Recent articles: Misinformation; Privacy literacy; Credibility

The latest issue of open access IFLA Journal (Volume 49, No. 1, March 2023) includes
- Strategies for checking misinformation: An approach from the Global South by Anup Kumar Das and Manorama Tripathi
- Croatian adolescents’ credibility judgments in making everyday life decisions by Alica Kolarić
- A review of international education literature: Interdisciplinary and discovery challenges by Shanna Saubert and Liz Cooper
Full issue available at: https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/2540

Hartman-Caverly, S., Chisholm, A., & Glenn, A. (2023). Digital Shred: Case Study of a Remote Privacy Literacy Collaboration. College & Research Libraries, 84(2), 238. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.84.2.238 "This qualitative, evaluative case study details the conceptual framing, development, delivery, and assessment of a privacy literacy workshop called Digital Shred. The workshop is a multi-institutional effort offered initially in-person in fall 2019 and adapted to virtual delivery in fall 2020. The conceptual framework underlying the workshop includes reputation management, behavioral surplus, data doubles, data governance, and information security damage assessments. " 
Photo by Sheila Webber: winter spring sky, March 2023

New articles: Skills and gaps; IL and humour; Emotional intelligence; Librarians as faculty developers; Librarian deference

The latest complete issue of the Journal of Academic Librarianship (a priced publication), Volume 48 issue 1 (January 2022) includes the following:
- Information literacy skills and learning gaps: Students' experiences and teachers' perceptions in interdisciplinary environmental science by Teresia Svensson, Julie Wilk, Kajsa Gustafsson Åman
- Librarians as faculty developers: Competencies and recommendations by Melissa Bowles-Terry, Karen Sobel
- Academic librarians: Their understanding and use of emotional intelligence and happiness by Michele A.L. Villagran, Lisa Martin (Open access article)
- Information Literacy: Making Asynchronous Learning More Effective With Best Practices That Include Humor by Debby R. Wegener (a study in a Singaporean university)
- It's Not Personal, It's Professional: Causes of Academic Librarian Deference Behavior by Lyda Fontes McCartin, Raquel Wright-Mair
Go to https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/the-journal-of-academic-librarianship/vol/48/issue/1

Photo by Sheila Webber: spot the cat, January 2022

New articles: Interdisciplinarity of Information Science Research @zin_journal

The Polish journal ZIN Zagadnienia Informacji Naukowej (volume 58 no. 1A) has an interesting issue on Interdisciplinarity of Information Science Research. The home page is (unsurprisingly) in Polish, but click the UK flag top right and you have the page in English and the articles are in English. They include: 

- Complex Interdisciplinary Approach to Modelling Information Literacy Education by Tibor Koltay, Enikő Szőke-Milinte 

- Affective Factors in Human Information Behavior: A Conceptual Analysis of Interdisciplinary Research on Information Behavior by Monika Krakowska 

- Theoretical Bases of Critical Data Studies by Łukasz Iwasiński 

- Information Science in Dialogue with Archival Science, Library Science and Museum Studies: The Recent Brazilian Experience by Carlos Alberto Ávila Araújo 

Go to http://ojs.sbp.pl/index.php/zin/issue/view/73  

Photo by Sheila Webber: old oak, November 2020

New articles: Fake news; Stress; government sources; theatre students; theses; interdisciplinary infolit

The latest issue of priced publication Reference Services Review is Volume 46 Issue 1. Articles include:
- Seeing through the network: A focus on interdisciplinary student research and information discovery: Dany Savard (pp. 4 - 15)
- Thesis consultation: a review: Karlene Patricia Robinson, Karlene Saundria Nelson, Jessica Claire Lewis (pp. 16 - 28)
- Tapping government sources for course assignments: Eleonora Dubicki, Susan Bucks (pp. 29 - 41)
- Performance review: online research guides for theater students: Julia Furay (pp. 91 - 109)
- A rubric and methodology for benchmarking referral goals: David Ward, JoAnn Jacoby (pp. 110 - 127)
- Stress among reference library staff in academic and public libraries: Marija Petek (pp. 128 - 145)
- Fake news judgement: The case of undergraduate students at Notre Dame University-Louaize, Lebanon: Maroun El Rayess, Charla Chebl, Joseph Mhanna, Re-Mi Hage (pp. 146 - 149)
Table of contents and abstracts at https://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/rsr/46/1
Photo by Sheila Webber: cherry blossom in my garden, April 2018

The Enactment of Information Literacy: An Exploratory Study among Interdisciplinary PhD Students #ecil2015

Next in liveblogging from the European Conference on Information Literacy 2015 was The Enactment of Information Literacy: An Exploratory Study among Interdisciplinary PhD Students was presented by Ola Pilerot, and his co-author was Louise Limberg.
This study was based on material originally gathered for Pilerot's PhD work. The problem that they perceoved that students in interdisciplinary fields face "a number of chal;enges concerning epistemic traditions and research practices" - as they are having to engage with more than one disciplinary areas they have to cope with a scattered literature, and differences in disciplinary practices (about how you do research, what tools you use, what are good methods etc.)
In this context information literacy is seen as the embodied capacity to engage with information (find, evaluate etc.) in a disciplinary area (so that the students can come to grips with the different disciplinary practices and information worlds). The interdisciplinary field here was "design research".
Research questions were "How is IL enacted in the investigated practice" and "In what ways does IL relate to people and material objects in the practice under study?". There was apractice theory approach. Data was collected through 10 interviews and observations etc. in conferences, meetings etc. The "guiding principles" for the study were activities (what is done); individual agency (what can people do, what practices happen); material objects; power (what can/can't be done) and what it means to be knowledgeable.
The results included that IL is enacted:
- in dialogue with others (e.g. fellow students and conference delegates)
- through discussion about work in progress (which can be academic work, practical design wotk etc.)
Thus IL is "a collectively sustained project that unfolds in dialogue with othersand through interaction with material objects". However, it is challenging for the students to position themselves, when their projects are interdisciplinary and may be novel.
In a question afterwards I made a connection with the skills that a librarian needs to understand and think themselves into different disciplinary information/knowledge worlds.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Tallinn, 2011

Polymathic Information Literacy: deconstructing what it means to be interdisciplinarily literate #ecil2013

Earlier today at the ECIL conference in Istanbul, Robert Labaree (University of Southern California, USA) talked about Polymathic Information Literacy: deconstructing what it means to be interdisciplinarily literate. He was reporting on a study in which he asked the question: What are the information-related strategies needed to develop interdisciplinary skills? The speaker examined academic articles on interdisciplinarity, and statements from integrative classes, and programmes promoting interdisciplinarity. He identified some key learning objectives that recurred in the literature and for each of them he highlighted some sub-objectives that he thought were particularly aligned with information literacy (with particular emphasis on the information seeking aspect of IL). The learning objectives were: creative thinking, integrative learning and synoptic problem-solving, epistemological proficiency, collaborative enquiry, and comprehend and appreciate working with complexity. I didn’t have time to note down the aspects that he highlighted.
The speaker proposed some competencies for IL in interdisciplinarity, using each of the learning objectives listed above. Again, I did not have time to note down many of these, but for example “Locates accesses and evaluates contrarian ideas and perspectives” is one of the items for Creative Thinking (see also the picture of his slide, above) and “Recognises and can apply the preferred units if analysis methods and validation criteria of other disciplines” for Epistemological Proficiency. At the end of the presentation, the speaker emphasised that the competencies and outcomes had not been tested or put into practice, and that different learning outcomes might be needed for different study levels.
It was interesting to hear about an interdisciplinary approach rather than a discipline-specific one, and I hope to read more detail about this.