SLIC AGM 22.11.13
Wednesday, November 27, 2013 at 4:45PM I attended the SLIC (Scottish Library and Information Council) AGM last Friday (22.11.13) along with Ian McCracken. We were invited by Moira Methven, the interim CEO of SLIC to speak about information literacy issues. The AGM was held in the Lighthouse in Glasgow. The morning was taken up with overview issues while the afternoon session consisted of reports on work undertaken by SLIC members.
Ian and I led off the morning session. Ian spoke about problems schoolchildren have in finding and using information and I spoke about information literacy policy issues with reference to Scotland. My presentation was essentially an abbreviated version of the one I delivered in Istanbul last month at the European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL). ( Hopefully it and all the other conference presentations will be appearing on the ECIL website soon http://www.ecil2013.org/index.php/home ). Our joint presentation generated some discussion and I was pleased that Fiona McLeod, MSP, the chair of SLIC picked up on some of the issues I had raised.
We were followed by Jane Robinson, the co-ordinator for ALMA-UK. ALMA is a body which co-ordinates library, museums and archive activity across the three devolved nations and interestingly enough includes information literacy in its remit.
The next speaker was Alyson Tyler, from CyMAL, the body which co-ordinates library, museum and archive activity in Wales http://wales.gov.uk/topics/cultureandsport/museumsarchiveslibraries/cymal/?lang=en . She spoke about (library) collaboration in Wales. CyMAL’s members include all 22 Welsh local authorities serving a population of three million. She spoke about the Libraries Inspire Project which runs from 2012 to 2016 and includes all library sectors. The work includes the physical refurbishment of public library buildings, simpler registration of membership of the National Library of Wales and one ebook service for all 22 local authorities. From November 27th emagazines will also be available. The Welsh Information Literacy Project has now been ongoing for four years and future work is being planned http://librarywales.org/en/information-literacy/ . Recent work includes the appointment of information literacy champions in all Welsh public library services and continuing work in health literacy. Wales pioneered the Prescribe a book scheme in 2005.
The afternoon was taken up with reports of good practice, mainly in public libraries although there was a report from SCURL on the SHEDL Project (Scottish Higher Education Digital Library) http://scurl.ac.uk/. There were presentations from public libraries on: IT training for staff (Inverclyde) and the MindFULLNess Project (North Ayrshire Libraries) which introduces preschool children and the elderly to IT applications.
The last presentation from Christina Kelly and Angela Hughes from Golley Slater reviewed public perceptions of the public library and how it can be better promoted and marketed. It is intended to put all the PPTs on the SLIC website.
During the course of the day I had a talk with Alyson Tyler, Jane Robinson, and Fiona McLeod and suggested the idea of an information literacy exchange of experience among the home nations and I hope to hear further from them on that idea. Ideally I would like to see the Republic of Ireland included too as it too has information literacy plans I believe.
John Crawford