Conference 2012 Blog Roll

Here is a list of other blog posts and articles about libraries@cambridge 2012 that we have discovered or  been told about. The list is in order of discovery.
If you know of any blogs that we have missed, please leave us a comment below. Thanks to everyone for blogging!

Claire Sewell (@ces43)

http://librarianintraining23things.blogspot.com/2012/01/librariescambridge-2012-some-thoughts.html

Annie Johnson (@Annie_Bob)

http://intothehobbithole.blogspot.com/2012/01/librariescambridge-conference-2011.html

Pol Harper (@PolHarper)

http://libraryshelfelf.blogspot.com/2012/01/day-i-left-my-shelf-and-conferred.html

Katie Birkwood (@Girlinthe)

http://maedchenimmond.blogspot.com/2012/01/lac12-or-librariescambridge-conference.html

Jason Scott-Warren (Via 'Centre for Material Texts'):

http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/cmt/?p=2138


Emma Coonan (@LibGoddess Via 'A New Curriculum for Information Literacy')
http://newcurriculum.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/blue-skies-a-new-definition-of-information-literacy/

Meg Westbury (@meg_librarian)
http://librarypie.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/dodos-and-eagles/

Anna Martin (@AnnaLMartin)
francesobolensky.blogspot.com/2012/01/library-design-at-librariescambridge201.html

and

Sylvia Christie's article in the English Library Faculty Newsletter:
 http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/efllib/uploads/Newsletters/Issue%2015%20Lent%202012.pdf

Parellel Session C: Are librarians and researchers on the same page?

Welcome to the Data Sharing blogpost, detailing a series of short presentations on the benefits, practicalities and considerations of sharing different types of open data. You'll find here a short synopsis of each talk and links to find out more about their areas of expertise.

  by  Britta Bohlinger 

The session was introduced by Ed Chamberlain from the University Library

Data is generated by a range of institutions and the support services for that data- teaching and learning assistance, the library, and administration- are common across Higher Education institutions, research institutes and government agencies. Traditionally this information covering everything from bus time tables, degree course details, census data, spending data to bibliographic records has been siloed, but is being shared more and more.

This data is increasingly provided on specialist sites and is available for reuse, the UK Government's and Cambridge University Library open data service are two such services.

Individual researchers too are increasingly sharing data, but why do we share?

• Increased transparency for corporations, public bodies and governments
• To illustrate value for the tax payer or research funder
• Increased prestige for the researcher or institution
• To expedite the research process
• To gain support and interest from national and international agencies

This open data can be re-purposed: see where your taxes go with Where Does my Money Go? which utilises a range of Government spending figures. Re-purposing is essential to the longevity and usefulness of open data. JISC is heavily involved in what it calls a 'metadata ecology' to improve access to collections in galleries libraries, archives and  museums, and allows the re-purposing of their data

This is a challenge to Universities in terms of:

• The skills required to create and maintain the data
• Choosing and designing an infrastructure and platform to share data
• Implementing standards
• The tangle that is licencing, copyright and intellectual property.

As a provider, curator and storer of data as well as a possible trainer of those using data, the library has a new role

Next up, we saw a researcher's perspective on open data

Dr Max Satchell (Department of Geography, University of Cambridge) Data sharing: making GIS data sets open 

His project: The occupational structure of Britain 1379-1911 uses GIS- geographic information systems. GIS is spatial data and usually corresponds to a point, a line a polygon, or a place. It's practical uses vary wildy and include both mapping the surface of planets, and mapping the relationship between locations in the Lake District and literature. One of the most well known examples is EDINA's Digimap.

How are GIS projects run?

• Researchers enhance and check existing GIS data
• New GIS data is created through digitization and data mining
• Results are analysed and customized in-house
• Data is delivered in an appropriate open data standard

Challenges of making historical GIS

• Inaccessible data: undigitized and sitting in specialist collections
• Existing digitization projects fail to create a product that can be repurposed
• Data mining of texts, huge potential for work outside and within libraries

Challenges of making historical GIS open

• Delivery concerns- accuracy vs delivery dates
• GIS aftercare (minimizing technical problems for re-users)
• Copyright  is complex
• Time involved- publication of datasets doesn't count towards REA/REF
• Tension between your requirements and the needs of resuers
• In-house dissemination vs through agencies such as EDINA
• Other people's data can be expensive for non-academic users

Despite these challenges making GIS open requires no extra skills, and is well thought of in terms of scholarship and attracting research funds.


