New articles: #Infolit for first years; teacher librarians' experience of teaching; Librarians involved in systematic review; Librarians and #SoTL

The latest issue of open access journal College and Research Libraries (Vol 86 Issue 1 2025) includes:
- Sarah LeMire, Zhihong Xu, and Doug Hahn. First-Year and First-Gen: Assessing the Information Literacy Skills of First-Year, First-Generation College Students.
- Matthew Weirick Johnson. Job Control, Library Instruction, and Burnout: A Quantitative Analysis of Academic Instruction Librarians’ Experiences of Job Control While Teaching.
- Catherine Boden, Susan Bolton, and Angie Gerrard. Health Sciences and Beyond: An Investigation into Canadian Librarian Participation in Systematic Reviews Across Disciplines.
- Anne Grant, Kyle Feenstra, and Mills Kelly. Why Does SoTL [Scholarship of Teaching & Learning] Happen in a Librarian-Free Zone?
Go to https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/issue/view/1670/showTocPhoto by Sheila Webber: snow in November 2024. The snow is still on the ground now, but less picturesque

New articles: Advanced searching; Systematic review; Teaching with Wikipedia

The latest issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) (Volume 112 Number 3, 2024) includes
- Exploring librarians’ practices when teaching advanced searching for knowledge synthesis: results from an online survey by Glyneva Bradley-Ridout, Robin Parker , Lindsey Sikora , Andrea Quaiattini, Kaitlin Fuller , Margaret Nevison, Erica Nekolaichuk
- Effect of librarian collaboration on otolaryngology systematic review and meta-analysis quality by Rachel Whitney, AHIP, Michael C. Shih, Tamar Gordis, Shaun A. Nguyen, Ted A. Meyer, Emily A. Brennan
Go to https://jmla.pitt.edu/ojs/jmla/issue/view/34 for these, and for articles marking 125 years of the US MLA and also on other medical library topics

I was reminded that I should be scanning JMLA more often through the announcement of the winner of the JMLA Biannual Research Article Award:
- Kahili-Heede, M. K., Patil, U., Hillgren, K. J., Hishinuma, E., & Kasuya, R. (2022).Library instruction and Wikipedia: investigating students’ perceived informationliteracy, lifelong learning, and social responsibility through Wikipedia editing. Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA, 110(2), 174–184. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2022.1291
"This article presents a multiyear pilot study delineating practical challenges, solutions, and lessons learned from Wikipedia editing experiences with first-year medical students at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawai’i at M ̄anoa."
Photo by Sheila Webber: Can't quite reach the phone, August 2024

How many sources are needed? The effects of bibliographic databases on systematic review outcomes

An interesting preprint, which takes articles which were identified in german systematic reviews of educational topics, and identifies which of 7 databases contain the articles (the databases were: Catalogue of the German National Library; Education Research Complete; ERIC; FIS Bildung Literaturdatenbank/ German Education Index; Google Scholar; LearnTechLib; Web of Science Social Science Citation Index).
- Keller, C., Heck, T. & Rittberger, M. (2022). How many sources are needed? The effects of bibliographic databases on systematic review outcomes. in: Aizawa, A., Mandl, T., Carevic, ., Hinze, A.,Mayr, P. & Schaer, P. (Eds). Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries in 2022 (JCDL '22), hybrid conference, Cologne, Germany and online, June 20 - 24, 2022. New York : Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.25657/02:25180
"The database coverage showed high variations and clearly indicates that one source on its own does not cover a sufficient amount of relevant literature. Some databases are very similar in coverage, while national and discipline-specific databases hold publications that cannot be found elsewhere. Google Scholar outperformed all databases regarding recall. However, due to poor precision this database is considered inadequate for review purposes" - the latter sentence highlights that Google Scholar yields by far the largest % of the articles - but although they are there, you wouldn't necessarily find them if you were using a subject (rather than a known item) search. In the original search some of these items could only be found through hand searching. There are also observations on why the authors of the original systematic reviews did not find items in other databases, when the items were in fact there. This includes the poor quality of metadata, and sometimes over-specific searches.
Photo by Sheila Webber: dry heath, summer 2018

Is Youtube not a reliable health information source?

