL: "Lifelong learning is rooted in the integration of learning and living, covering learning activities for people of all ages, in all life-wide contexts and through a variety of modalities that, together, meet a range of learning needs and demands." (p17).
Photo by Sheila Webber: tree that thinks it's a sculpture, Gothenburg, June 2023

Artificial Intelligence and Librarianship

A new open access book published with a Creative Commons license is:
Frické, F. (2023). Artificial Intelligence and Librarianship. SoftOption Ltd. ISBN 978-0-473-68682-6 https://softoption.us/AIandLibrarianship or https://oercommons.org/courses/artificial-intelligence-and-librarianship 

I just had a quick scan and this book (aimed at people like me who teach librarians) seems very readable, starting with basics of ontologies and what Deep Learning, Machine Learning etc. involve, and ending by covering ways in which librarians can incorporate AI into many aspects of practice - Chapter 11 is Librarians as Educators which includes information literacy. There is a Word version you can download, for those who want to use just one chapter or incorporate it.
Photo by Sheila Webber: park, Gothenburg, June 2023

New articles: Source evaluation; First years; Asia

Faix, A. & Daniels, T. (2023). Teaching SIFT for Source Evaluation in Asynchronous One-Credit Information Literacy Courses. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 23(3), 449-459. http://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2023.a901563. [this journal is a priced publication]
- Roth, A., Goldman, C., Amorao, A.S., & Turnbow, D. (2023). Breaking the Ice: Introducing First-Year Writing Students to “Scholarship as Conversation”. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 23(3), 571-591. http://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2023.a901568
- Ashiq, M., Adil, H.M., & Batool, S.H. (2023). Information Literacy Research in Asia: A Bibliometric Analysis. portal: Libraries and the Academy 23(3), 593-619. http://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2023.a901569
"From the Scopus database, the study’s authors extracted bibliographic data on IL from Asian countries. The findings revealed that 20 of 48 countries in Asia produced no publications on the topic. The last few years, however, have seen remarkable growth in Asian IL literature."
Photo by Sheila Webber: squirrel in the botanic gardens, July 2023

Posters from #LILi2023

Posters from the 2023 LILi (Lifelong Information Literacy) Conference, held in July 2023, are available at https://lili.libguides.com/lili2023/posters, including Lost in Translation: Forgotten Librarians and AI Literacy Development; TILTing the Library's Online Tutorials; and Integrating Information Literacy Into The First Year Experience . All have abstracts, and the "posters" are in various formats, including videos, ThingLink (and image with embedded text and an embedded video), slides.
There are also links to slides from some conference sessions at https://lili.libguides.com/lili2023/schedule Thanks to Esther Grassian for the link.
Photo by Sheila Webber: mixed hydrangeas, July 2023

Library Information and Knowledge practitioner’s experiences of research: survey

The UK's Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) is undertaking a project to "gain a baseline understanding of Library, Information and Knowledge (LIK) practitioners’ experiences, skills and confidence of taking part in research." There is a questionnaire (closing 8 September 2023) and follow-up interviews for those who are interested. LIK practitioners from any country can respond. "The findings of this research will help identify training needs and other interventions that could be used to encourage research and ensure that key values are embedded in library, information and knowledge practice." More information and the survey link at https://www.cilip.org.uk/members/group_content_view.asp?group=201305&id=692056
Photo by Sheila Webber: hydrangea by a pathway, July 2023