Discussion:

Q: Why do current digitasation techniques not suport reuse in a GIS context?
A: Access problems, prohibitatively expensive, data can't be exported or is in the wrong format. Ususally not commerical reasons of copyright, just planning.


Paul Stainthorp (University of Lincoln)- Orbital. A research data project.

"Orbital is a project which aims to create a brand new way to store and manage your research data"

The University of Lincoln has a collaborative approach to developing projects:

• Oribital is part of a development stack of initiatives. The project brings together developers, dabblers and catalogers who share similar mindset and emphasises a heavy use of cross-departmental teams. 
• Data is stored using MongoDB: an open source database resource designed for building web applications, which powers Craigslist and twitter, for example.
• The Common Web Design allows foe rapid system development based on a pre-developed web design style. 
• Implementing a Crystal Clear approach- an agile development methodology, which focuses on conversation, quick planning and delivery.
• data.lincoln.ac.uk is taking steps with Cambridge, Oxford, Southampton and the Open University to strive for a national data framework to publish useful open data.

Orbital's first partner was the University's new School of Engineering, a near-market research faculty, heavily funded by Siemens. Their research output tends to be tied up on commercial or military confidentially clauses. A difficult task, but if it could work in such an environment, it could work anywhere. the project involved a strong analysis of user needs and thorough planning on how this data will look, be accessed and importantly re-purposed: "we want to make things that people can use".

Why did they do this?

• Making life easier for local users (the engineers)
• To improving research methodology and the project team's practice
• Building research and developer capacity
• Designing a reusable toolkit for development
• Main aim: Improving the University's capacity for innovation

Projects are web scale and web-native. They are experimental in nature and welcome changing or flexible requirements. Interested in the smarties not the tube- the data rather than the context, the rationale or the method of delivery. Applications are useful and designed to be consumable/ re-purposeful, not for long term archival storage.

Why are librarians involved in this? Not the obvious things, curation and preservation. It's that we:

• Are good at producing useable, good documentation
• Good at negotiations with stakeholders, meeting their needs and keeping them happy
• Strong data discoverer and re-users
• Have repository experience

Dr Anna Collins, DSpace  The Cambridge context of data sharing

Data sharing is big news:

BL CEO job advert: "memory of the nation" "DNA of civilisation" "preserve and provide wider access"
University of Cambridge news "Cambridge gives Newton papers to the world"
Scott Polar Research Institute offers notes from Scott's last expedition

Data has to be made open, and librarians are the people who can get this done. Naturally collaborative, we can blend our own expertise with that of others to the benefit to our researchers. Librarians are comfortable with metadata, this makes data discoverable and something that researchers tend to struggle with.

Sharing data is good for you, good for your institution, and good for academia, but often we feel that our hands are tied by institutional demands, customs and funder requirements. Often researchers lack the confidence, knowledge or inclination to share data. Librarians can offer practial help and dispell myths about other using your data.

Discussion:

Q: to Paul. Smarties out of the tube get mixed up, lost or trodden on- that's a risk. Do you have a plan about  retaining the data and the data format. Are you going to preserve the format, or not?
A: Paul: We keep hold of what the reseacher gives us- original file and format are archived. Tools strip out file contents which are stored flexibly in MongoDB. Different types of data are stored in a similar way, allowing for interaction.  Curation shouldn't be about format- it's about it being meaningfully useful.

Comment from the floor to Anna: Librarians as metadata specialists are mediating the data to the wider audience, it's often surprising that researchers don't fully understand their own data, it's applications and uses, and the pitfalls of lack of detail.
Anna: The blending of specialist knowledge can overcome those hurdles.

Parallel session B: digital libraries

This session, the special collections strand, was chaired by Natalie Adams of Churchill Archives Centre.

Further links will be added to this post throughout the afternoon!

