European conference on Information literacy (ECIL) , Istanbul, Turkey 22-25 October, 2013

I got back on Monday after attending the ECIL Conference which was pretty hectic followed by three days of equally hectic sightseeing.  The conference - see website:  http://www.ecil2013.org/index.php/home was held at the Military Museum near Taksim Square although all seemed quiet there. It was a busy three days – about 8.30 am to 6-8 pm most days and we were all pretty tired by the end of it. There were 367 delegates from 59 countries. There were about 235 presentations including keynotes. I was on the Standing and Programme Committees which meant I had to evaluate submissions and also chair a conference session. I also gave an invited presentation.

The conference was mainly organised by Serap Kurbanoglu, a professor at Hacateppe University in Ankara, and Sonja Spiranec from the University of Zagreb in Croatia. I think our Community of Practice did pretty well to have three speakers: Bill Johnston (presenting with Sheila Webber), Marion Kelt and me. Just about everyone who is anybody in the IL world was there, including ChristiPaul Zurkowski ECIL 2013 (Photo courtesy of ECIL Serap Kurbanoglu)y ne Bruce, Annemaree Lloyd, whose work I particularly admire, and most notably Paul Zurkowski who coined the term information literacy in 1974 and is the father of the movement. He gave a memorable keynote.

For fairly detailed reporting on the presentations she attended have a look at Sheila Webber’s blog: http://information-literacy.blogspot.co.uk/ . This includes the session I chaired on the Thursday afternoon.

Bill and Sheila gave a most interesting presentation on the Tuesda y afternoon  - Information literate lives in the 21^st century – which outlined a curriculum for an information literate lifecourse, the information needs of ordinary people in other words, which seems to me to be a model we could follow.

John Crawford speaking at ECIL ( Photo courtesy of ECIL Serap Kurbanoglu)My presentation on the Wednesday afternoon – Are national information literacy policies possible? went OK. T he presentation was based partly on my experience  of directing the Scottish Information Literacy Project and the wider lessons which can be learned from it and partly on reading about other countries. My aims in presenting were twofold:

• To find out if the Scottish experience resonated with delegates from other countries
• To find out if my ideas about national literacy strategies were applicable in other countries.

The answer to both these questions proved to be yes. My presentation generated quite a few questions. 

I had scarcely sat down after I had finished when a member of the conference team approached me and asked if I was free for a meeting with Paul Zurkowski who congratulated me on the presentation and discussed issues of common interest. He hopes to travel to Ireland and possibly Scotland and it would be great if he could come here. Other people who talked to me afterwards included Maria Carme Torres Calvo who, although based in Bergen in Norway, is a Catalan and thought the Scottish and Catalan situations similar. A Mexican delegate also thought my ideas relevant to his country.  

I also took the opportunity to give the book a plug: Crawford, John C and Irving, Christine. Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning: Policy issues, the workplace, health and public libraries. Chandos, 2013. so hopefully it will help sales. Paul Zurkowski said he would get a copy.

Marion was on at 8.30 am on the Thursday morning and unfortunately I slept in and missed it but hopefully she will tell you all about it herself.

The session I chaired on the Thursday afternoon was attended and blogged by Sheila Webber and her blog gives all the details. There were six papers and the session lasted three hours and included Annemaree Lloyd with whose work on IL in the workplace I am familiar and also Katarzyna Materska from the University of Warsaw who also spoke about IL in the workplace. I had not come across her before and found her work interesting. Much of her work is in Polish unfortunately (see Google Scholar http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=Katarzyna+Materska+&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp= ).  The final session speaker was Christine Yates on health literacy.

The conference was a great success and well organised and Serap and Sonia deserve great credit for all the work they did. Amazingly enough they are going to do it all again and are planning another conference in Dubrovnik in October 2014. Hopefully it will be equally successful.

John Crawford

Dundee College's Skills for Learning, Life and Work Course

The Learner Resources team at Dundee College have successfully launched a pilot course called Skills for Learning, Life and Work. The 'press release' information we provided:

A key part of the College’s role is to help students prepare for obtaining and retaining employment. In addition to the academic qualifications, it is important we provide them with the skills required for their future careers. The aim of this course is to provide students with a certificated qualification which demonstrates to employers that the students have the essential soft skills and personal qualities required to be successful employees through a range of ‘learning by doing’ activities.

In addition, it aims to help students make the connection between the knowledge, skills and experience gained at College and how they can demonstrate these when applying for jobs. For example, gaining the knowledge and understanding behind learning how to research a subject topic can be transferred into the workplace setting in key areas such as professional communication and IT skills.

The Skills for Learning, Life and Work course will cover the following subject areas at level SCQF 6:

• Induction to library, Hub services and resources and College systems
• Using IT Successfully
• Study Skills
• Research Skills
• Writing Styles (for business, for scientific reports, for essay writing, for communications reports)
• Referencing
• Presentation Skills
• Reflexive Writing / Personal statements
• Searching and Applying for Jobs
• Time Management and Stress Reduction

The key element of the course is information literacy supporting all academic literacies. Students must complete 10 hours of the subjects listed and then must pass a summative test for that topic. Once all ten hours are completed, a College certificate is issued.

We have been overwhelemed by uptake for the pilot groups, with 11 streams currently undertaking the course. All the materials are available under a CC licence and we are working with JISC to make this widely known.

