Go Digital Newcastle

The CILIP Information Literacy Group (UK) is giving £6,000 to fund a scheme "bringing together public and commercial organisations, local charities and community groups to create a digital support network for residents and businesses in Newcastle upon Tyne... The Go Digital Newcastle: Connecting Our City project will work with government, local charities and community groups to allow digitally isolated residents to access online services and gain digital literacy skills... Go Digital Newcastle: Connecting Our City is the residents’ support element of Newcastle City Council’s wider Go Digital Newcastle initiative, and provides local opportunities for those who feel digitally excluded to develop, or improve, their digital literacy; enhance their employment prospects; demystify the online world; and understand digital citizenship. This project will support people to discover that the internet can be for them, and show them that a few basic digital skills such as sending an email or accessing a bus timetable can go a long way." Announcement on the IL website: http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/2014/10/first-information-literacy-group-research-bursary-awarded/#more-4027 Go Digital Newcastle website: http://godigitalnewcastle.co.uk/
Photo by Sheila Webber: In Lady Dinah's cat cafe, September 2014

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

cfp #WILU2015

There is a call for papers for the WILU (Canadian Information Literacy) conference. It will be held June 15-17 2015 in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The conference theme is Sea Change: Transforming Learning. "The phrase “sea change” is rich with meaning: the OED defines it as an “alteration or metamorphosis [or] a radical change”. The ideas of change, growth, and transformation are central to WILU, where librarians come together to learn and grow as educators, and where we are inspired through our teaching to help transform others. Our theme also points to important changes currently taking place in our profession with the emergence of the new ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education - a framework built on the idea of transformative learning. For WILU 2015, we invite proposals that are inspired in various ways by the ideas of growth, change, and transformation; that bring us together to explore changes that we have either experienced or inspired, and to examine the transformations that are taking place around us." There are various presentation options (talks, posters, workshops etc.) Deadline for proposals is Monday, December 1, 2014. http://wilu2015.wordpress.com/proposals/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Autumn mixture, Sheffield, October 2014

New articles; Bibliography of 2013; EFL; Faculty roles

The latest issue of Reference Services Review (priced journal) includes their annual annotated information literacy bibliography (the first item referenced below). Although with some bias to North America, it is still a very valuable resource every year: the 2013 version includes 501 items, 313 of those covering the academic sector (which always has the largest number of articles). At the moment it is the preprint version which is available on the website, so the articles listed below do not have page numbers.
- Detmering R. et al. (2014). Library Instruction and Information Literacy 2013. Reference Services Review, 42 (4).
- Jumonville, A. (2014) The Role of Faculty Autonomy in a Course-Integrated Information Literacy Program. Reference Services Review, 42 (4).
- Johnston, N., Partridge, H. and Hughes, H. (2014). Understanding the Information Literacy Experiences of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) Students. Reference Services Review, 42 (4).
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/rsr/42/4
Photo by Sheila Webber: Farewell tall ships, Greenwich, September 2014.

German language tutorial for schools

Librarians in the network Informationskompetenz Berlin/Brandenburg (NIK-BB) have produced an online tutorial (in German) for schoolchildren and those commencing their studies. The tutorial has short sections on identifying your information, finding material etc. and applying the information to do your homework and is here: http://info.ub.hu-berlin.de/tutorials/informationskompetenz/index.html?accesspoint=1

Technology enhanced learning and Open Learning

There are some short videos with "highlights" from the European conference on Technology Enhanced Learning that took place in Graz, 16-19 September 2014. (The actual proceedings are in a priced publication from Springer Verlag).
The interviews are at http://openeducationeuropa.eu/en/node/161897 which is part of the Open Education Europa website (worth exploring: lots of project and course listings and resources).
I picked up on this because of the interview with Rebecca Ferguson and Mike Sharples, who are talking about pedagogy in MOOCs (their powerpoint is here: http://www.slideshare.net/sharplem/innovative-pedagogy-at-scale-ectel): there is also a video summary of the whole MOOCs session and another video is on wearable learning. Following a link, I also found a site on Social Mobile Learning http://www.somolearn.org/home which you might find interesting if you are designing learning using mobile/social media.

cfp 7th International Conference on Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries

There is a call for papers for the 7th International Conference on Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries which takes place 25-27 May 2015 at IUT Université Paris Descartes, France. The deadline for submissions is 30 of March 2015. "we will emphasise models and initiatives that run under the budget restrictions, such as the innovation, the crisis management, the long-term access, the synergies and partnership, and the open access movement". More information at http://www.isast.org/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Tall ship on the Thames, September 2014

ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Instruction Section social media

As a result of a survey, the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Instruction Section has added to its social media presence, so that you can like/follow/engage on the following platforms:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/instructionacrl
Twitter https://twitter.com/acrl_is @acrl_is
Google+ https://plus.google.com/u/0/111377896798204551708/posts ACRL Instruction
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/ User name: ACRL Instruction Section
Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/acrlinstruction/
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/ User name: ACRL Instruction Section
Photo by Sheila Webber: secret garden, Charlton House, September 2014

LILAC call for papers

There is a call for papers for the LILAC (Information Literacy) conference, that will be held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, 8-10 April 2015. Proposals must be submitted by 5pm UK time on 12 November 2014. This year's conference themes are: IL and employability; Delivering IL through new technologies; IL for the under-18s; Research based IL; Creative approaches to IL; Outreach and collaboration. Proposals can be for short papers; long papers; workshop sessions; symposia; Teachmeet presentations or posters. Go to http://www.lilacconference.com/WP/call-for-papers/ for more information and to submit an abtract online.
Photo by Sheila Webber: lilac

Information/ Digital Literacy and the Researcher

Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum (WHELF) and the Great Western 4 libraries have organised a one-day event on 28 November 2014 at Cardiff University, Wales; Information/Digital Literacy and the Researcher. Moira Bent is the keynote speaker and other speakers include Kate Bradbury (Cardiff University) on supporting the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and Sam Oakley & Claire Boucher who will discuss innovative research support initiatives at Swansea University. There was also be a Teachmeet. Book by contacting Caroline Huxtable (Caroline.M.Huxtable@exeter.ac.uk)
Photo by Sheila Webber: honeysuckle, Charlton House, September 2014