1: Grant Young, Jennie Fletcher, Huw Jones,'Laying the foundations of a new digital library'

First off, Grant explained the background.
In 2010 the Cambridge University Library digital library had ambition and vision and plans. Now, through major donation and JISC and research council funding, there is a major programme worth £2million, which is delivering infrastructure and content. It's already made a media splash with the release of some of the Newton papers: coverage in newspapers and TV, even in New Zealand.

You can explore the Digital Library at http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/.

Backstory:
CUL has an impressive digitisation unit and has been digitising for a long time (particularly for the Genizah and Darwin projects, and has also supported Parker on Web and Freeze Frame).

Donor:
The Polonsky Foundation recognised that funding was needed to support infrastructure and content. £1.5milion donation for core three-year project: Foundations Project, Phase 1, to run mid 2010 to mid 2013. Has attracted further funding (£700,000) from JISC and AHRC.

Goals:

• Support creation, delivery, preservation digital content
• Enable discovery, access, reuse (as licenses permit - can download high res Newton MS and use under Creative Commons license) (will be developing APIs to allow use of data and metadata)
• Enable interaction with content, including personalisation and user interaction
• Enrich content by linking with research, providing digital humanities tools/platform
• Integrate well with existing library infrastructure
• Develop infrastructure that is flexible, scalable, extensible and sustainable

Content:

• Two broad areas covering priority collections and hopefully inspiring donors: Foundations of Faith and Foundations of Science
• Content delivery concentrated in years 2 and 3
• Liaising with academics to inform content choices
• Actively seeking further funding

Jennie spoke about the technology infrastructure:
They quickly identified that a commercial system wouldn't serve well, so use open source tech.

They have a lightweight modular system: individual parts can be altered and replaced as required.
It's scalable: designed to put minimum load on servers, and uses virtual machines that can be cloned and redeployed rapidly as needed

Production:

• They use Goobi, which is developed by Intrada, and has some special additions for us. It's written in Java, and is open source
• It allows workflow management and custom workflows: this means that experts can help at appropriate points in the process.
• Outputs METS MODS and image files

Preservation and Display:

• Large tiff images and metadata are loaded into DSpace
• Displays using XTF and our own custom digital library viewer.
• XTF processes a variety of metadata into JSON for viewer, and it also indexes data for searching and faceted browsing (to be added to interface in future)

Viewer:

• Allows transcriptions next to MSS - these are provided via the Newton Project
• Focus on images: simple and clear interface. Scales to size of browser window and is customisable by user.
• It uses HTML5, ExtJS, SeaDragonAjax, Java Spring Framework
• Runs on Tomcat and Apache on Ubuntu, but can be run on any OS

Forthcoming:

• Further user customisation: bookmarks, own notes and annotations to share
• Search and faceted browsing
• Specialised views for other content
• Further Improved mobile support
• Mailing list for updates
• More download options: pdf? metadata?
• More content!

Huw examined one of the four major strands of the library in depth, the project 'Navigating 18th Century Science and Technology': 

•  JISC project information: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/content2011_2013/Board%20of%20Longitude.aspx  
• AHRC-funded project info: http://www.rmg.co.uk/blogs/longitude/
• This project digitises the Board of Longitude Archive and objects from the National Maritime Museum, in partnership with JISC and AHRC (dept of History and Philosophy of Sciecne in Cambridge are writing history of the board, funded by AHRC, JISC supporting the digital bit)
• Has 65K images as well as archive and accompanying material. It's more than just the Longitude story we know! Includes famous and non-famous people, many areas of science and technology, early example of state-funded research and many other interesting things.
• Will run Nov 2011-July 2013

What's it mean for digital lib?

• Amazing content
• Working in partnership: libraries involved in research projects
• Uniting Museum and Library Collections
• Driving development: i.e for such a large collection you need to have search, browse, etc., making the most of different types of materials, e.g. maps
• Library as publisher - i.e. integrating research output into Digital Library: raises question of library moving from disinterested provider of content, to being a publisher choosing and curating research output.  But this is an opportunity.

2: Christy Henshaw, Programme Manager, Wellcome Digital Library, 'Creating an Online Resource for Medical Archives at the Wellcome Library'

The Wellcome Library has be digitising for a while, but the Digital Library as a long-term strategic programme is new. It's currently in the pilot stage, and although digitisation and infrastructre development are underway, there is no delivery system yet.

