An interesting open access book:
Mfengu, A. et al. (2025). Advancing Social Justice Through Curriculum Realignment: Centering Scholarly Communication in LIS Curricula. UCT Libraries Press https://openbooks.uct.ac.za/uct/catalog/book/79
Photo by Sheila Webber: roses, May 2026
This is Sheila liveblogging on Combining Information Literacy and Metaliteracy to Advance Transnational Group Learning about AI. Learning Process and Learning Outcomes, Results from a Case Study authored by Joachim Griesbaum, Stefan Dreisiebner, Emina Adilović, Justyna Berniak-Woźny, Subarna Bhattacharya, Jini Jacob, Tom Mackey, Tessy Thadathil at the ECIL conference. It was presented by Mackey, Griesbaum and Dreisiebner. They are reporting results from an intercultural course part of the IPILM project, which involves institutions in India, Poland, Germany, USA, Austria and UAE. They noted that the course was worthwhile but demanding, requiring motivated students. The project https://ipil.blog.uni-hildesheim.de/ fosters intercultural learning whilst learning about information literacy and metaliteracy. It is an example of Collaborative Online International Learning which involve course co-creation, interactive learning, accessibility, and students based at the home institution. There is an explanation of COIL here). The course combines information literacy and metaliteracy in a seamless way. Learners work in team find synthesising content and evaluating tools they are using, the learners also have to reflect on themselves and their learning. Outcomes include critical thinking, knowledge production and collaboration.
The concept of IPILM involves the community (including the LMS and other collaborative tools), the learning cycle (course structure) and transnational groups (including learners from at least 2 locations). The idea emerged from the collaboration between universities in Germany and India, and developed in terms of course design (to have a winter and summer course) and to the different countries. This year there were 7 instructors, and 34 students from India, Poland, Germany, USA, Austria, UAE.
They onboard students, then there is the main part where the students collaborate and then a public online conference where the student groups present. The students, who are from different disciplinary backgrounds, are given some initial readings and then the collaborative knowledge construction starts. They build up their knowledge on the allocated topic then present and discuss interim results. Each group has to produce an artefact that addresses the problem and which is accessible to people outside academia. This is usually a video. There is iterative discussion and feedback and then the presentation.
The learning topics addressed by the groups all focused on AI this last time. e.g. AI impact on democracy; Politics; AI impact on local culture: presentations are here.
For their project they have research questions about the IPILM concept and the learning success of students. For the first aspect - they have run IPILM for 7 years and with no funding. They just did per and post surveys and asked learners to write reflections. They only had 1 student dropout after onboarding. The students said they were motivated. 10 out of 19 respondents had had group conflicts, which were addressed by course tutors. The learners judged course structure as good and teaching support as very good. For learning outcomes, they assessed IL and intercultural competency pre- and post-course. There was not a significant increase in IL but was in intercultural competence. This all seemed to show that the IPILM was feasible and enjoyed by the students.
Pam McKinney here, continuing the live-blogging from the ECIL conference. This presentation was from Monika Krakowska, Magdalena Zych from Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, the lovely location for the ECIL conference in 2023. Monika and Magdalena spoke about their research to understand ethical IL literacy in Higher Education. They wanted to diagnose LIS students' practices in working with Gen AI, and the gaps in students' real-world practices and the ACRL framework for IL. The research questions focused on how students understand authorship and disclosers of AI text production, how they assess the credibility of AI-generated responses and how criticality manifests in AI use. They used selected ACRL frames: information has value, authority is constructed and contextual; research as inquiry and searching as strategic exploration, and tried to understand how they could be reinterpreted in the context of GenAI.