US National Information Literacy Awareness Month

October is National Information Literacy Awareness Month in the USA.  The month was first celebrated in 2009, with a proclamation from President Obama. Now states in the USA are urged to make declarations for the month, and so far (for this year) Governors in 25 states and 1 US territory have issued proclamations. There is also an article about the initiative:
Weiner, S., Jackman, L. and Prause, E. (2013) Strategizing for public policy: The Information Literacy State Proclamation Project. Public Services Quarterly, 9(4), 284-99. Open access version at  http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_fsdocs/60/

International Day of Older Persons #IDOP2014

Today is International Day of Older Persons (IDOP), with the theme this year of Leaving No One Behind: Promoting a Society for All. The United Nations website is here: http://www.un.org/en/events/olderpersonsday/index.shtml, there is a WHO page about it here: http://www.who.int/ageing/events/idop_rationale/en/. This notes that "In our fast ageing world, older people will increasingly play a critical role - through volunteer work, transmitting experience and knowledge, helping their families with caring responsibilities and increasing their participation in the paid labour force": so that (healthy) older people need to be seen as an asset rather than a problem. Since "60" appears to be when you start being an Older person, I just qualify in this category, and I do get irritated when I see this issue being treated in a rather patronising way, as if all older people needed to catch up. I hadn't realised (before today) that today was IDOP, so I haven't spent much time identifying material dealing with information literacy and older people (perhaps next year!) There tends to be a focus on older people's deficit in using digital technology, and today's post on the CILIP blog focuses on that rather than a holistic view of information literacy in later life stages: Kathy Valdes of Digital Unite talks about How to get older people online.
The picture shows me in the virtual world, Second Life, doing what I believe people are supposed to do in their twilight years i.e. sunning myself on the porch ;-)

PRIMO Site of the Month: My Learning Essentials Online

PRIMO Site of the Month is My Learning Essentials Online by Jade Kelsall, Jody McGurk. Jennie Blake, Sam Aston, Neil Sprunt, Dave Hirst, John Hynes at University of Manchester Library, UK. There is an interview with the authors at http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/directoryofleadership/sections/is/iswebsite/projpubs/primo/site/2014september and the tutorial itself is at http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/academicsupport/mylearningessentials/
Photo by Sheila Webber: yet more michaelmas daisies (photoshopped).

Tutorials on citation etc.

As the new semester starts people have been sharing links to information literacy and citation guides. These include:
- Hong Kong University of Science and Technology videos on citation e.g. citing in different styles http://lbcone.ust.hk/elearning/?tag=citation
- Purdue University's OWL Citation Chart (compares MLA, APA and Chicago styles of citation) https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/949/01/ (and the Online Writing lab has lots of other resources too)
- A new document from ALISS (Association of Librarians and Information Professionals in the Social Sciences), Useful resources for student training and orientation, lists links to a number of resources such as information literacy tutorials

Photo by Sheila Webber: Michaelmas daisy, Charlton House, September 2014

The Debate Over Anti-Plagiarism Software: fair deal for students?

A fairly routine news article about anti-plagiarism software, and whether it should be used to punish or to educate. However, I think the long debate in the comments about whether or not the repeated use of students' work in the Turnitin database is really "fair use" is interesting.
Turner, C. (2014, August 25). Turnitin and the Debate Over Anti-Plagiarism Software. npr. http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/25/340112848/turnitin-and-the-high-tech-plagiarism-debate
Photo by Sheila Webber: Michaelmas daisy, Charlton House, September 2014

Miriam Dudley Instruction Librarian Award

There is a call for nominations for the Miriam Dudley Instruction Librarian Award. There is a US $1000 award, presented at the American Library Association Conference. The deadline for nominations is December 5 2014. "This award recognizes an individual librarian who has made an especially significant contribution to the advancement of instruction in a college or research library environment." It does not (as far as I can see) say that the nominee has to be North American, though it looks like all the recipients so far have been. Further details are given on the website at http://www.ala.org/acrl/awards/achievementawards/miriamdudley.
There is also a Distance Learning Librarian award with the same closure date for nominations (and a slightly higher prize of $1200!) http://www.ala.org/acrl/awards/achievementawards/dlsaward
Photo by Sheila Webber: Charlton House, September 2014

My contribution to a MOOC on Play #FLplay

Quite a lot of my tweets, won't be about information literacy for the next couple of months, as I am one of the educators in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) about Play. It is using the Futurelean platform, and the educators are all from my faculty, the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Sheffield. My colleagues come from a variety of departments with reseach expertise in different areas, such as play spaces, the history of play, disability and play, and so forth. I'm contributing the sixth week of seven, and focusing on play in virtual worlds, specifically Second Life. I also include a video about information behaviour, to introduce an information literacy exercise.
The play theme is not just about children; it is looking at aspects of play lifelong. It is exciting and also a little daunting (over 13,000 people have signed up for it!) It starts next Monday and you can find information here: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/play In the introductory video (on that page) I appear briefly as my Second Life avatar, Sheila Yoshikawa, which is how I present most of my week. As it's a MOOC, it is of course free!
The picture is my #toyselfie - as an introduction to the MOOC we are encouraged to tweet a picture of ourselves with a favourite childhood toy. THis is me with Lamby.

Seminars on e-learning from JISC Netskills

JISC Netskills offers priced seminars and workshops in various parts of the UK e.g. in London on 25 November: e-Learning Essentials: BTEC Certificate; in Newcastle on 4 November Excellence in online training and teaching. They also do some online sessions e.g. on 13 November: Introduction to instructional design for e-learning (delivered online). Details at http://www.netskills.ac.uk/content/products/workshops/public/index.html
Photo by Sheila Webber: cosmos and dahlias, Blackheath farmer's market, September 2014

Webinar: Podcasts: What Are They And Can Librarians Play?