The Wellcome Library is smaller than many, and is subject specific, so the idea of digitising it all is maybe less intimidating than in other places.

Digisation is a particular strand of the Library Transformation Strategy 2009-14, which covers: targeted collecting, expert interpretation, and strategic digitisation

The pilot project is: 'Genetics and its Modern Foundations 2010-2013'. It plans to:

• Build a sustainable expandable mechanism
• Digitise key holdings
• Digitise important third party content
• Use innovative content and tools
• Explore commercial partnerships

Technology:
They use Goobi, too, and have similar infrastructure to CUL. But they don't have a separate digital library website: will be searchable through main OPAC, including full-text search in the main library catalogue.

What's being digitised (2 years, 10 collections, 600K pages)?

• Archival material: Will be 1.1million images: 600K internal 500K internal. The major internal collection is the Francis Crick collection.
• Books: 600K images related to genetics research, including up to modern material.
• Non-genetics stuff: Early printed books as part of ProQuest Early European Books = c. 5.5million images/14-15K books. Also Medical Officer Health Reports for London, 400K images
• Born-digital material: small but growing.

Key tasks for digitising archives (digitisation done in house):

Physical work (0.6FTE):

•     Flattening
•     Check sequences
•     Protect with sleeves
•     Remove stapless

Digitisation (2FTE):

•     Everything, even copyrighted: will block access to inappropriate material at a later stage)
•     Canon digital cameras

Managing users:

•     Make clear what's not currently physical available via catalogue and an online list
•     Maintain a schedule on a staff wiki

Reducing imapct:

•     Remove items for shortest time possible
•     Include buffer in advertised unavailable time
•     Set targets based on what's been completed already

External partners (1.5 years, 9 collectionss, 500K pgs) (Will digitise their own images, Wellcome takes copy, and Wellcome provides the funding):

• Churchill Archives Centre
• Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory
• King's College London
• University of Glasgow
• University College London

Sensitivity and archives:Access policy: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/node159.html#access

As Wellcome isn't publicly funded they don't have to comply in the main with FOI, and as most data isn't structured, data protection isn't such a huge issue, but they do hold a lot of very sensitive material (which isn't in the public domain) and they try to abide by spirit of legislation and behave sensitively. Archivists asses collections based on metadata, then sample items from collections are checked against a checklist: it's an iterative process to determine what can be made available how. They don't have resources to check everything straight off.   This is done to an extent at cataloguing stage, of course, but have to be more careful and granular if material is to be made available online.

Graded online access:

•         Material >100 yrs old: open access
•         Material <100 yrs but open in reading room: register online
•         Restricted material (e.g. reference letters, grant applications (within certain dates), letters discussing medical information not in the public domain): users have to sign a form in person
•         closed: not available to anyone

Copyright:

•     Impossible to do the project if clearance obtained for everything
•     Orphan works v. difficult to obtain copyright for
•     Taking a managed risk
•     Copyright clearance by exception
•     Bearing risk for non-Wellcome content
•     Ensure clear research value: not commercial purposes. Terms of use prohibit commerical use for less than 100 years old.
•     Take-down policy

Registration:
Users who register agree to various responsibilities including abiding by data protection act. The reuse agreement specifies reuse encourage within copyright, data protection, with acknowledgement, for non-commerical use.

Find out more about the archives digitisation: goo.gl/T1RS9

Questions and discussion

There were several interesting questions covering issues including why we provide digital library content for free, how these libraries are advertised, the costs of long-term preservation, what user interaction is expected and how it is encouraged, and how and why digital library content can and should be integrated into the main library website and catalogue.
 

Parallel Session A: Beyond Arcadia

11.25

Hello hello hello and welcome to the not-quite-but-almost-live blog for Parallel Session A: Beyond Arcadia.  It’s been a very thrilling morning so far—if you’re not here, you’re missing out.  I’m Helen, Deputy Librarian at Trinity Hall, and I’ll be your host for this morning’s (and afternoon’s) entertainment, leading you through an exciting sounding session on a New Curriculum for Information Literacy (or ANCIL), and trying very hard not to get things wrong. 

