Friday, May 2, 2014 at 8:49PM Ian Watson has also posted on his blog about the report. You can find it at http://blogs.iriss.org.uk/socialmedia/2014/05/01/shhh-theres-an-elephant-in-the-room/
John Crawford
Friday, May 2, 2014 at 12:26PM What is 10 Things?
10 Things is an online self-directed course developed by the Scottish Government Library. The aim is for you to spend a little time each week developing your social media and information searching skills.
Each week we’ll post details about one or more of the tools from our 10 Things course and encourage you to try them out and reflect on them. Our aim is to present a realistic challenge that you can fit it into your schedule.
10 Things is based on the original 23 Things course which ran at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County in the USA in 2006.
When does it start?
The next course will start on Tuesday 6th May 2014.
How can I join?
You can sign up for the course here. Places are limit to 50, so please do not post this link to networks or mailing lists.
When the course starts you’ll receive an email welcoming you to the course and the first ‘thing’. Then each Monday thereafter you’ll receive email notification of that week’s ‘thing’. The course will last 10 weeks as you’ll receive 1 thing a week. Once joined you can access 10 Things here.
How does it work?
Each ‘thing’ will be published and archived on our 10 Things Yammer group. Only course participants will be able to access the group. Please note that the course content is designed for Scottish Government staff – though we hope you can apply it to your own personal or professional use.
Each ‘thing’ will include some set activities for you to try, and you’ll be asked to submit your learning outcomes or any questions to our 10 Things Yammer group. If you haven’t used Yammer before, don’t worry – we’ll cover that in week 1.
How much time will it take?
We estimate you should allow half an hour a week to go through that week’s ‘thing’. We understand participants will have different working patterns, so you can choose when in the week to spend time on 10 Things. Though we do encourage you to complete each thing by the end of each week.
Course programme
Week 1 Introduction, overview of social media, Yammer
Week 2 RSS and dashboards
Week 3 Blogs
Week 4 Twitter
Week 5 SG & social media, SlideShare, Prezi, Creative Commons
Week 6 Secure collaborative tools – Knowledge Hub, SharePoint, Huddle, Collaborate, Government Communication Network, Lync, OneNote
Week 7 Non-secure collaborative tools – LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Google Drive
Week 8 Searching skills – Go Google!, Google Scholar, eLibrary subject pages, KandE (Knowledge and Evidence), IDOX, Knowledge Network
Week 9 Social bookmarking and social citation
Week 10 Alerts and current awareness tools
Friday, May 2, 2014 at 11:30AM The Final Report of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Inquiry into digital participation was published on 30 April 2014. The Report is available from the RSE website in PDF, eBook and HTML formats. If you would like a printed copy of the report, please contact Susan Lennox at slennox@royalsoced.org.uk. A copy of the presentation given at the launch event is also available on the website.
I attended the launch of the report at Edinburgh University on Wednesday along with Ian McCracken, Bill Johnston and Jenny Foreman from the CofP, Sean McNamara from CILIPS and Amina Shah and Gillian Daly from SLIC.
Professor Michael Fourman who chaired the inquiry gave a fairly short presentation which focused on access and infrastructure issues although he did give libraries some attention but mentioned only the public library sector. He rightly drew attention to the digital divide and exclusion. New analysis of the digital divide in Scotland suggests that extremes of exclusion vary greatly between postcodes, with almost one in five Scottish households (18%) in postcodes where most of their neighbours are likely to be offline. About 800,000 households are offline. Remote rural communities account for some of these areas, but many more correlate with communities already facing other forms of deprivation in Scotland’s towns and cities. These areas should be seen as priorities for action, if the digital divide is not to exacerbate existing social divides. He also focused on the importance of ‘digital privacy’ something which was taken up in discussion.
The Report makes recommendations around affordable access, motivation and the skills needed both for everyone to get online, and for a flourishing digital economy. It comments on the responsibilities of a digital society to create an environment in which the benefits of being online are not outweighed by the risks, and calls on the Scottish Government to take strategic oversight of Scotland’s digitisation, including the impacts on fundamental issues such as privacy, surveillance, freedom of expression and data protection.