84 LIS students at various levels of education took part in the research, they had to choose one of three tasks with ethical AI use dilemmas, modelling three roles: science fiction writer, information broker and podcast creator (e.g. analyse the consequences of using AI in video games). The team analysed the chat log from students' interactions with ChatGPT, and analysed this thematically, using the ACRL frames to support coding. Students mostly did not acknowledge the authorship of ChatGPT, did not question the credibility of the information provided by the AI, and did not identify bias. There was little iterative, purposeful prompting and searching, the prompt engineering was not very successful. Simple single-step requests/prompts dominated the chat logs, and usually focused on the format of the responses rather than the content.
In terms of the ACRL framework, they found that there was a need to examine AI use and how the ACRL framework could be updated and developed. Coming from the research are three central points: the need to recognise non-human contribution, bias and hallucination literacy is needed and prompt engineering competency is needed. The research took place in one university and there is an appetite for extending this to other universities. Future-ready IL must be AI-aware, AI-critical and AI-responsible.
Photo: rainy Monday morning in Bamberg (Pam McKinney)
Some recent articles from the priced Journal of Education for Library and Information Science include:
- Dow, M. (2025). High-Impact Information Literacy Learning Opportunities in Postsecondary Education in Health, Civic Engagement, and Personal Finance Courses. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 66(1), 21–39. https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis-2023-0084
- Hands, A.S. & Shankar, S. (2025). Back from Crisis Mode: Exploring Care-Centered Approaches to Teaching in LIS. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 66(1), 85–93.
https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis-2024-0052
- Winn, J et al. (2025). Identifying Core DEIA+AR Andragogical Competencies in LIS Education: A Systematic Review. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 66(2), 174–194. https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis-2023-0079 "By focusing on andragogical practices (the method and practice of teaching adult learners) instead of curricular interventions, educators can ensure that DEIA+AR [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Anti-Racism] is intentionally part of academic programs and in the classrooms. ... This systematic review set out to examine what approaches have been tried, what is being currently done, and whether there are identifiable best andragogical practices that support DEIA+AR in post-secondary education."
- Dow, M. et al. (2025). Cognitive Consequences of Social Presence in Online Asynchronous Learning: A Grounded Theory Study. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 66(2), 103 - 126. https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis-2024-0024 "In a constructivist grounded theory study, 22 graduate students enrolled in library and information studies programs in eight US higher education institutions were interviewed about their affective feelings in online learning, their perceptions of people as real, knowing what others know and how well they know it, and social conflict monitoring. The findings reveal the need for improvements in online teaching and learning strategies and suggests that instructors should model presenting themselves as real persons through increased use of audio and visual instruction."
Photo by Sheila Webber: Cherry blossom and young leaves by St John's church, April 2025
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
On 29 July I gave a keynote at the IFLA WLIC 2022 Satellite Conference: SET Training School: Towards a Curriculum for Social and Digital Inclusion and Lifelong Learning entitled Curriculum, community, context, sustainability: A reflection. The slides for this presentation are embedded below
Today the IFLA SET conference started with a talk from IFLA President Barbara Lison on The Art of Being a Leader. She started by stating her belief in the value for learning and professional development. She then presented a professional motto for a library leader "the library is you", and stated that leadership needed personality and skills. Lison reminded us that people form opinions very quickly when they first see you. This led to her saying that we need to think about what impression we make on others, and then an interesting conversation amongst participants about whether or not people cared about what impression they made and issues such as stereotyping. Lison also presented some statistics that, in terms of being perceived of being capable, that it was based: 30% on your work, 30% on presentation of self; 30% of being seen to do a good job, and 10% on what you are saying and doing. Lison went on to talk about personality (which she saw as consisting of assets, values and image), and how you need to be aware of it and reflect whether you want to change it. This led to the idea of personal branding, which you can strengthen through listing (your assets etc.), auditing, choosing an accountability partner, creating a tagline for your brand, designing an action plan, and ask yourself questions. Lison advocated: having a clear focus and goals; developing critical self-awareness; being consistent in your branding; being clear; being ready to fail and show weakness; creating a positive impact (since one creates an impact whether or not you want to); following a successful example; being likeable not liked; having more questions than answers; build relationships. Lison also listed skills for successful leadership such as social competence, belief in oneself, consistency, empathy.After the talk there was a lively discussion on topics such as finding your voice, and presenting your case