Here’s a description of ANCIL lifted straight and shamelessly from the details in the conference programme: “Like cloud behaviour, ANCIL is about sharing and networking; it’s distributed – it doesn’t sit in one central pace but works at local level; and it’s highly customisable, allowing you to shape it to meet the needs of your students”.  But the title of the session is Beyond Arcadia, and so I’m guessing that it also promises to look at how the progress made so far can be sustained and developed further.

Tulip Stair at Queen's House, Greenwich, by mcginnly

11.28

The stars of our show are obviously our five highly esteemed presenters—John Naughton (@jjn1), Jane Secker  (@jsecker, and Jane blogs here too), Helen Webster (@scholastic_rat, and see Helen's blog here), Emma Coonan (@LibGoddess, and Emma blogs as the Mongoose Librarian), and Katy Wrathall (@KatyWrathall, and have a look see at Katy's blog here.) The temptation at this point to make some ill-drawn comparison to our speakers and Take That is overwhelming but I will resist. The speakers are here, the laptop seems to be working, I can see … 2 iPads (*envies 2 people*), the audience look excitable (and dare I say, ever so glamorous), and so without much further ado, it’s over to our speakers.

11.30
And starting bang on time, Darren Bevin gets us going with a brief introduction to the session and the speakers.

Up first is John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University and Vice-President at Wolfson College [HM: yes, I have Googled all the speakers but let’s just pretend it was a deliberately ironic decision for a conference session on information literacy].

John is the academic advisor to the Arcadia programme.  It started in 2008, and is a three year programme to explore and rethink the role of academic libraries in a digital age.  Its main thrust was a three year fellowship programme, where there could be people working on short and intensive projects within the general Arcadia landscape.  There are changes going on EVERYWHERE—technology, publishing, workflows, media ecosystem—and Arcadia tried to pick people and projects to be mapped onto this landscape.

John’s plan was this: (a) to pick clever people to do interesting things; (b) to let them do it without micromanaging them; and (c) to protect them from the hassles that are normally part of an organisation.  There have been nineteen Arcadia Fellows, and seventeen Arcadia projects—I won’t list them all here, but details are all available on the Arcadia website. [HM: from the list of people John’s mentioning as former and current Arcadia fellows, he certainly achieved point (a) of his plan very successfully!]

Issues did arise: how to balance between Cambridge-specific stuff and the wider world; how to move from a pilot to a reality; how to cope with big decentralised institutions, and more.  But there have been big results—better communication and understanding within institutions, changes in attitudes, and many more.

The way we think about information literacy is “ludicrously antiquated” and the focus on the new curriculum was an extremely important part of the project.  ANCIL is the product of the first phase of the research project (May-July 2011), undertaken ably by Jane and Emma.  The principal objective was to create “a structured and holistic framework for meeting the information needs of undergraduates entering higher education over the next five years”.  The second project (October-December 2011) looked at strategies for implementing this new curriculum at higher education institutions, including Cambridge, and was led by Helen (focusing on Cambridge) and Katy (focusing on everywhere else).  [HM: so nothing too tricky, then].

11.40
Next up is Jane Secker, the Copyright and Digital Library Advisor at the Centre for Learning Technology at LSE.

Phase ONE of the project started with this objective: “Develop a new, revolutionary curriculum for information literacy in a digital age”.  For more information have a look here This was led by Jane and Emma—the first Arcadia team—and the plan was to look at what an information literacy curriculum might look like.

But what is information literacy? There are LOADS of definitions—they were familiar with CILIP’s (2004) definition: “knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner”.

But ANCIL started with  a broader and more ambitious definition, and one that goes beyond teaching and learning, linking information literacy with human rights and with social inclusion: the UNESCO Alexandria Proclamation from 2005:

“Information literacy…empowers people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use and create information effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational and educational goals. It is a basic human right in a digital world and promotes social inclusion in all nations”.

11.43

The project would only run for ten weeks—and its focus was the information needs of undergraduates and future undergraduates over the next five years.  Time was spent thinking about how information literacy links to terms like digital literacy—and Emma and Jane had to think about the relationships of these terms.  And then finally to the nitty-gritty—the creation of a PRACTICAL, FLEXIBLE CURRICULUM of information literacy. In a very very short space of time.

