Presentations from #ub13 available

Powerpoints from the Umbrella conference #ub13 held on 2-3 July have been put online. These include a number directly relevant to information literacy including the following (there are a couple more I will blog separately):
- Information to best support society strand included: Welsh Information Literacy Project (by Patricia Hebron and colleagues)
- The benefits and possible drawbacks of automating the discovery and sharing of online information resources across multiple social networks (by Gary Green, Surrey County Council Public Library Service)
- A critical approach to information literacy (by Lauren Smith, The University of Strathclyde)
- Information prescriptions: personalised information through libraries and information services (by Ruth Carlyle, Macmillan Cancer Support)
- Emergence of social learning and its impact on education (Hannah Gore, The Open University)
- Using Twitter to create an interactive information literacy lecture (Suzanne Tatham, University of Sussex)
- Are librarians delivering good practice in information literacy for postgraduates in UK Higher Education? (Charlie Inskip, Research Information Network / SCONUL)
- Systematic searching - you CAN control the internet (Emily Houghton, National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER)
http://www.cilip.org.uk/umbrella2013/pages/presentations.aspx
Photo by Sheila Webber: Bluebells, May 2013

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? success for a clinical librarian #ub13

The final session at the CILIP Umbrella conference #ub13 in Manchester last Tuesday was Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a librarian! from Victoria Treadway, Clinical Librarian, Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust & Dr Girendra Sadera, Consultant, Critical Care and Anaesthesia, Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. This was a very popular session, with lots of people tweeting about it.
Treadway is a clinical libararian who, with the championing and support of Sadera, has become part of the critical care team. Being incorporated into the ward round means she can pick up on information needed by the health team on the ward. At first she had to return to the library to search for information, but now she is able to search on an ipad whilst they are doing the rounds. The advantage of being at the patient's bedside with the team is that she can understand the context and contribute to the discussion in a more meaningful way. Having an ipad also means she can pass round the things she finds at once.
They described the way this initiative had developed. Victoria found it daunting at first: apart from anything else there are gruesome procedures and distressing injuries etc. on a critical care ward, and about 40% patients will die.
There was a10 month period as a pilot phase, during that time Victoria did 29 supported ward rounds, and also provided additional services. When asked what impact the information had, the team said that it did improve knowledge and care, and evidence provided by Teadway confirmed or added to their current knowledge. The speakers gave three examples of times when the information had made a difference:
- finding evidence that administering paracetemol made a condition worse;
- finding the latest guidelines for anorexic patients in critical care to prevent refeeding syndrome so a managmeent plan could be formed;
- comiling an evidence summary on use of decompression stickings to respond to a complaint from relatives of a patient who had died.
Treadway mentioned getting confidence and integrating with the clinical team:
- she started each session by explaining to the team why she was there to support them
- it was invaluable to have a champion for the project i.e. her co speaker
- she started to have requests for help outside ward rounds and responded to these questions promptly; she "went the extra mile"
- at the end of each ward round, she stayed for the tea and toast afte the ward round; this social aspect was important
Sadera said that to begin with some of his colleagues were sceptical. Also it took a while to convince IT to lend them an ipad ;-) He stressed that becoming part of the team was a key factor. I also liked something he said later on about convincing senior managers "You keep banging at the doors and at some point they just give in".
The speakers talked about moving the initiative to the wider organisation. A 10 minute video doing a mock ward round, including interviews with the clinical team, was a good marketing tool. The video is at http://www.whnt.nhs.uk/staff/media/itu/wuth_clwr.html
The speakers had talked about the initiative at a critical care conference in Delhi in October last year, giving "an opportunity to communicate clearly". Then Treadway took Sadera to the Canadian Health Libraries conference. Again they got some useful lessons on how to package and describe what they were doing, and they wanted to use this to promote more within the organisation. Finally, Sadera made a nice statement when he said that Treadway was "the secret weapon of our [health services] Trust".
There is a careers profile of Treadway here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2013/feb/15/five-minutes-with-clinical-librarian
There is more information on the initiative here: http://www.whnt.nhs.uk/hrod/development/library_services/services/clinical_librarian_service.html

