Pam McKinney here live blogging from the second day of the LILAC conference in Cardiff. Richard Douglas from Trinity Laban Conservatoire spoke about research that he undertook as part of his MA in Librarianship at UCL. Richard is a trained singer who started working in libraries and studied at UCL. He became interested in embodied information, drawing on the work of Annemaree Lloyd, who identified this corporeal information as an aspect of the information landscape of trainee firefighters and ambulance workers. There is a body of research looking at embodied information behaviours in serious leisure contexts, e.g. ultra running. Embodied information refers to information stored, processed, produced and interpreted by the body. Singing is a very embodied activity, bodies are central to singing practice, but also, in the context of the conservatoire, it is embodied information in an academic context, where singers become experts in using their voices.
He used an interpretive qualitative study design using grounded theory. There were 4 participants - three students and 1 teacher. Participants were asked about their bodily information and their singing practice, focusing on their learning and progression and how they got better at using information. Participants were very engaged in the questions, and the data was very rich. Participants spoke about analogies and metaphors for information, pain as a key source of information, and listening to themselves singing. observing other people's bodies, the unreliable nature of hearing one own voice. A more reliable way to access information about the quality of the voice is to record it and play it back. Information activities acted as feedback loops, and then this could be used as a prompt to action. Even though singers can notice information, they don't always know what to do with it, but teachers can support this and help singers take appropriate action.
Richard noted that the study of embodied information literacy is still quite new and under-researched. This study has provided music educators with an information-based understanding of formal singing training, and provides some insight into the role of the teacher in developing information literacy. For librarians, it is important to recognise that singing students might have a high level of information literacy, but in a non-traditional way, we need to avoid a deficit mindset in teaching. We need to think of ways to connect their existing information literacy practices to more text-based information literacy that is more traditional in higher education.
Photo by Pam McKinney - statue of a child in front of the Cardiff museum
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