The next talk I will blog from the IFLA SET Training School is LIS Research Methodology: Decolonial Perspectives Informing Knowledge of African Communities, presented by Professor Jaya Raju (University of Cape Town, South Africa). She aligned her perspective on decolonisation with that of Bagele Chilisa, and Raju also mentioned the work of Linda Tuniwai Smith and numerous other authors: this was a rich and scholarly presentation that I'm not able to do justice to. She emphasised that the existing LIS research literature mostly comes from the Global North and reflects Western research methodologies, and so there is a need to engage LIS with research methods informed by decolonial perspectives, so that there can be a more nuanced understanding of communities. Raju gave examples of "Combative decolonial" approaches to research methods e.g. conducting research so that the "worldviews of those who have suffered a long history of oppression and marginalisation are given space to communicate from their frames of reference" - with research data being "engaged with in its own terms". Raju asserted that transformation in research "can only happen when the researched and the researchers are involved from the outset", which means truly participatory research methods. One example Raju gave was that the Lancet rejects articles with data collected in Africa, but with no mention of African collaborators.
Raju stated that this does not mean discarding Western research methods, but to have the different worldviews, epistemologies etc. coexisting, and privileging the indigenous ways of knowing of the community being researched. Moving specifically to library and information research - there is the starting point that "information" is not neutral. This makes it particularly important for LIS research to be "critically reflexive and decolonial in its approach". Raju presented a diagram that drew on indigenous and western research methodologies, and also a table that compared various Western research paradigams e.g. positivist, constructivist, with a decolonial perspective as regards what ontology, epistemology, axiology, methodology meant in each paradigm.
Today I'm speaking at the IFLA WLIC 2022 Satellite Conference: SET Training School: Towards a Curriculum for Social and Digital Inclusion and Lifelong Learning. I will post my presentation when I've uploaded it to Slideshare, and will also do some liveblogging.
The first speaker today was Marta Bustillo (University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland) on Digital by Default, Inclusive by Design? Musings on 21st Century Librarianship She started by talking about Maria Moliner, who Bustillo named as her librarian hero. Amongst other things, Moliner was the first woman to teach at the University of Murcia, Spain, in 1924, and she worked in a team setting up a network of rural libraries across Spain. Despite being purged from her post when Franco came to power, she still carried on and her most remembered achievement was compiling a dictionary of Spanish usage, which is still held in high regard. Bustillo emphasised that the connection to her talk was Moliner's belief in the power of libraries, inclusion, vision and tenacity.
Moving on to the theme of "digital by default", the speaker cited statistics that there is an estimated 7.9 billion population in the world, of which 5 billion have internet access. This raises the question of who is being left behind by making as much as possible digital, and also thinking about whether this race to the digital is giving libraries less control over materials etc. (as more and more is in the control of a handful of companies, in the cloud). Bustillo noted that "Digital is neither accessible not inclusive" and not sustainable if our energy supply is threatened.
She then gave the example of UCD Library Digital Literacy initiative, and there is information here http://libguides.ucd.ie/diglit Digital Literacy was chosen as the focus of the initiative as it is mentioned in documents such as UCD's strategic plan. They have created a framework based on the European Union's one, have designed a digital skills portfolio that students should build up, and aim to embed digital skills in programmes of study. She identified that this work required many skills: course design, teaching, collaboration, technical knowledge, advocacy, and the ability to use research methods and carry out evaluation.
This obviously leads to the question of what is needed in library and information courses. She raised the question of whether the courses should aim for depth or breadth, and just skills and knowledge, or more than that. She has been working with a network aiming to educate librarians about open education, European Network of Open Education Librarians. On the issue of inclusivity - since communities are diverse, there is the question of how that can be reflected in the spectrum of libraries and their activities (e.g. format decisions, library design, staff management, hiring, collection development). Bustillo emphasised that librarianship is a profession about people, and that librarians must work successfully and empathetically with their communities. Therefore she wanted to turn round the title of her talk - that it should be Inclusive by Default and Digital by Design.