More snippets from #ub13

My catching up with conference blogging has been delayed by trying to catch with all the other things, plus I'm suffering from dreadful hay-fever at the moment. Doing another quick search for Umbrella-related items, I found:
- Simon Barron's presentation Rise of the cyborgs: the growth of librarian-IT hybrids at http://www.slideshare.net/simonxix/rise-of-the-cyborgs-the-growth-of-librarianit-hybrids "In this presentation for CILIP's Umbrella 2013 conference, Simon Barron explored the impact of technology on librarianship and the increased amalgamation of library and IT roles. By examining the skills and technologies of librarian-IT hybrids, we see the future of librarianship and information management."
- 3 posts about conference sessions on the MMIT blog, from Catherine Dhanjal: http://mmitblog.wordpress.com//?s=umbrella

Catching up with #ub13

I did a quick trawl for other people's posts on the CILIP Umbrella conference #ub13 in Manchester. I only attended the first day, 2nd July (and I do have a couple more catch-up posts I will do from that, hopefully later today). The quick trawl found:
- Elisabeth Goodman with some useful notes on the sessions she attended on both days http://elisabethgoodman.wordpress.com/tag/ub13/
- A Storify from Victoria Treadway who gave a very interesting presentation at the end of day one (I'll be blogging about it): http://storify.com/Victoriatread/umbrella2013
- Post from Brian Kelly (pictured) http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/reflecting-on-yesterday-understanding-today-planning-for-tomorrow/
- Prezi of the #uklibchat presentation that I liveblogged on Tuesday http://prezi.com/4n5v3kfnob2q/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
- Quote from a 13 year old Phil Bradley https://twitter.com/_aaronhussey/status/352455878487715840/photo/1
and of course there was a lot of discussion and interaction on Twitter - the hashtag is #ub13 https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%23ub13&src=typd

Where does the internet end and the library begin? #ub13

The first afternoon session at CILIP Umbrella conference #ub13 in Manchester, UK is called Where does the internet end and the library begin? There is a panel led by Chris Dymond, an Independent Digital Producer: panel members are Ben Lewis (filmmaker, author and art critic); Rebecca Bartlett, Innovation Manager, Library of Birmingham; Shay Moradi, Creative Director, Running in the Halls (RITH).
It started with a presentation from Shay Moradi (right), who explained that RITH makes games and apps, working with a variety of organisastions e.g. universities or the auction house Christies. He also said that "we love libraries" and he talked about how this started when he was studying at Huddersfield University, making little apps and then after graduating using library data. Shay went on to say something about gamification - using a gaming approach in "non game" contexts. He was interested in "subtle gamification" like the British Gas app that shows a smiley face when you are using energy efficiently. However library interfaces tend to be pretty ugly, and they found that librarians were very welcoming to the idea of introducing more playfulness and user interaction.
So they have developed Lemon Tree for academic libraries (implemented at the University of Huddersfield), where you hook up your library card to the system and get points for things like borrowing books, or coming in at certain times of day. You get little badges for these different types of activity and you can see what your friends have been doing too. They've found that people like personal analytics too and have visual metaphors e.g. a tree that grows over time. There is a link to Facebook and they have also tried physical badges etc. but those are not so popular. As well as working with other universities they have also developed a public library version, Orangetree.

Ben Lewis started by talking about his attachment to libraries as places to find knowledge. He played a clip from his film Google and the world brain, which highlighted the issue of what Google is able to do with the digital version of books from various important libraries that it has digitised. As noted in the earlier talk from Roly Keating, libraries may welcome the opportunity to get collections digitised, when the libraries can't afford to do the digitisation themselves. There is the issue of intellectual property and of what could be done with the immense knowledge base that Google is amassing. Ben also talked about his concerns about the lack of criticality about the internet, and concerns about intellectual property. He noted how Google and major publishers were not willing to talk to him about the film. Ben finished by talking through the issues to do with out of copyright, in copright and out of print books. Ben risked pelting with conference handbooks, by suggesting that libraries are shy out of the way places, but countered by saying that he now realised they could be forces in society ;-)
Finally Rebecca Bartlett talked about the new Library of Birmingham: 1,000 book crates a day are currently being moved to the new library. She talked about rethinking the library, and thinking about the relationship between the physical, the digital and the staff with their expertise.In particular she picked out three new systems/interfaces, to do with gaming ("Information overlord" - curently prototyping a game in which you run your own library), search (concerning metadata generation, including crowdsourcing) and mobile (showcasing the collections).
The session is finishing with a discussion session, but this post is already long, so I'll finish here and do another post if I blog the discussion