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services is running a webinar: Podcasts: What Are They And Can Librarians Play? on October 15, 2014 at 11am US Pacific time, which is 2pm Eastern US time and 7pm UK time. It will last about an hour. "The main themes of this webinar are that podcasts have unique and useful scholarly and leisurely material that is easy to access and that librarians can be on the front lines of organizing and marketing them. Librarians will take away marketing and organizing ideas they can implement immediately, as well as ideas about marketing and organizing this relatively unknown medium in the future." The presenter is Sheryl Ramer Gesoff (director of the Health Sciences Library at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Elmhurst, New York. This is a priced webinar: ALCTS Members and individuals from outside the USA pay US$43, nonmembers $59. There are also group rates. The registration page is at http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=olweb&Template=/Conference/ConferenceList.cfm&ConferenceTypeCode=X; this lists all the American Library Association webinars.
Photo by Sheila Webber: sunset behind the Houses of Parliament, London, September 2014

Health Literacy Month: October 2014

October is Health Literacy Month. There is a website from the apparent founder http://www.healthliteracymonth.org/. The US National Library of Medicine links to some relevant resources http://nnlm.gov/bhic/2014/09/17/october-is-health-literacy-month-3/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Houses of Parliament, from St Thomas' Hospital gardens, September 2014

Information Literacy; programme evaluation; faculty expectations; engineering students; statistics

The proceedings of the 2014 IATUL conference, held in June 2014, include an information literacy session. These are full text papers, an interesting set:
Determining Return on Investment: The Importance and Development of Statistics Collection for Information Literacy Training at CPUT by Janine Lockhart and Deborah Becker, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Does IL Education Have an Impact on Undergraduate Engineering Students' Research Skills by Marja Talikka, Harri Eskelinen and Hanna Varri, Lappeenranta University of Technology
Great Expectations: Results from a Faculty Survey of Students' Information Literacy Proficiency by Brian Jackson, Margy MacMillan, and Michelle Sinotte, Mount Royal University
Long Term Evaluation of Information Literacy Programme by Tina Hohmann, Technische Universität München
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/iatul/2014/infolit/
Photo by Sheila Webber: creeper, Oxford, September 2014

Rethinking the Digital Experience in Higher Education

A history professor and a librarian co-author a new article which calls for less concentration on big data solutions, and more attention to creative and open engagement with data. There is a section on the History Harvest project, in which students curate and digitize artifacts for open access.
Thomas, W.G. and Lorang, E. (2014, 15 September) The Other End of the Scale: Rethinking the Digital Experience in Higher Education. EDUCAUSE review online. http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/other-end-scale-rethinking-digital-experience-higher-education
Photo by Sheila Webber: Bicycle cart you can rent, in the park in Lyon, France, August 2014.

2015 Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) Awards call for nominations

The 2015 Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) is now taking nominations for the LIRT Librarian Recognition Award and the LIRT Innovation in Instruction Award, closing January 15, 2015. Award winners will receive a $1,000 (US) cash award, a plaque, and a $500 travel stipend to be used to attend the American Library Association Annual Conference. As far as I can see you do not have to be North American. For full details go to http://www.ala.org/lirt/awards

Younger Americans and Public Libraries report

Younger Americans and Public Libraries is a Pew Research Internet Project report that "pulls together several years of research into the role of libraries in the lives of Americans and their communities with a special focus on Millennials". It looks at things like attitudes to, and use of, public libraries and books, use of internet and social media, participation/ consumption of other media and activities (i.e. it does not just look at libraries in isolation). Three age ranges are identified and described: ages 16-17; 18-24; and 25-29. They also note, however, that age is not the only factor e.g. "people who have extensive economic, social, technological, and cultural resources are also more likely to use and value libraries as part of those networks."
Just to pull out one paragraph from the summary "Respondents of all age groups generally agree that the internet makes it much easier to find information today than in the past, and most Americans feel that it’s easy to separate the good information from bad online. However, Americans under age 30 are actually a little more likely than older adults to say that there is a lot of useful, important information that is not available on the internet. They are also somewhat more likely to agree that people without internet access are at a real disadvantage because of all the information they might be missing." Summary and full report at http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/09/10/younger-americans-and-public-libraries/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Vase of wild oregano, July 2014

Techniques for Student Engagement in Library Instruction

There is a priced online workshop running from 6 to 31 October, Techniques for Student Engagement in Library Instruction. The teacher is John Doherty and it costs $175 (US). "In this four-week, online workshop we will examine a variety of student engagement techniques, focusing on Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning, problem solving, and metacognition. Over the course of four weeks we will examine up to 10 of these techniques and how they can be applied in traditional, blended, and online classes. We will especially uncover approaches that will work for one shot library sessions. In groups we will examine one or two student engagement techniques in detail, and explore how these might work in our own contexts. We will also develop a plan for applying a student engagement technique in our own practice." More info at http://libraryjuiceacademy.com/078-student-engagement.php
Photo by Sheila Webber: Rose, Quad, Regent Park College, September 2014

Would You Watch It? Creating Effective and Engaging Video Tutorials

On September 18 at 3pm US Eastern time (that's 8pm UK time) the Blended Librarians Online Learning Community has a webcast presentation and discussion with Nichole Martin and Ross Martin, Would You Watch It? Creating Effective and Engaging Video Tutorials. "At Seminole State College of Florida, Nichole and Ross have increased tutorial production to meet the growing demands of distance learning courses. To ensure high quality video production, they studied best practices outlined in library literature, as well as findings from other fields invested in video communication: education, business, journalism, and television production. Through research and personal experience, they discovered methods to create effective and engaging video tutorials that are high-definition, mobile-friendly, and accessible for disabled viewers." More info at http://blendedlibrarian.learningtimes.net/would-you-watch-it/#.VBGZr1KLPTS
Photo by Sheila Webber: unidentified flower by the Cherwell, Oxford

cfp LOEX breakout sessions #loex2015

There is a call for breakout session proposals for the 43rd Annual LOEX (US Information Literacy) Conference to be held in Denver, Colorado, April 30-May 2, 2015. Deadline for proposals is November 21, 2014.You can propose a presentation or an interactive workshops (both types are 50 minute sessions). Conference themes are:
- Pedagogy: The Art of the Craft
- Assessment: Taste Test to Perfect the Batch
- Collaboration & Outreach: I'll Buy the Next Round
- Learning from Failure: Tweaking the Recipe
- Cultivating Leadership: Lessons from Fellow Crafters
- Innovative Contexts: Brewing a New Batch
More information at http://www.loexconference.org/breakoutproposals.html
Photo by Sheila Webber: More echinaceas (I think), Lyon, August 2014

