Character Defining: a library journaling game #LILAC26

The next session I will blog from the LILAC information literacy conference is Character Defining: a library journaling game about creating characters from the unexpected connections between books presented by David Smith (University of the Arts, London). The abstract is here and Smith's blog with a detailed account of the initiative (and material you can download) is at https://daspgcert.myblog.arts.ac.uk/
Smith explained that it started with the idea of the game genre solo journaling, where you are prompted to create characters and story for a role playing game, and then thinking about how this could be used to help people explore books they would not otherwise look at.
A library move had led to a weeding exrecise, but some of the books were worthwhile to read even if they hadn't been used for a while. Smith thought of making interaction with these underused books into an event - preferably fun - and thus the idea of a game. Smith mentioned Andrew Walsh's book on teaching through games and play. He was also influenced by work on serendipity and by counselling interventions that involved role play. Smith's aim was to enable people to seek out roles and stories that were not like their own, including developing conversations about decolonisation.
An exemplar game is The Last Teashop. The principles for Smith's game involved developing a character by developing the characters/stories of others in the character's life (a mentor, love interest, rival family member), so the character's story was developed through their relationship with others. These other characters were developed through random interaction with the books that had been scheduled for weeding out.
Smith acted as games master in the trial run - summing up he is certainly going to run something similar, but not exactly the same as there were logistics difficulties (books falling over), players needing more support etc. However, positives included the interaction in sharing the characters and stories, in players getting interested in some of the books and topics, and players creating a diverse, complex range of characters, locations and stories. The gaming aspect also stretched players' imagination.
An example of a follow up was a project set up for MA Publishing students "Decolonising the archive". They took a selection of books and created a scenario where Smith and another librarian roleplayed strict/misleading librarians, with fake catalogue cards and the books hidden in a cupboard. This made the students into scholars who were investing the accuracy of the records and interacting with the books. Another initiative is using the library's photobook collection as prompts for sound art projects.

LIS Research Methodology: Decolonial Perspectives Informing Knowledge of African Communities #WLIC2022

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.

New articles: SoTL; Inquiry Based Learning; Impact

The latest issue (Vol. 8 no. 1 2020) of Teaching & Learning Inquiry, the open access journal of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), includes
- Behari-Leak, K. (2020). Toward a borderless, decolonized, socially just, and inclusive Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 8(1), 4-23. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.8.1.2 " Drawing on Africa as a case study to explore a framework for thinking outside borders, the author invites the reader to embrace a global social imagination that disrupts and transcends the epistemic, social, and cultural borders designed to produce knowledge that is ahistorical and decontextualized. "
- Pechenkina, E. (2020). Chasing impact: The tale of three SoTL studies. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 8(1), 91-107. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.8.1.7 "the author proposes a rubric by which to judge various levels and dimensions of impact achieved in SoTL-focused projects. To operationalize it, the rubric is applied to three completed projects, which while differing in their initial scope and intended outputs were united by a shared goal of improving learning by the means of innovative teaching."
- Archer-Kuhn, B., Lee, Y., Finnessey, S., & Liu, J. (2020). Inquiry-based learning as a facilitator to student engagement in undergraduate and graduate social work programs. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 8(1), 187-207. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.8.1.13 "This seven-cohort mixed methods study examines student engagement in their learning in higher education utilizing inquiry-based learning."
Photo by Sheila Webber: seeds from the cottonwood tree, May 2020 - this has covered the pavement in a cloud of cottony material

Celebrating Shane Godbolt

The latest issue of Focus on International Library and Information Work is dedicated to Shane Godbolt, who died last year, and who I remember with respect and affection from when we were both young information professionals. As the editorial says she was "someone who championed libraries sharing expertise and working together across borders" and the issue includes an article detailing her extensive work, and reprints of coauthored articles Promoting the Health of the People of Africa Building Library Partnerships for Better Health and Building a Partnership to Promote Health Information: A Case Study in Kenya.
The issue also includes a report on the conference Decolonising Library Collections and Practices: from Understanding to Impact. Go to https://cilip.informz.ca/CILIP/data/images/Special%20Interest%20Groups/ILIG/Focus51-1.pdf
Photo of Shane Godbolt by Tom Roper: "At the launch of the North Thames Regional Documents Database in 1996, in a hotel next to paddington station. Shane Godbolt and I are holding copies of the CD-Rom version of the database." Roper, T. (1996). shanetom. https://flic.kr/p/bi4zp. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0