Recordings: Data Literacy for Community College

Recordings from the 2nd webinar series (held February 2026) which forms part of the University of North Texas' (USA) Data literacy for community college project are available. This series had that title Building Data Literacy in Practice: Tools, Lessons, and Strategies, and the webinars were on: Understanding Data and Data Sources; Making Data Insightful and Actionable; and Managing Data Ethically and Responsibly. 
Go to https://ci.unt.edu/dlcc/webinars/webinar-recordings.html and scroll down the page (the series 1 webinars on From Principles to Practice: Data Literacy in Academic Libraries, held in 2025, are linked at the top of the page). 
From my quick scan of the slides, these presentations look useful to my own teaching and students e.g. Making Data Insightful and Actionable goes from the need to formulate a meaningful question, through data collection and analysis to presentation (with the focus on quantitative data).
Photo by Sheila Webber: last snowdrops (in that I will move on from snowdrop photos now), February 2026

New books: Community College Libraries: assessment - and - IL teaching

Two books just published by the US Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
- Pinkley, J & Casey, K. (Eds).  (2022). The Community College Library: Assessment. ACRL.  Price US $72.00 ALA Member $64.80 ISBN: 978-0-8389-3901-7 (ebook Price: $50.00 ISBN 978-0-8389-3900-0) https://www.alastore.ala.org/content/community-college-library-assessment
- Pinkley, J & Casey, K. (Eds). (2022). The Community College Library: Reference and Instruction. ACRL. (Price US $98.00 ALA Member $88.20 ISBN: 978-0-8389-3768-6 (ebook Price: $70.00 ISBN 978-0-8389-3902-4) https://www.alastore.ala.org/content/community-college-library-reference-and-instruction

Photo by Sheila Webber: plum blossom, February 2022

Information Literacy and Further Education

There is a new page on the Information Literacy website managed by (UK) CILIP IL Group. The page focuses on Further Education, which I believe is rather like Community Colleges in the USA and VET colleges in Australia. The characteristics of FE are outlined and there is an embedded pdf outlining some questions and challenges for information literacy in Further Education, and another with an example information literacy strategy for further education. http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/information-literacy/further-education/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Outside the students' union, Sheffield, October 2014

New issue of Journal of Information Literacy

Volume 8 no. 1 of the open access Journal of Information Literacy is published. Articles include:
- Assessing information literacy programmes using information search tasks by Nikolas Leichner, Johannes Peter, Anne-Kathrin Mayer, Günter Krampen
- Bilingual workplaces: integrating cultural approaches to information literacy into foreign language educational practices by Alison Hicks
- The creation of a university library outreach programme to develop the information literacy of further education students: an interactive approach to support transition by Lisa Anderson, Stephen Bull
- Exploring the lived information-seeking experiences of mature students by Sarah Clark
- AMORES - Discovering a love for literature through digital collaboration and creativity by Geoff Walton
- Information literacy: a matter of course by Elizabeth Tilley
- Graduate information literacy in online education using the embedded librarian model by Lauryl A. Lefebvre, Martha C. Yancey
Plus conference reports and book reviews
Go to http://ojs.lboro.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/JIL/issue/view/168
Photo by Sheila Webber: raindrops in June, Sheffield, 2014

To measure or not to measure at #colrictt13

I will do a couple of blog posts from the COLRIC (Council for Learning Resources in Colleges) information literacy event in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which focuses on the Further Education sector. Grazyna Kuczera's session was called: To measure or not to measure. She is from Northampton College, which won the 2011 Association of Colleges (AoC) Beacon Award for the Effective Integration of Libraries/Learning Resources Centres in Curriculum Delivery (More info about this here http://www.northamptoncollege.ac.uk/news/item.aspx?NewsItem=724) She is far left in the poor-quality picture above.

Grazyna stressed that you had to develop impact measures that really told you something about how the students' learning experience has changed. She introduced a picture of a tree, with the library at the base of the trunk, i.e. vital in order to get the tree to grow leaves and fruit. However you had to convince and influence others that students would not flourish in the same way if the library was not there. She mentioned the Huddersfield University project which got meaning out of visitor statistics by correlating them with class of degree. Here is a quick link to the archived version of an article about this: http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/7940/1/Academic_library_non__low_use_revised_final_version.pdfGoodall
Homing in on her picture of the tree, she identified some root activities (roots nourishing the tree) e.g. support for A levels or for Higher Education in Further Education, catch up sessions and information for study skills. One tip was to watch for things which were not working and move in to show how the library could make an improvement.

Also Grazyna talked about tracking performance of students who had information and study skills education, not just while they were at the college, but also after they went on to university via direct entry (they found that their students were doing better than the students who had started at the university at level 1). This information was powerful to feed backto the teachers. She talked about some other initiatives where you could get evidence about impact including the "Six book challenge". Evidence included the testimony of students themselves e.g. a student saying "It made me realise I shouldn't use Wikipdia so much."