Registration open for Augustana Information Literacy workshop

The 14th annual Augustana Information Literacy workshop takes place om December 4 2014, on the Augustana Campus, University of Alberta, Canada. The workshop presenter/faciltator is Mary MacDonald, and the workshop is entitled Building Capacity for Information Literacy Through Wisdom, Courage, and Humor. As usual there are optional consultations and dinner the day before. Mary MacDonald is professor and Head of Instructional Services at the University Libraries, University of Rhode Island in Kingston. More information is at http://www.library.ualberta.ca/augustana/infolit/workshop/
Photo by Sheila Webber: cookie at the Augustana workshop where I co-presented, in 2011

Good MOOC bad MOOC: report 3 #flansoton #futurelearn

At the one-day FutureLearn Academic Network (FLAN) meeting in Southampton and this is my 3rd report. In fact this will be quite short, as there was an interesting presentation on “Quantitative analysis of short online course data to understand learner behaviour?” by Neil Morris (Leeds University), but as it was research in progress he asked us not to tweet which I think also means not blogging. The one thing I can't resist blogging is that for the data set (across 4 MOOCs) that he was analysing quantitatively, the people in the age group 56-65 were the group who "did" most things (in terms of clicking on videos, viewing discussions etc.)
The next presentation was also confidential as Russell Beale talked about Futurelearn course analytics, in a presentation coauthored with David Major; so this was aimed at Futurelearn partners. These are the reports that Futurelearn produce for the people running each MOOC. They aim to give transactional, interactional and conversational data which is "actionable".
I should give a link to the Futurelearn website and the Futurelearn blog https://about.futurelearn.com/blog/
I may blog Naomi's presentation (see previous blog post) tomorrow rather than today.
Photo by Sheila Webber: clover, by the Cherwell, September 2014

Good MOOC bad MOOC: report 2 #flansoton #futurelearn

I’m at the one-day FutureLearn Academic Network (FLAN) meeting in Southampton and this is my 2nd report. By the way, tweets are at https://twitter.com/search?q=%23flansoton&src=typd.
First up after the coffee break was Naomi Colhoun (Sheffield University) “Learning from Learning Analytics: Can data analysis of a FutureLearn MOOC usefully inform design for learning?”. I have supervised her Masters dissertation on this topic, and therefore know a lot about it so I will do a separate blog post on this!
Rebecca Ferguson (OU) then talked about “Evaluating Educational Impact and Learner Support within OU [Open University] MOOCs”. As an aside, she started by showing an interactive map on MOOC retention that had been created by one of their PhD students. http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html. Ferguson identified the range of people and units in the OU who were interested in MOOC evaluation. There were also a variety of reasons why evaluation was needed. It was, for example, for internal and external comparison, to support the journey from informal to formal learning. In terms of "what learning" it included learning about the subject, the online learning tools and about the people. Learning was also undertaken by learners, the course team, the facilitators and the university.
In terms of what is provided by Futurelearn on its MOOC dashboard, there are basic statistics on joiners, leavers, who has posted a comment etc. MOOC providers can also set up surveys in individual MOOCs (e.g. asking learners whether they think they have learnt anything). However, one issue is that end of course surveys are inevitably filled in by course completers, who are the minority. You can also looked at how many people have participated in an activity. The OU (which is entirely a distance learning university) has a standard learning design tool which they also use for MOOCs.
One thing that the speaker picked out as an example was that they found that in a couple of weeks people were completing step three more than steps one and two, but the learner support was in steps one and two. They can now investigate why this is (e.g. do steps one and two have boring names!) The speaker talked about text mining (e.g. for phrases like "I learnt") as evidence of learning. She also talked through an example of a high-frequency word that initially did not seem relevant to the MOOC, but had actually been a focus for community building and learning.
The OU MOOCs have facilitators. Turning to support structure, the speaker identified an explicit support structure, to help with motivating, socialising, information exchange, knowledge construction and learning development. The MOOC team identified potential support structure risks e.g. thinking that the university's learner support is poor. These can be used to evaluate support. Examples of things they looked at were the facilitator introductions, facilitator activity (e.g. posts, word count, likes of their comments); this included whether facilitators were modelling good behaviour (e.g. were they following people, were they liking things and encouraging learners to like things). The evaluating team could search for comments mentioning the facilitators and for the kind of thing that the facilitators were saying. One of the things that emerged was that facilitators needed more training in features specifically of the Futurelearn platform. This also carries a lesson as regards learners: experienced online learners may come with certain expectations of the platform and need educating specifically in Futurelearn's features.
Rebecca Ferguson's blog is at http://r3beccaf.wordpress.com/
I should mention that there is a Facebook page for FLAN (where the presentations will be put), but I'm afraid it is a closed group for FLAN members.
Photo by Sheila Webber: mallow by the Cherwell, September 2014