What did they do first? Well, what didn’t they do? They took what I would consider the “no-stone-unturned” approach.

They began with a modified Delphi study (which is used for forecasting the future), which involved consultation with experts in the education and information fields, presenting them with scenarios, and getting them talking to each other.  This was all in addition to the traditional literature review approach.  A first draft of the curriculum was developed and presented to experts and then refined in light of feedback.

(Experts: in information literacy, researchers, educators, school librarians, in the UK and beyond).

What they discovered was that HOW you teach is at least as important as WHAT you teach.  Information literacy, in isolation, doesn't really work—it has to be embedded into the academic curriculum, and it can't be a “one-size-fits-all” curriculum.  There’s a much broader group of students now and any curriculum must be based on their real and actual needs, however varied, and it should be based on their real and actual experience.

11.48

What did the experts say?

The format and structure of the curriculum should be flexible, so not tied to a specific staff role, modular (with ongoing ‘building blocks’), embedded (within the context of the academic discipline), and holistic.

It was important that the teaching style should be flexible and adaptable, whether delivered online or face-to-face. There's a distinct lack of prescription in the curriculum, the whole point being that it's flexible and therefore relevant to a whole variety of people.

Building assessment in was really important too—so example assessments and learning outcomes were also produced. 

And then a quick quote from one of the slides which sums up the curriculum quite nicely: “Aligning the curriculum content to discipline specific knowledge, skills and behaviour”.

11.51

This led Emma and Jane to the 10 curriculum strands.

1. Transition from school to higher education

2. Becoming an independent learner

3. Developing academic literacies

4. Mapping and evaluating the information landscape

5. Resource discovery in your institution

6. Managing information

7. Ethical dimension of information

8. Presenting and communicating information

9. Synthesising information and creating new knowledge

10. Social dimension of information

The strands aren’t quite linear, but almost—the earlier numbers are ones that will need to be done earlier in a student’s career, but again, flexibility is the key word in this curriculum.  The “spokey diagram” (below) shows the different types of skills that students will learn—and they’re not to be taught in isolation.  Some of them might, perhaps, be familiar to librarians, and others less so—“presenting and communicating”, for example, is something we’re maybe a little bit less involved with.

Strands of learning--or the "spokey" diagram

Here’s ANCIL’s definition of information literacy:

Information literacy is a continuum of skills, behaviours, approaches and values that is so deeply entwined with the uses of information as to be a fundamental element of learning, scholarship and research.  It is the defining characteristic of the discerning scholar, the informed and judicious citizen, and the autonomous learner.

11.55
And now we have another change of cast, and this time it’s Dr Helen Webster taking to the floor.  Helen is a learning developer, formerly of CARET’s Transkills Project, and currently a consultant and trainer on UEA’s PreUniversity Skills and SkillsForUni programmes.  You may remember her from earlier in the live blog when I said her role was to look at strategies for implementation of ANCIL within ye olde University of Cambridge.

The aims of Phase TWO (in just ten weeks) were:

1. To scope possible implementation strategies, both inside and outside Cambridge.  And the starting point for this was looking at what provision already exists, with Helen looking at Cambridge and Katy at York St John and Worcester.  They needed to look at who might deliver ANCIL within an institution, and the formats delivery might take.  There was some confusion over ‘curriculum’—it wasn’t a ten-week teaching plan.  And then finally, they looked at what could be produced to support delivery.

2. To develop resources to support implementation. And this was for individual institutions, as well as generic, adaptable resources for any institution.

[NB: This bit of the project isn’t quite over yet…]

The question Helen is asking is this: what’s new about the New Curriculum? First off, the new thing about it is that: it’s a curriculum.  It’s not a model or a framework—or providing a picture of what the ideal picture would look like.  Rather, the focus is on the process of learning, i.e. becoming information literate, and about helping the student in the direction of that ideal picture. 

And second, it isn’t owned by any one profession.  The IL definition in ANCIL is so broad that it has expanded beyond the core of librarianship.  What’s required then, is a joined up model of working (i.e. it’s interprofessional).  It’s about looking at IL from the student’s point of view—and for a student, it’s a continuous programme of learning.