Reflecting on Yesterday, Understanding Today, Planning for Tomorrow #ub13

A talk I'll miss because it clashes with my own talk at CILIP Umbrella conference #ub13 in Manchester, UK, is Brian Kelly's Reflecting on Yesterday, Understanding Today, Planning for Tomorrow Making Sense of the Future. Efficiently, he already put it on slideshare, so here it is.

Reflecting on Yesterday, Understanding Today, Planning for Tomorrow from Brian Kelly

#uklibchat #ub13

Last in the session I'm attending this morning at the CILIP Umbrella conference #ub13 in Manchester, UK, today was a talk on#uklibchat: instant ideas and collaboration + access to knowledge from Ka-Ming Pang @agentk23, Online Support Librarian, St George’s University of London. The website is at http://uklibchat.wordpress.com/. Ka-Ming talked about what it was and how they ran it. #uklibchat runs regular discussions on library and information topics using tweets.
I am liveblogging and this was the third of three 15-minute talks, which I was working hard to keep up with, so at this stage I missed some of Ka-Ming's points, but there is lots of information on the website ;-)
She was urging people to join in - as it helped to get connected, share views and find out about things. Key to running #uklibchat was team work, exploiting a range of technology, being willing to ask people to do things, being adaptable and always looking for ways to improve things. They worked hard to promote #uklibchat, and when they added feature articles and implemented a daily tweets rota, then hits on the website went up.
Points from discussion afterwards included that: employers should see that it WAS benefiting work life, but whilst some employers were very welcoming of work-time twitter use, others were not (also some employers might have very specific policies about use of social media: and Keri added that they had examples of people losing their jobs because of use of social media). #uklibchat runs in the early evening (for UK people) so people could engage in their own time.This led to the issue of how people can manage their personal and professional use of social media, and Jo Alcock talked about how she has managed to keep very up to date professionally using social media. She saw social media complementing the other tools people use for continuing professional development. Some people in the audience talked about how they had personal and professional identities in social media, which they kept separate.

Managing change and changing mindsets #ub13

Next up at the CILIP Umbrella conference #ub13 in Manchester, UK is Managing change and changing mindsets from Keri Gray, Business Development Consultant, Sue Hill Recruitment. Sue Hill Recruitment is an agency which is specialist to the information and library sector and has been around for a good while. Therefore Keri (an experienced professional who used to run her own agency) was able to draw on a good range of observations and experience. She started by noting that librarians had a valuable range of skills, that they could be more assertive about!
Changes that commonly emerge across the sector now are to do with: budgetary cuts, increased use of volunteering and recruitment of non-professionals, and the transformation of the media market and the emergence of e-books. She felt that barriers to change included: reluctance to change, resources (being squeezed), accountability (having to justify your existence) and self-promotion (or lack of it!).
It is easier to change your own mindset than take the organisation with you. When Keri asked the audience whether any of us had a "fixed" mindset, no-one put their hand up, but several people raised their hands when she asked if anyone had to manage teams that included people with fixed mindset.
Her "Tips for success" slide included having vision, identifying or setting up champion groups and communities of practice to support them through change, partner and engage with people who had similar roles, keeping a positive minset and making your user central to the process.