Good MOOC bad MOOC: report 1 #flansoton #futurelearn

I’m at the one-day FutureLearn Academic Network (FLAN) meeting in Southampton. The focus of the meeting is evaluating MOOCs (as a reminder, Futurelearn is the UK MOOC consortium and FLAN is its research forum).
Julie Wintrup (Southampton University) talked about two studies funded by the Higher Education Academy (HEA): “A Community of Participants? Experiences of MOOC learners”. The full open-access reports will be released this month by the HEA. (This is a previous report funded by the HEA https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/elt/the_pedagogy_of_the_MOOC_UK_view)
The first study is on Engaged learning in MOOCs: a study using the Engagement survey. I know the HEA is interested in the NESSE (USA’s survey for student engagement in higher education) and I think this engagement survey is based on that. There were higher proportions of learners reporting engaging in reflective and integrative forms of learning. Fewer reported in engaging in interactive forms of learning.
The second study is Liberating learning: experiences of MOOCs. 10 learners and 5 academic staff (involved in Souhampton University MOOCs) were interviewed for this study. The speaker started by saying that “belonging” emerges as an important theme in campus-based higher education, and testing out ideas, articulating understanding and being challenged emerge (from the literature) as central to learning. In this group of interviewees (who were all MOOC completers): discussion fora emerged as a key form of interaction; social media etc. was less understood or valued; however some really appreciated Twitter especially if they could interact with the course team; there was anxiety about looking foolish when you posted something; some people just enjoyed looking at others’ posts; some “limited” their posts to give others a chance. One major issue was the unthreaded nature of the comment forum, which was time consuming to go through and made it difficult to engage with in conversation. Despite the latter problem, people did feel part of a learning community, particularly where there was a personalised element, e.g. interaction with educators. In fact interaction with educators was something that people expected, so that was one of the key messages (i.e. don’t let it just run without their input).
The second presentation was from Andy Wright (Birmingham University) “Good MOOC, Bad MOOC: Judgement day”. He came up with retention, research (learning analytics etc. and enhancing teaching materials), reputation, recruitment (to credit-bearing courses) and revenue (e.g. fees for the actual MOOC) as the 5Rs of success. After the first worry about the high drop out rates from MOOCs, the second wave helped people understand that people joined MOOCs for different reasons, and a high drop out rate did not automatically mean failure. However the speaker identified that the longer you could retain students, the more they were likely to be recruited to other courses, they give you more learner data etc. i.e. it contributes to the other 4 Rs.
In terms of research, the speaker talked about (as well as getting data for learning analytics) that you could get enthusiasm/transfer from academics to other online teaching. Reputation included brand awareness, exposure to (good) quality teaching material, students feeling part of the Birmingham community, and also strategic presence in the Futurelearn community. An obvious challenge here is that you could get bad press for your courses too. With Recruitment: at the moment it is difficult to establish whether people were influenced by MOOC participation when they register for a course. Additionally MOOCs may not be pitched at the same audience as normal courses. The speaker raised the opportunity of working with the schools that you were hoping to recruit from. With revenue, as well as certificates he mentioned sales of books.
The speaker also raised the issue of social policy and impact (for example MOOCs on dementia, on inclusion): in this case the MOOC’s success would be the way in which it contributed to policy outcomes. Under the philanthropic banner you could also look at the MOOCs contribution to broadening understanding, tolerance etc. and contributing to charitable work.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Michaelmas daisy, by the Cherwell, September 2014

ISIC: the Information Behaviour Conference

ISIC: the Information Behaviour Conference took place in Leeds last week. You should be able to find the tweets at https://twitter.com/search?q=%23isic2014&src=typd though so far I haven't been able to track down presentations. Information Research should be publishing the proceedings.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Petra, Lady Dinah's cat cafe yesterday

Academic Literacy Research and Practice

An interesting presentation from Sophie Bury and Ron Sheese (York University, Canada) is on Undergraduate Students' Writing, Research and Learning Skills: Academic Literacy Research and Practice at York University It gives some brief details of focus groups at with academics in different faculties at York University undertaken in summer 2012, on academic literacies. It then talks about their response to their findings, in terms of course design and specifically a web resource SPARK (Student Papers and Academic Research Kit). SPARK is at http://www.yorku.ca/spark and the presentation is at http://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/27822 (there are other talks by the same author in this repository).
Photo by Sheila Webber: Artemis the cat, at Lady Dinah's Cat Cafe today

Evaluating the learning effectiveness of an online Information Literacy Class

New article: Taiwanese study evaluating information literacy education using Kirkpatrick's framework. Article is in a priced journal.
Chang, N. and Chen, L. (2014) Evaluating the learning effectiveness of an online Information Literacy Class based on the Kirkpatrick framework. Libri, 64 (3),211–223. http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/libr.2014.64.issue-3/libri-2014-0016/libri-2014-0016.xml?format=INT

"The purpose of this study was to use the Kirkpatrick four-stage framework to evaluate the learning effectiveness of the online general education information literacy materials “Library and Information Utilization,” initiated by the Ministry of Education (MoE) for higher education in Taiwan ... The study population consisted of 206 students at Tatung University and the course evaluation spanned two academic years. ... The study used a mixed-method approach, including a mainly quantitative online questionnaire, followed by ten semi-structured interviews of students ... In general, the results demonstrated that students were more confident in their future study and daily life after learning the online material. Based on the Kirkpatrick model, the results provide favourable evidence for course effectiveness and its value...."
Photo by Sheila Webber: rose, Regent Park College, Oxford, September 2014

Academic Librarianship 360: Research, Access, and Instruction: October 3

In Buffalo, USA on October 3 2014 there is an event Academic Librarianship 360: Research, Access, and Instruction. Speakers are Vincent Rinaldo (Niagara University)
Mixed Methods Research: Assisting Students in the Purpose and Processes of Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Methods; A. Ben Wagner (University at Buffalo) Open Access: Breaking Out all Over; Cynthia Tysick (University at Buffalo) Library Instruction and Outreach to Alumni: A Wealth of Untapped Opportunities; Kimberly Hoffman (SUNY Geneseo) Library Instruction and K-12 Collaborations: Tapping into Goals for Career & College Readiness.
This is organised by the Western New York/Ontario chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Registration deadline is September 19. For more information go to http://wnyoacrl.org/fall-conference-program
Photo by Sheila Webber: Through the hothouse window: Botanic Gardens, Lyon, August 2014

Journal Club in SL today: teens' information practices in digital communities

Join us in the virtual world Second Life for a one-hour discussion of an open-access article. Marshall Dozier (Edinburgh University, Pancha Enzyme in Second Life) leads a discussion on:
Harlan, M.A., Bruce, C.S. & Lupton, M. (2014). Creating and sharing: teens' information practices in digital communities. Information Research, 19(1) paper 611. http://InformationR.net/ir/19-1/paper611.html

When: Thursday 4 September 2014 at 12.30 SL time, that's 8.30pm UK time, see http://tinyurl.com/ndykxju for times elsewhere

Where: Infolit iSchool, in the virtual world Second Life. You need a SL avatar and the Second Life browser installed on your computer. Go to http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/134/47/22

Everyone is welcome to join the one-hour discussion.