The increasing focus on human and social issues was very welcome. Much of the time was taken up with questions which included contributions from the voluntary sectors and those concerned with older computer users. Amina Shah, speaking for SLIC, spoke about training issues and the need to work in partnership with others referring to the government’ plans to move benefits registration and payments online as an example.
Something that both Michael Fourman and Professor Alan Alexander, the RSE general secretary spoke about at some length was access to IT facilities in schools and colleges by the general public outwith standard hours and holidays. Although a good point it does raise important issues about support and security and how this should be funded which both Michael Fourman and Professor Alan Alexander made light of, yet when I suggested that the agenda should move more to training and skills issues Michael Fourman spoke at some length about the staffing issues which this would raise. While there is some truth in this a training base exists, much of it provided by libraries on which further developments could be based.
The interim report, published at the end of 2013, dismissed libraries in six inaccurate lines but, thanks to our representations the role of libraries receives adequate coverage although this is still seen in terms of public libraries with the role of other sectors still not understood. However a successful exercise in advocacy on which to build I think
John Crawford
Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 1:54PM Penny Andrew's poster Embedding multiple literacies in a MOOC for professionals caught my eye with its Russian Doll images in relation to information literacy and multiple literacies.
Embedding multiple literacies in a MOOC for professionals
The poster is by Penny Andrews, Penny is an an MSc Student at the University of Sheffield. @pennyb The following papragraph from her poster explains the images ...
"Information literacy is the literacy that contains all the other academic literacies. Florence Dujardin @afdujardin originated the idea of a matryoshka doll (set of nested dolls) as a metaphor for this concept"
;)
From how to why: critical thinking and academic integrity ..
From how to why: critical thinking and academic integrity as key ingredients in information literacy teaching was another poster that caught my eye, this one was from the Artic University of Norway. In their poster they present their plans and purposes with the course and discuss in particular why we consider a shift in focus to be essential.
I'm a great believer in self-efficacy and believe that if you do not believe in yourself you fail before 
you start whereas if you believe in yourself / what you do you can achieve so much more.
Thus the interest in this poster Does information literacy increase a person’s self-efficacy by Geoff Walton, Northumbria University, geoff.walton@northumbria.ac.uk and Eleanor Johnston, Staffordshire University, e.johnston@staffs.ac.uk
The quesution is part of a study which aims to establish whether the IL programme 'Step-Up to HE' contributes directly to participants’ self-efficacy – a key programme objective (Taylor, 2012). I'll be interested in the findings.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 8:52AM There is a call for papers from New Library World as follows:
New Library World is planning to publish a special issue exploring Information Behaviour and Practice in general, with a focus more specifically on implications for library and information services. This issue will be jointly guest edited by Dr Allen Foster and Dr Pauline Rafferty of Aberystwyth University.
Scope
We are looking for articles which deal with both theoretical and practical aspects of information behaviour.
Topics of interest include but are not restricted to:
* Models and theories of information seeking behaviour
* Information seeking behaviours in the digital age
* The Google Generation
* Information seeking behaviours of specific groups of information users
* Reading, information behaviour and the library
* Context in information behaviour
* Everyday life information seeking
* From information seeking behaviour to Information practice
* Implications for academic libraries of students’ information seeking behaviour
* Information seeking in public libraries
* Serendipity and incidental information acquisition
* From information behaviour to designing information systems
* Information behaviour: relationships between structure and agency
* Information spaces and information behaviour
* Convenience and information seeking
* The impact of mobile devices on information behaviour
* The affective dimension of information seeking
Research papers, case studies and best practice papers will be considered.
More about the special issue theme
Information seeking behaviour remains an area of importance in information science and librarianship, perhaps even more so in the digital age. This special issue is an opportunity to share contemporary ideas in information behaviour, as well as practice models and methods which originate from (or are of relevance to) any branch of the LIS discipline, sub-discipline and wider information profession.
Submission
Please submit manuscripts for consideration using our online submission platform by 2 June 2014.
Full author guidelines can be found at http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=nlw.
See more at:http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/call_for_papers.htm?id=5339#sthash.KC7eDecO.dpuf