#CPD23 and CILIP PKSB #ub13

Next up for me at the CILIP Umbrella conference #ub13 in Manchester, UK, today was CPD23 and CILIP PKSB from Niamh Tumelty, Assistant Librarian, English Faculty Library, Cambridge and Jo Alcock,Evidence Based Researcher, Birmingham City University.
Niamh gave an introduction to CPD23, which I've blogged about before as I participated in the latest round. The "23 Things" concept is to enable professional development by identifying 23 things (e.g. blogging, using Youtube) that people want to learn about using, and to blog about one of these each week, setting tasks for people following the 23 things to do (e.g. create your own blog and blog about your progress in the 23 Things). Early versions were within one institution, but CPD23 opened this out, including some elements like "participating in professional associations" that were specific to Continuing Professional Development. It was also open to anyone who wanted to join in.
Jo then introduced the CILIP Professional Knowledge andSkill Base (PSKB) - CILIP is the UK professional association for librarians. The PSKB lists a lot of knowledge and skills that may be important in different library and information jobs. It is used for formal course accreditation and for people e.g. who are working towards cecoming chartered members of CILIP.
Niamh and Jo had mapped the activities in CPD23 onto the PSKB and found that CPD23 covered rather a lot of skill and knowledge areas. For example 70% of "Organising Knowledge and Information" skills/knowledge including "file planning" (through e.g. using Dropbox) and elements of "indexing" (through covering things like tagging). Elements like reflective practice and strategic thinking were covered, since a key aspect of CPD is reflecting on progress, how CPD23 is relevant to you and your practice, how you plan to use new skills in teh future etc.
This is the presentation:

CPD23 and CILIP PKSB from Jo Alcock

Umbrella keynote: 40 years of the British Library #ub13

The opening keynote at the CILIP Umbrella conference #ub13 in Manchester, UK, today, was from Roly Keating, Chief Executive of the British Library. His talk was entitled: Born digital? The British Library at 40. He started by putting up some of the statistics about the Library's holdings. This was a bit nostalgic for me, as I worked for the British Library for 13 years, starting in 1980. Keating highlighted that Apple and Microsoft were founded just a couple of years after the Library was founded (its foundation brought together existing organisations like the British Museum Library, the National Reference Library for Science and Invention). He mentioned that there were differences in culture between the organisations (which I can testify to), but he felt that digital developments and the move to the new British Library at St Pancras has brought people together.
Keating talked about things like the business innovation service (which is now partnering with city libraries), its exhibitions, events and education programmes. Along with its development it has had to change its organisational structure: now into - audiences, collections, finance and operations, with a Chief Digital Officer and Chief Executive at its centre. He noted that since only 1% of the Library's vast collection (which includes millions of books, patents, stamps, recordings etc.) was digitised. This is why, for example, they have partnered with organisations like Google, as digitisation is not something that the Library can afford on its own.
In particular Keating drew attention to the digitisation project for newspapers (which are particularly fragile and important social records), with Brightsolid: for the first 10 years the digitised papers are part of a subscription service, but after that they become open access. There is also going to be a newly built research room for news and media. Thisd connects with projects to capture and archive more video and audio news sources e.g. from the BBC.

Other projects he mentioned were geo-referencing (crowd-sourced) and having donations of archives of writers - but with the added archival challenge of working with authors' emails as well as digital and paper documents. Keating announced a partnership with Arts Council England and Local Government: a competition with 10 awards of up to £45,000 "to support local economic growth with the business and intellectual property national network."
Digital copyright deposit has finally come into law in the UK (in April this year) which means that there is even more of a challenge, but it does give the Library the right to store "the UK web domain". There is likely to be an annual trawl with more frequent collection of some specific items. It's called the UK Web Archive, and involves the cooperation of the other British copyright libraries (e.g. the National Library of Scotland)
Photos by me: Keating presenting, and a photo I took of the Library's courtyard at St Pancras, from inside the conference suite.

Helping citizens develop their own information literacy curriculum for lifelong learning #ub13

Tomorrow (2nd July) Bill Johnston and I are presenting at the CILIP Umbrella conference #ub13 in Manchester, UK, on Helping citizens develop their own information literacy curriculum for lifelong learning. The abstract reads "Sheila and Bill will outline a framework to enable citizens to self-audit their changing information literacy needs through life, so they can identify strategies for meeting those
needs. In particular they will highlight lifestage transitions. They will indicate implications for people who support these citizens, including possibilities in using tools such as MOOCs."
I am aiming to be doing some blogging from the conference as well (just on Tuesday, I'm just going for the one day: I've still got blogging catching-up to do, including from my own presentations at the i3 and ELEL conferences!).

Helping citizens develop their own information literacy curriculum for lifelong learning from Sheila Webber