A Sheffield iSchool Centre for Information Literacy Research event.

Digital and Information Literacies and research support

On 28 November 2014 in Cardiff, Wales, Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum (WHELF) and Great Western 4 libraries are organising an event on Digital and Information Literacies and the researcher. They seek volunteers to participate in the TeachMeet part of the day, willing to give 10 minutes presentations on supporting researchers either face-to-face or online. Topics could include: innovative solutions for remote support; 1-2-1 engagement; using social media; managing research data; supporting open access; supporting researchers for the REF (Research Excellence Framework); making bibliometrics accessible to the uninitiated; diagnostic testing for research students. If you would like to present please contact Lori Havard l.d.havard@swansea.ac.uk or Caroline Huxtable Caroline.M.Huxtable@exeter.ac.uk
There will be more information at http://cardiffteachmeet.wordpress.com/
Photo by Sheila Webber: sedum, Lyon, August 2014

Phenomenographic interviews as a learning process

Today I gave a presentation with Dr Eva Hornung and Dr Shahd Salha (former PhD students) at the SIG Phenomenography conference held at Regent Park College, Oxford. I am not blogging this conference thoroughly, as it is not about information literacy, but I will give some further snippets in a future post. This conference is for people who use the phenomenographic research appoach or variation theory: it takes place every two years and is a great conference as it is fairly small, with great discussions, and delegates include the founders of phenomenography through to new researchers.
As this was a phenomenography conference we did not explain what phenomenography was: so, "Phenomenography is the empirical study of the differing ways in which people experience, perceive, apprehend, understand, conceptualise various phenomena in and aspects of the world around us.” Marton (1994) .

Phenomenographic interviews as a learning process from Sheila Webber

Final links for #IFLAlimerick

A quick final post about the IFLA satellite conference on Information Literacy that took place in Limerick, Ireland, 14-15 August 2014.
The website is here: http://www.iflasatellitelimerick.com/
Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/hashtag/iflalimerick

My blog posts are at http://information-literacy.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/IFLALimerick

There are storifys by
Clare McCluskey https://storify.com/librarygirl79/ifla-il-satellite-meeting-2014
Shona Thoma https://storify.com/shinyshona/ifla-satellite-meeting-limerick

Lauren Smith blogged about the session I was in and some others at http://laurensmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/ifla-limerick/

Photo by Sheila Webber: Galway, August 2014

Paris Declaration on Media and Information Literacy released

The Paris Declaration on Media and Information Literacy has been released. I haven't the time today to read it properly and see whether my suggested amendments were taken into account ;-) so I will most likely produce another post looking at the declaration in more depth.
http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/In_Focus/paris_mil_declaration_final.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: moorhen (I erroneously said this was a coot earlier!), Lyon, France, August 2014

Information Literacy Best Practices: Exemplary Programs

The Association of College and Research Libraries has published an Information Literacy Best Practices: Exemplary Programs list. The libraries are listed by Best Practice Category (Mission; Goals and Objectives; Planning; Administrative and Institutional Support; Articulation (program sequence) within the Curriculum; Collaboration; Pedagogy; Staffing; Outreach; Assessment/Evaluation. There is a brief paragraph in each case describing what is considered exemplary. Mostly theexamples are North American, although there is one British example (University of Manchester).
http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/directoryofleadership/sections/is/iswebsite/projpubs/bestpractices-exemplary
Photo by Sheila Webber: echinaceas (I think), Lyon, August 2014

Apologies for hiatus

It's been just over a week since I last posted, which is unusual for this blog, so apologies for that (life intervening!) I will be catching up on Limerick and IFLA, interleaved with other news.

MOOCs not just in the keynote at #wlic2014

Pierre Dillenbourg was today's keynote at the World Library and Information Conference (IFLA) 2014 in Lyon, France. Academic director of the EPFL Center for Digital Education at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), he's talked about Ten surprises in our MOOC experience. Since I've now gone through the process of preparing material for a MOOC (the Play MOOC offered by Futurelearn) and have read a good deal about them I didn't find so many surprises, but it was interesting to hear from someone from outside the English-speaking sphere and he is an entertaining speaker. Just to remind you, MOOC stands for Massive Online Open Course. This will find my previous posts about MOOCs http://information-literacy.blogspot.fr/search?q=moocs
Just to pick out a few things that struck me:
- One of his messages was that MOOCs can enable a smaller university to punch above its weight, reaching a huge audience internationally (e.g. they have many students from the USA, France and the UK).
- Dillenbourg said that "MOOCs save Books" i.e. the MOOC may stimulate book buying particularly if the video is attached to an academic or a course that has produced the book-of-the-course.
- Students may use a MOOC as the "textbook" for the credit-bearing course they are studying at university, and the speaker positioned this as part of a flipped classroom approach.
- Learners may be "watching MOOCs in teams" (the MOOC platforms that his university uses are Cousera and EdX i.e. what are termed xMOOCs, taking a less social/constructivist approach, so "watching", the word he used, may be appropriate)
- amusing soundbite "Good MOOCs are (in general) better than bad MOOCs"
- I was surprised, but not in a good way, by the statement that "MOOCs turned teaching into a high stakes activity" (surely it should be high-stakes anyway - it certainly is high stakes for the learners!), though it may just present the reality that teaching is seen as less important than research even now (in terms of getting promotion etc.)

Also rather surprisingly, considering he'd been invited to a library conference, the speaker evidently hadn't done much googling of "moocs librarians" or "moocs bibliothécaires" as when asked about the role of librarians he did not seem to feel there was one. I did feel compelled to make a comment on that e.g. mentioning the Futurelearn librarians' group.

A quick google turned up other presentations on MOOCs in which this speaker was an author e.g. this one which makes some of the same points.

Last year at IFLA there was this paper:
CALTER, Mariellen (2013) MOOCs and the library: engaging with evolving pedagogy. Paper presented at: IFLA WLIC 2013 — Singapore — "Future Libraries: Infinite Possibilities" in Session 98 - Knowledge Management with Academic and Research Libraries.

