Two information literacy resources

Notification from Mark Hepworth re two publications that he thinks should be useful for people who do information literacy training.

1.     The first is a book I published in collaboration with Geoff Walton. This is called Teaching Information Literacy for Inquiry Based Learning. This has recently become available electronically and can be found at: http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=1830&ChandosTitle=1

Unfortunately it is not open access

The book is aimed at teachers of information literacy (encompassing, to an extent, media literacy). The book is structured into two parts.

a)     The first half of the book gives the theoretical pedagogical knowledge that a teacher or librarian needs to know to teach information literacy; common knowledge for many teachers, but here applied to the teaching information literacy which is new.

b)    The second part is a practical guide to planning lessons to teach information literacy, including lesson plans and learning outcomes – some further work would need to be done to integrate these into different subject areas and relate to levels of information literacy.

2.     I would also like to alert people to a publication, freely available via Open Access. This identifies the challenges associated with developing information literate, independent learners and building research capacity in Higher Education. It also proposes an institutional strategy that  could be applied to help ensure that this takes place.

It is based on research I did last year in Africa, working with the University of Botswana, the University of Zambia and Mzuzu University in Malawi. The work was funded by the Institute of Development Studies and done in collaboration with Siobhan Duvigneau, Information Literacy Manager, British Library for Development Studies at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton, as well as people at the three universities who contributed to the research design and enabled access to academics, librarians and academic support staff.

Although aimed at providers of higher education I think the principles are relevant to secondary education – specifically the need to build the capabilities of staff (both in terms of appropriate pedagogy and knowledge of information literacy) and also the infrastructure that supports IL and Media and Information Literacy capacity building. This can be found at:

http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/2301?show=full

I would appreciate any comments on these two works and more than happy to get into discussion.

A collection of Information Literacy (IL) Resources from around the world is now available on UNESCO’s website

© UNESCO

A collection of Information Literacy (IL) Resources from around the world is now available on UNESCO’s website in e-Pub and PDF formats. The publication titled “Overview of Information Literacy Resource Worldwide” is divided into 42 language lists and includes selected resources – from websites, books, journals and other kinds of publications – that were provided by contributors from different countries and institutions and compiled by Dr Forest Woody Horton Jr.

I haven't had time to look at this yet but it sounds good.

Public Library - health information literacy activities

I'm looking for examples of health information literacy activities in Public Libraries for a book chapter that I'm writing.

Much of the reported public library activities however seem to center on the provision of health information in the form of books, leaflets and bookmarked reliable health websites (such as NHS Choices and NHS Informs, and schemes such as Books on Prescription.

There may be information literacy activities within the provision offered but it seems to be implicit rather than explicit.

Does anyone offer or know of any activities that offer explicit information literacy activities either with a health element or as part of the health information service?

Thanks

Christine Irving

Update on Friday, February 22, 2013 at 4:44PM by Christine Irving

Thank you to everyone that responded to my enquiry. The information has helped me finish my chapter. 

It is good to see so much engagement in health information and some partnership working with the Health profession but disappointing that there is not more emphasis on the health information literacy skills of the public.