An overview of the materials can be accessed here.

CILIPS Autumn Gathering 2013: Inspiration and Education - school libraries, digital and information literacies and professional development

On the 10 October I attended the  at the John McIntyre Conference Centre, Edinburgh. The themes for this year were school libraries, digital and information literacies and professional development. Audrey Sutton, CILIP in Scotland's President kicked off the day and welcomed everybody.

The first keynote speaker was Barbara Band, CILIP Vice President - Let’s shout about advocacy Barbara is a school librarian and very passionate about what she does and called upon everyone to be an advocate and shout out about libraries. That self advocacy does not come naturally to most people but we need self advocacy to support our role, services we provide and our profession. Advocacy she said 'was a bit of a scary concept for people' as it was associated with lobbying, putting yourself out there, not a comfortable position. However if you looked at alternative words for advocacy, it was closely aligned to promotion, a term / activity which people were more comfortable with. The major reasons for advocacy was to influence, to inform, to educate and to change.  People's perceptions are based on their experience, so what you do influences people's perceptions of what you and we do as a profession and the services you/we provide.

“30% of our success is due to skills and experience but 70% is due to visibility.” Steve Bowman, University of Chichester

When advocating / promoting it is important to decided who your target audience is, what your key message is, it must be pertinent and relevant and you need to speak their language. How or what you will do, will depend on your circumstances and commitment, for example:  

1. your organisation - let people know what you are doing
2. your sector (your tribe) - collective wisdom - participate, collaborate, disseminate with others
3. the profession - get involved

You need to: be creative and persistent; look at how others do it; use your network. We all have a voice - so use it.

Many of the above themes were picked up by other speakers / presentations throughout the day.

I next attended the Schools Libraries: Advocacy! A group discussion facilitated by the School Libraries Advocacy Group Firstly we learnt about the advocacy being carried out by the group including:

• focusing on Education Scotland
• sharing of good practice / evidence of supporting learners - there is a space on the cilips website http://www.cilips.org.uk/shared-practice/
• SLIC has commissioned Robert Gordon University (RGU) to undertake research into the impact of school libraries. The information was gathered through Freedom of Information requests from local authorities not just in Scotland but in England as well. Some information was shared with us. Of the 21 local authorities in Scotland who responded (2 failed to respond) there is a variation of service offered across Scotland and unfortunately an overall demise of centralised library services. 12 authorities provide some provision through public library services and all but one employs a professional librarian. The English scene is still to be analysed. See http://www.scottishlibraries.org/school-libraries/ for a summary of the findings, full details of the project and the RGU final report which will be available soon.

The discussion part of the session focused on specific questions regarding advocacy linked to how, what, where etc. The delegates from each table discussed the question at thier table - suggestions, comments etc. where recorded by a facilitator and the group moved on to the next time when time was up. Hopefully the recorded thoughts will be written up and made available. If I hear about it I will let you know. If you hear about it - please let me know.

The second keynote speaker of the morning was Liz McGettigan – A Force for Change - The infinite possibilities of libraries and librarians in the digital age I know and have heard Liz speak before and she is certainly a force for change and an inspirational speaker. Her presentations are always filled with powerful images and quotations. I didn't take any notes during her presentation so please have a look at it.

As this is quite a lengthy blog posting I will finish here and post another day about the afternoon sessions I attended which concentrated on professional development. There are I think some useful activities and strategies that we could use for information literacy. 

The presentations from this year's Gathering are now online and available at http://www.cilips.org.uk/autumn-gathering-presentations/

Book and Istanbul

After a good many delays for all sorts of reasons - Information literacy and lifelong learning: Policy issues, the workplace, health and public libraries

is at last being printed and will hopefully be available later this month.  It has taken about two years to put it together and has been an awful lot of work. It contains ten chapters, seven written by me, two by Christine Irving and there is a case study of the Scottish Government Information Service written by Jenny Foreman and Morag Higgison which complements the overall text very well.  The book is primarily concerned with information literacy in a wider world beyond the traditional stamping ground of higher education.  As the title indicates it examines the less structured world of information usage in the working environment, the use of health information and the growing and important role of public libraries.  It also reviews the information culture, the role of information literacy within it and how information policy agendas may be taken forward. Practical suggestions for implementing national information policies are discussed in the final chapter which are I feel applicable to Scotland and could form the basis for discussion and action. Christine has contributed a chapter on IL in early years education, a reminder that lifelong learning means just that.

I hope to have a couple of copies to take with me to Istanbul to the European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL).  My presentation will be about national information literacy policies and will be based on the final chapter. Marion Kelt and Bill Johnston are also presenting. To have three members of our group presenting at a world class event is very encouraging.  The conference last three days, 22-24 October, from 8.30 am until about 8pm each day. I think we will all be pretty tired by the end of it but hopefully the presentations and contacts will make it worthwhile. Pretty much everyone who is anybody in IL will be there including Paul Zurkowski, the man who originally coined the term in 1974.  Full details can be found at https://www.arber.com.tr/ecil2013.org/index.php/login

John Crawford

CILIPS Autumn Gathering 2013: Inspiration and Education

Looking forward to CILIPS Autumn Gathering 2013: Inspiration and Education tomorrow (10th October) in Edinburgh at the John McIntyre Conference Centre The themes for this year are school libraries, digital and information literacies and professional development.