There was a whole session on MOOCs this year, but unfortunately none of the papers from that session are in the IFLA library yet (and I couldn't go to it as it clashed with the session in which I was givinga paper). I will link to them when they appear. There is a paper in another session that also focuses on the librarian's role in MOOCs:

Eisenberger-Pabst, D. et al. (2014) The academic library – a hidden stakeholder - in the age of MOOCs. Paper presented at: IFLA WLIC 2014 – Lyon - Libraries, Citizens, Societies: Confluence for Knowledge in Session 210 - Information Technology. In: IFLA WLIC 2014, 16-22 August 2014, Lyon, France. http://library.ifla.org/id/eprint/905
Photo by Sheila Webber: cakes at teh reception last night

Information literacy + Service Learning = Social Change #wlic2014

I've just been in the session organised by the IFLA Social Science Libraries with Women, Information and Libraries Special Interest Group at at the World Library and Information Conference (IFLA) 2014 in Lyon, France, where Tiffini Travis gave a paper (coauthored with Jennifer Gradis) on Information literacy + Service Learning= Social Change. They work at California State University, United States and this presentation was about the information literacy contribution to a service learning course at their university.
Service Learning is a term that doesn't really get used in the UK, but it seems a part of US higher education. Wikipedia says it means "a method of teaching that combines classroom instruction with meaningful community service" (although that article is flagged as having issues, that seems pretty much what service learning means).
Travis started by saying that she connected information literacy with empowerment and it should lead to action. She identified that research and problem solving can be used for social activism. Travis referenced the new proposed ACRL information literacy framework, and saw this teaching intervention as fitting in the "Research as inquiry" frame. She categorised what she was doing as experiential learning, with a cycle of thinking, doing, experiencing and reflecting. In a video, Travis' coauthor described the service learning assignment - the learners have to select an organisation that addresses a socially significant problem, they have to contact it and undertake some service learning, and produce a portfolio including a presentation about the organisation and their own specific contribution. The information resources that the students discover can contribute to learning about the organisation and its impact, and the library's contribution has meant that the students are finding better and more wide ranging materials that help them understand and complete their assignment. Travis gave an example of finding scholarly articles about the problems of homeless pregnant women.
The speakers emphasised the impact, including attitudinal and emotional impact, of this particular course, since students are learning to work with classmates and people in the outside world. The issues they investigate also can have a big impact on the students which the speakers felt "could lead to a positive social change". One of teh messages from the talk's conclusion was that this intervention "allows the reenvisioning of IL to focus on the application of information rather than just the search for information".
The slides will be available at http://www.slideshare.com/T_Travis (added 28 August: this is the specific link: http://www.slideshare.net/T_Travis/social-activism-and-information-literacy-video
Photo by Sheila Webber: the reception last night at La Saltiere, Lyon

Role of information literacy in agricultural productivity #wlic2014

The IFLA Agricultural Libraries Special Interest Group had a session focusing on information literacy at the World Library and Information Conference (IFLA) 2014 in Lyon, France: Role of information literacy in agricultural productivity and food security: An international perspective. I didn't go to this session (as it clashed with the IL Section Lunch), but most of the papers are already in the IFLA library, and they include:
- Embedding Information Literacy into the Agriculture Curriculum in Liberia: A Model Approach for Developing Countries Worldwide from Martin Kesselman (Rutgers University, New Jersey, United States)
- Farmers Information Literacy and Awareness towards Agricultural Produce and Food Security: FADAMA III programs in Osun state Nigeria from Abiola Abosede Sokoya (Yaba College of Technology Library, Sabo, Lagos, Nigeria) and colleagues
- Influence of Information Literacy skills in accessing agricultural information: with special reference to paddy farmers of Ampara district, Sri Lanka from Mohamed Majeed Mashroofa (South Eastern University of Sri Lanka, Oluvil, Sri Lanka) and Wathmanel Senevirathne (Open University of Sri Lanka, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka)
- Attaining Information Literacy: An assessment of Indian Agricultural Universities approach to enhancing Student’s Information and Research skills from Neena Singh (G B Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Uttrakhand, India)
Photo by Sheila Webber: more trees in the park (Parc de la Tête d'Or), Lyon, August 2014

Information-seeking behaviour of LGBTQ health professionals #wlic2014

Another post from the LGBTQ session at the World Library and Information Conference (IFLA) 2014 in Lyon, France. Martin Morris (Schulich Library, McGill University, Canada) and K.R. Roberto (Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States) talked about Information-seeking behaviour of LGBTQ health professionals: New data to inform inclusive practice

They reported on the results of a research project. This was folowing up on a study by Fikar and Keith (2004). There is evidence that medicine "has been almost silent on the issue of access to healthcare for LGBTQ patients". The researchers carried out a questionnaire survey and got 123 responses. They found that a majority (64.5%) did feel that they had specific information needs.  Comments included a need to have information related to (amongst other things) abuse, reproductive options, LGBTQ mental health, transgender issues. There was a call to be educated by LGBTQ peers. Straight librarians were felt to have a lack knowledge about LGBTQ issues. The researchers asked whether the participants in online chat with a librarian, and about 43% found it more appealing than f2f (in this case having the chat with a LGBTQ librarian didn't make the option more appealing). Lessons drawn from this included that: LGBTQ people continue to have specific needs; librarians can expect more complex questions; better trained librarians are needed; making the physical library more LGBTQ friendly e.g. having gender-neutral toilets inthe library; advertising these things on your library website. There was also the issue of "were respondents wrong about straight librarians"; there did seem to be a need for librarians who were out as LGBTQ and have librarians who engage with LGBTQ networks. A short paper is at http://library.ifla.org/id/eprint/1032

Fikar, C. and Keith, L. (2004). Information needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered health care professionals: results of an Internet survey. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 92(1), 56- 65.