This afternoon at the World Library and Information Congress I attended a session on IFLA Guidelines for professional library and information science (LIS) education programmes. This has been an initiative developed over a number of years, and the finally approved version of the guidelines are here https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/1987 The aim is for the guidelines to be used to influence national accreditation bodies and policy agency, and for them to be used with individual programmes. We discussed the guidelines on tables (on mine there were people from various types of library, from Armenia, USA, Germany, Ireland, Wales; plus me from an information school in England). There were three topics for discussion, and these are some key ideas that emerged.
(1) Promoting the guidelines
- Employing the guidelines as a professional development tool e.g. for workshops
- Promoting guidelines to encourage mobility berween jobs (notably between countries)
- Discussing the guidelines at local conferences, including socialising them with students
- Using social media to stimulate knowledge and understanding about the guidelines
- That the strategy would depend on the extent to which a national professional structure was developed (e.g. for those in countries with accrediting associations there needed to be discussion with them to make sure the IFLA guidelines were incorporated in their accrediting structures; for those that didn't it might involve approaching individual universities to run smaller courses based on some elements of the guidelines)
(2) Using the guidelines as a tool for the development of quality in LIS education
- Starting by reviewing existing programmes and see whether they are compatible - addressing the gaps
- Use as an international examination
- Using it as a basis for reciprocity, so people could move between countries
- Getting examples so people can see what the guidelines look like in practice
- Need help in thinking about how to use the guidelines in specific areas e.g. if training childen's librarians for specific tasks
(3) Challenges in implementation of the guidelines
- It would be helpful if there workshops on mapping accreditation standards to the IFLA guidelines
(i.e. how to do that)
- Finding ways of helping librarians create development programmes mapped to the guidelines, also advice on getting support from funding agencies to support the programmes
- There are procedures for getting academic programmes approved - so incorporating the guidelines might involve a lot of bureaucratic effort
- Having an impact in different countries
- How do you cope with fast-changing skills
The idea is that this should be a living document and is of genuine use to library and information professionals. Therefore there is an intention to have a group of people stewarding it.
People who have already provided leadership are Jaya Raju (University of Cape Town, South Africa), Clara M. Chu (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, United States) and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States): these three led the session. Other people are mentioned in the guidelines (linked above). See also https://bslise.org/
Three more topics that were publicised at the WLIC conference last week were:
(1) The IFLA/UNESCO Multicultural Library Manifesto (which is in 24 languages) https://www.ifla.org/node/8976?og=73 and the IFLA Multicultural Library toolkit (in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Russian - French is being added shortly) https://www.ifla.org/node/8977
(2) Libraries in the broadband ecosystem - a useful page that links to statements and examples of libraries using broadband to extend and improve their service https://www.ifla.org/node/94070 and
(3) IFLA's Building Strong Library and Information Science Education (BSLISE) project https://bslise.org/map/
The latest essay in the Project Information Literacy Provocation series (number three) was published on 9 June 2021, by Kirsten Hostetler, entitled The iSchool Equation. The strapline is "Librarians are increasingly being looked to as one solution to the spread of misinformation, but are iSchools producing graduates who possess the teaching skills to tackle this growing problem?" The essay is here https://projectinfolit.org/pubs/provocation-series/essays/the-ischool-equation.html and there are some suggested discussion questions here https://projectinfolit.org/pubs/provocation-series/essays/discussion-questions/ischool-equation-dq.html
Spoiler alert - the author concludes that library students are not being adequately prepared for teaching, and makes some good points. However, she does focus entirely on the situation in the USA, something that was not obvious from the title (I'm in an iSchool! and I'm not in the USA! - in fact there are more iSchools outside North America than within it - see https://ischools.org/Directory).