Spoiler alert - the answer seems to be "no". This is a review of existing research into Youtube's reliability.
Osman, W., Mohamed, F., Elhassan, M. et al. (2022). Is YouTube a reliable source of health-related information? A systematic review. BMC Medical  Education, 22 (382). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03446-z
Abstract: "YouTube is a valuable source of health-related educational material which can have a profound impact on people’s behaviors and decisions. However, YouTube contains a wide variety of unverified content that may promote unhealthy behaviors and activities. We aim in this systematic review to provide insight into the published literature concerning the quality of health information and educational videos found on YouTube. ...
"Based on eligibility criteria, 202 papers were included in our study. We reviewed every article and extracted relevant data such as the number of videos and assessors, the number and type of quality categories, and the recommendations made by the authors. ... The total number of videos assessed in the selected articles is 22,300 ... The video quality was assessed by scoring, categorization, or based on creators’ bias. Researchers commonly employed scoring systems that are either standardized (e.g., GQS, DISCERN, and JAMA) or based upon the guidelines and recommendations of professional associations.
"Results from the aggregation of scoring or categorization data indicate that health-related content on YouTube is of average to below-average quality. The compiled results from bias-based classification show that only 32% of the videos appear neutral toward the health content. Furthermore, the majority of the studies confirmed either negative or no correlation between the quality and popularity of the assessed videos. ...
"YouTube is not a reliable source of medical and health-related information. YouTube’s popularity-driven metrics such as the number of views and likes should not be considered quality indicators. YouTube should improve its ranking and recommender system to promote higher-quality content. One way is to consider expert reviews of medical and health-related videos and to include their assessment data in the ranking algorithm."Photo by Sheila Webber: farmers market May 2022 - those were early raspberries and it was still asparagus season.

Recent webinars: Learning analytics; Evidence synthesis

Two recent recordings of Association of College and Research Library (ACRL) webinars:
- Recording of Libraries and Learning Analytics: Facts, False Choices, and Future Forays (November 15, 2021) Speakers: Megan Oakleaf, Ken Varnum, Becky Croxton. 1 hour. https://youtu.be/X-6-YHaX_t4
- Recording of the ACRL PPIRS (Politics, Policy and International Relations Section) webinar: Evidence Synthesis and politics, policy & international relations [including the librarian's role in evidence synthesis] (December 8 2021). Speakers: Emily Keller, Andrew Dudash, Annelise Sklar, & Sarah Young. 1 hour. https://youtu.be/4u5EQe7jOg8 They mention the Evidence Synthesis Methods Interest Group https://www.ala.org/acrl/acr-igsrrm

Photo by Sheila Webber: All that's left of yesterday's snowman, November 2021

Printed educational materials: effects on professional practice and healthcare outcomes

Starting the year with evidence! There is a Cochrane Collaboration systematic review: Printed educational materials: effects on professional practice and healthcare outcomes. The methods are, of course, given in detail and the findings of the review explained clearly. They reviewed 84 research studies. To quote from the plain English summary 

"The aim of this review was to find out whether printed educational material distributed to healthcare professionals can improve their practice and in turn improve patient health. 

"Key messages: The results of this review indicate that printed educational materials probably improve the practice of healthcare professionals and probably make little or no difference to patient health. The results also suggest that computerised versions may make little or no difference to healthcare professionals' practice compared to printed versions of the same printed educational material. Further research with rigorous methodology is likely to have an important impact on our confidence in these estimates of effect, and may change the estimate." The review is open access at https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004398.pub4  

Photo by Sheila Webber: doorway, December 2020

New articles: Older people; #AFMIL ; Informed Learning; Teachers; Professional infolit; health sciences; pedagogy - and more!