Other talks in this LGBTQ session are available in the IFLA library:
JOSÉ AUGUSTO CHAVES GUIMARÃES et al. Gay Marriage and Homoaffective Union: a terminological analysis of the social values of libraries as a source for an ethical subject representation and dissemination in Brazil
B. Mehra and L. Gray “Don’t Say Gay” in the State of Tennessee: Libraries as Virtual Spaces of Resistance and Protectors of Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) People
N. Somorjai Reducing the Suicide Risk of LGBTQ Library Users
J.A. Winkelstein Public Libraries: Creating Safe Spaces for Homeless LGBTQ Youth She also mentioned http://lambda.sis.utk.edu
C. Edeholt and M. Lindgren. The Rainbow Library at Umeå City Library and The Swedish Network for LGBTQ Issues at Libraries (the photo is of a slide showing the Rainbow shelf at Umeå City Library.
E. da S. Alentejo Power and community: organizational and cultural LGBT responses against homophobia and promotion of inclusion values

librarians’ attitudes to the provision of LGBT-related fiction to children and young people #wlic2014

Liveblogging at the World Library and Information Conference (IFLA) 2014 in Lyon, France, I'm attending a session of the IFLA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) Users Special Interest Group. One of my iSchool's PhD students is presenting: Elizabeth Chapman (Information School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom) on “I’ve never really thought about it”: librarians’ attitudes to the provision of LGBT-related fiction to children and young people in English public libraries.
She started by rehearsing reasons on why LGBT fiction should be provided to children and young people. These include helping LGBT young people to form a positive sense of self. Liz is using mixed methods to explore this topic for her PhD and has nearly completed her research. She concentrated on results from her interviews with librarians. From these interviews, librarians' attitudes towards providing LGBT fiction are positive, recognising that it is valuable for both LGBT children and for those who are not LGBT (in helping them understand different people). However there was a rather passive stance, avoiding discrimination, but not necessarily making an active effort to seek out LGBT material for collection or display. There was a lot of lack of awareness: i.e. it was not an issue they had not thought about much. Therefore if no one had asked for the material, the librarians probably had not proactively acquired it. Areas for concern expressed by teh librarians included finding what they thought of as “quality” material (whereas LGBT families might prefer something rather than nothing). Librarians also didn’t necessarily see the need for LGBT picture books, as they felt the issue wasn’t relevant to young children (associated with that was a fear about complaints from conservatively-minded parents). Thus there was the “rhetoric of non-discriminition but it tended to translate into a passive stance”. Liz made some recommendations for librarians. Her full paper is at http://library.ifla.org/1017/

Supporting and working effectively with indigenous students #wlic2014

Liveblogging at the World Library and Information Conference (IFLA) 2014 in Lyon, France, I attended a session of the IFLA IndigenousMatters special interest group. Camille Callison (Indigenous Services Librarian and Liaison Librarian for Anthropology, Native Studies and Social Work, University of Manitoba, Canada; pictured at the lectern) talked about Supporting and working effectively with indigenous students whilst building and strengthening relationships between indigenous communities and the academic library. She felt that libraries and archives play a vital role in helping preserving and honouring indigenous culture and history. At Manitoba they wanted to be a centre of excellence for indigenous education and research. This includes engaging with the community, and ensuring that indigenous cultures and knowledge are integrated into work and study. Here is the link to their Indigenous Connect website: http://umanitoba.ca/indigenous/. Callison identified the history of distrust and cultural imperialism, and a "culture of whiteness" in crricula and library holdings, which all provide barriers to achievement.

One way in which these barriers are addressed is through a home and community (Bald Eagle Lodge). They have also attempted to decolonise the library, although this is a slow process (for example classification systems e.g. that indigenous people are "ghettoised" in "History"; the confusion about cvarious LC subject headings to do with indigenous people).

Callison said that the library aims to address the unique needs of the indigenous students. Strategies include: recognising bias; bringing the library to students by having sessions in the Migizii Agamik (sitting by the lift to catch them on their way to coffee!) and having special sesions in the library; dialogue e.g. in the classroom, working with them on assignments; having a special Facebook group; relationship building with the local indigenous community; holding an Aboriginal Archives Day and a storytelling event.

She visits schools and other recruitment events so the prospective students know they will be supported. Collection development is also important, in the general collections and special collections e.g. graphic novels. Collison also talked about the library's role in terms of preserving and giving access to indigenous knowledge.The third photo here shows a statement about indigenising the academy (which I wasn't quick enough to transcribe)
She mentioned a book in which she has a chapter Aboriginal and visible minority librarians book and the International indigenous librarians Forum to be held in 2015.

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over #ifla_set40

Liveblogging from the 40th anniversary conference of the IFLA Section on Education and Training which is part of the WLIC (IFLA) 2014 in Lyon, France. I was too nervous to liveblog in the 2nd IGNITE session as I was speaking in it. I'll blog a little about it later.
The last keynote is from Lynn Silipigni Connaway, entitled Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly: developing educational programs for an emerging profession. She started by revolving around the tensions in library and information education - in particular the tension between research and practice. She pointed out that the criticism that LIS research is not of practical use to libraries has been around for a while.
In terms of education she felt that it wsn't the tools (including technology tools), but rather the values, ethics and fundamentals that educators should concentrate on teaching (the tools were no good without these). She mentioned things like organisation of information, understanding of theory, people skills and collaboration as being part of the fundamentals. Understanding and researching people's behaviour (including formal service evaluation and usability studies) was important. Working out how to build relationships was also vital: and in fact a focus on relationship building rather than service excellence (citing Brian Mathews). To do this, students also needed to develop their problem solving and decision making skills and master research methods.
Connaway saw great potential in data specialist or data librarian posts, but with emphasis on people skills, not just technical skills.
Connaway cited various studies or statements that showed that employers did not feel enough library graduates were prepared for the library workplace. At the end she felt that the person had a good approach when she said that a library qualification gave them an understanding of why librarians do what they do, based on a grounding in theory.
Connaway does interesting research at OCLC, which I've blogged about previously, but here's a random link to an article from last year:
Connaway, L.S. et al.  (2013) "I always stick with the first thing that comes up on Google. . ." Where People Go for Information, What They Use, and Why. EDUCAUSE Review, December 6.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Spot the bridal party, Lyon August 2014