Presentations from #lilac13 - skills, gamification, reflective practice, digital literacy ...

Here are some presentations from the LILAC conference last week (on the right is a view of the area where they served lunch etc.) - from sessions I didn't attend but which look interesting!
- experienced, empowered, engaged: showcasing skills for the future: David Parkes,Alison Pope and Kathleen Morgan http://www.slideshare.net/djp/djpajplilac2013v3
- Arming the teacher-librarian: Using experiential learning and reflective practice to guide pedagogy: Alan Carbery http://www.slideshare.net/acarbery/arming-the-teacher-librarian
- A Room Without Walls: Using problem based learning in a collaborative real-time virtual space to develop critical research skills in an FE college: Christine Stevenson & Leanne Young, University of Sunderland http://prezi.com/tkraf3xnh0bj/final-lilac13-prezi/
- Embedding digital literacy at Leeds Metropolitan University - there is an e-book on pdf by Sue Smith and Simon Thomson at http://www.eshare.edgehill.ac.uk/1766/1/Day_2_Session_5_We%27ve_Made_an_eBook_-_text.pdf and there is a Storify of the tweets from the session at http://storify.com/leedsmetlibrary/embedding-digital-literacy-at-leeds-metropolitan-u
- Games and gamification for information literacy: Adam Edwards, Andrew Walsh, Vanessa Hill http://www.slideshare.net/EISLibrarian/lilac-2013-games-and-gamification-for-information-literacy

Also Emma Cragg has put together some presentations given or mentioned at LILAC at http://bundlr.com/b/lilac13 and Eleni Zazani has made a LILAC 2013 Twitter archive https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkGq4A6nr7oQdGxXd2Q5V21qT1pNeWRGRlRPNHVtUmc#gid=36

TAFE and IL

I was talking today to someone about information literacy in further education colleges: as anyone in that area will know there is far less literature than there is about universities. I was recommending looking at the material written about IL in Australian TAFEs, so I thought I'd mention that here too. TAFE stands for Technical And Further Education and I think they are the nearest equivalent to the UK's FE colleges (someone correct me if I'm wrong). You can actually find some good material by doing a search on good old Google TAFE "Information literacy".

To pick out a couple of specific items:
Fafeita, J. (2006) "The Current Status of Teaching and Fostering Information Literacy in TAFE." Australian academic and research libraries, 37 (2), 136-162. http://alia.org.au/publishing/aarl/37.2/fafeita.pdf (this reports on a survey of TAFE librarians)

LEARN Network of South Australian TAFE Libraries. (2006) Learn Information Literacy Initiative (Lili). http://www2.tafe.sa.edu.au/lili/index.html (A tutorial)

You also might want to keep an eye on the wiki Towards a knowledge commons: modelling a transformation of library services and information resource provision in the Vocational Education Sector http://victafe.pbwiki.com/

Photo by Sheila Webber: Yeppoon, Australia, June 2004.

Standards for teaching in lifelong learning sector

After a consultation process, in December 2006 LLUK published standards for those engaged in any type of teaching in the further education sector. They "describe, in generic terms, the skills, knowledge and attributes required of those who perform the wide variety of teaching and training roles undertaken within the sector with learners and employers." (pII) Five "domains" are identified, with standards for each domain: Domain A: Professional values and practice; Domain B: Learning and teaching; Domain C: Specialist learning and teaching; Domain D: Planning for learning; Domain E: Assessment for learning; Domain F: Access and progression.

This is obviously interesting for those in further education, but I think can also be of interest to other sectors. There is interest both for librarians (and information departments) considering what librarians need to know as teachers, and in terms of implications for curricula that librarians might be teaching into. Unfortunately the document does not seem to specifically identify librarians as people who sometimes have a teaching role, but it says that these standards apply to anyone who teaches. It identifies information skills as being part of Domain B (Learning and Teaching) so you would expect to see information skills incorporated into curricula for further education teachers. I think that Chris Armstrong had mentioned that there was input from the library and information sector to the consultation. The specific standards relating to information are (BK5.1 are the standrad numbers, in this case standard 5.1 relating to knowledge in domain B):

In terms of knowledge "Teachers in the lifelong learning sector know and understand:
"BK 5.1 The impact of resources on effective learning.
"BK 5.2 Ways to ensure that resources used are inclusive, promote equality and support diversity."
and in terms of progfessional practice "Teachers in the lifelong learning sector:"
"BP 5.1 Select and develop a range of effective resources, including appropriate use of new and emerging technologies.
"BP 5.2 Select, develop and evaluate resources to ensure they are inclusive, promote equality and engage with diversity." (p6)

Lifelong Learning UK (2206) New overarching professional standards for teachers, tutors and trainers in the lifelong learning sector. London: LLUK. http://www.lifelonglearninguk.org/standards/new_prof_standards.html

Photo by Sheila Webber: Tree and telephone wires, dusk, Blackheath, December 2006.