There is a new issue of the open access Journal of Information Literacy (volume 13, number 2). It includes an article co-authored by me which I will be blogging more about, separately and is a bumper issue with articles addressing research and practice. It contains:
- Connecting with the underland by Dorothy Williams (this is the guest editorial introducing the issue, here underland means "hidden layers and deep networks, created by nature and by humankind, beneath our feet in cities and countryside")
- Older Australians’ information literacy experiences using mobile devices by Gema Linares Soler
- Exploring value as a dimension of professional information literacy by Sara Sharun
- Teachers and information literacy by Christine Shannon, Jacqueline Reilly, Jessica Bates,
- First-generation students’ information literacy in everyday contexts by Darren Ilett
- Should we flip the script? by Tatiana Pashkova-Balkenhol, Mark Lenker, Emily Cox, Elizabeth Kocevar-Weidinger
- Social living labs for informed learning by Hilary Hughes, Marcus Foth, Professor, Kerry Mallan, Professor
- Re-visioning library support for undergraduate educational programmes in an academic health sciences library by Denise Smith
- How individual consultations with a librarian can support systematic reviews in the social sciences by Michelle Dalton
- Connecting theory to practice by Kieren Laura-Marie Bailey, Michele Jacobsen
- Personalised video instruction by Emily B Kean, Cayla Robinson
- Developing online instruction according to best practices by Ashley Lierman, Ariana Santiago
- Engaging academic staff with reading lists by Allie Taylor
- Contingent teaching through low-tech audience response systems by M. Sara Lowe, Katharine V. Macy, Sean M. Stone
- WikiLiteracy by Caroline Ball
- Be Media Smart by Philip Russell
and last but obviously not least ;-))
- The Age-Friendly Media and Information Literate (#AFMIL) City by Sheila Webber, Bill Johnston
There are also book reviews
Go to https://ojs.lboro.ac.uk/JIL/issue/view/210
Photo by Sheila Webber: rich and healthy variety of vegetables at the Blackheath Farmers Market, December 2019

New articles: librarians' teaching; librarians and systematic reviews

New articles from the November issue of open access College and Research Libraries:
Galoozis, E. (2019). Affective Aspects of Instruction Librarians’ Decisions to Adopt New Teaching Practices: Laying the Groundwork for Incremental Change. College & Research Libraries, 80(7), 1036-1050. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.80.7.1036
"This article addresses the question: How do emotions and emotional labor relate to instruction librarians’ motivations to adopt new teaching practices? Twelve information literacy instruction librarians were interviewed about their motivations to adopt new teaching practices. An initial round of coding was completed using grounded theory, to surface themes of motivations to adopt new teaching practices. In a second round, the themes were retained while further coding was used to identify language reflective of emotion and affective labor, along with five conditions for human motivation identified by Charles J. Walker and Cynthia Symons: competence, autonomy, worthwhile goal-setting, feedback, and affirmation. Using the results of the analysis, suggestions are made for library managers and administrators to lay the groundwork for developing supportive and collegial environments that encourage incremental change and emotional self-reflection."

Kogut, A., Foster, M., Ramirez, D., & Xiao, D. (2019). Critical Appraisal of Mathematics Education Systematic Review Search Methods: Implications for Social Sciences Librarians. College & Research Libraries, 80(7), 973-995. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.80.7.973
"Social sciences librarians have an interest in supporting systematic reviews, but the available guidance is focused on health sciences settings. This study contributes guidance specifically for social sciences librarians using the Campbell Collaboration’s standards to evaluate the search methods reported in systematic reviews on K–12 mathematics education. After searching ERIC (EBSCO), Education Source (EBSCO), Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), and Compendex (Engineering Village) in April 2018, we included 40 systematic reviews. The reviews were evaluated on the transparency of the reporting and the comprehensiveness of the search as required by the standards. The findings revealed deficiencies in search processes and reporting of search methods. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for librarians collaborating with social sciences researchers."