Helen created a map of information literacy provision at Cambridge.  What it shows is just how many people, at lots of different levels and wearing lots of different hats, both front of house and behind the scenes, are actually involved in information literacy provision.  And it also showed that huge numbers of that these people don’t actually speak to each other.

12.03

What might the curriculum be used for:

1. Benchmarking/diagnostic tool—it can be used to work with the student, and to work out where a student is on the curriculum, and to help the student articulate what it is that they’re finding difficult.

2. Guidance model—not necessarily within a formal teaching situation, but as a way of informing how we communicate with the student.  It’s not just about answering a student’s question, but thinking of the answer in a more holistic way—it’s about looking at the bigger picture.

3. Teaching resources—to be used to develop workshops.

4. Framework to inform strategy, learning outcomes and marking criteria—it’s a way of the academic and the student understanding what the student needs to be doing.

5.  Audit tool: institutional, faculty/college, individual—and more about this from Katy later.

So top down, it’s an institutional audit tool—and this is Katy’s job. And bottom up, it’s a teaching toolkit—and this is Helen’s job. The plan was to meet in the middle.

Helen’s big question: would this ever work at Cambridge? Yes, it’s hard to get things done here, but there’s also a huge amount of goodwill and expertise.  Helen wants to begin with the supervisor—i.e. the person marking the essays—and then join up with the other professions.  It’s about information literacy through the teaching, and not instead of or alongside it. 

There's no one way to deliver it--it needs to take account of professional and academic expertise, as well as staff- and student-led delivery.  Recommendations and resources for ANCIL in colleges, faculties and in general, are being worked on [HM: all these resources are available on the interwebs on the wiki]. The task is ongoing, incredibly collaborative (these people want some feedback, readers!)—and sounds pretty amazing.

12.09

And at this point one Dr Emma Coonan takes centre stage.  I don’t believe she needs any introduction! (OK, OK, in interests of fairness: Emma is Research Skills and Development Librarian at Cambridge University Library)

Did you know: in Cambridge we don’t have an institutional commitment to information literacy.  Some people don't even know what it is.  There’s nothing, at an institutional level, to support or resource this, despite a huge level of overlap between the strands and the Teaching and Learning Strategy of the university.  Emma wants us to see this ignorance as a challenge and an opportunity.  The advent of increased fees and changing student expectations (prediction: students wanting more visible support in their learning)—gives us the chance to make something holistic and transferable, which isn’t just library training, but equips students with the capability of generating their own strategies for dealing with new information contexts—like when they leave university and go out and get a job.

Emma is now daring us to create our own information literacy strategy—and then to implement it. Right now. No, seriously, this actual second. The glamorous audience are moving about as I type, getting themselves into little groups, (and in the spirit of the conference they’re taking the furniture with them too)…

12.19

They’re chatting away now…

12.28

The volume’s increasing…

12.31

Blimey, this lot’s getting rowdy…

12.35

Emma calls the groups to order [HM: slightly disappointed now that the groups haven’t been asked to adopt team names].

The big question: Do we think it’d be useful to have an institutional information literacy strategy?  An almost unanimous and resounding YES from the room. One person questions whether it’s fundamentally necessary—aren’t we doing good enough already? Of course, replies Emma, but that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve more.  It’s difficult, says another audience member, to disentangle information literacy from libraries, especially from the perspective of the people at the top—so can we think of another way of describing it? The same content, but a different nomenclature.  Another audience member asks about tying information literacy into admissions and graduate employment and further study—can we use an institutional strategy for information literacy to promote our students’ graduate prospects?  Someone else points out that there’s a measurable output, a selling point, to an institutional information literacy strategy, and it might be this that could persuade ‘senior management’ to support and resource this.  A trial, demonstrating conclusively that there are ostensible benefits and providing actual proof, is necessary, argues another audience member.

[HM: Get involved in the discussion in the comments section—hopefully I can chivy the speakers to respond…]

12.53

Audience participation draws to a close and our last, but by no means least, speaker is Katy Wrathall, formerly Project Manager on the Study Methods and Information Literacy Exemplars (SMILE) blended learning project with the University of Worcester, Imperial College London and Loughborough University. Katy’s role in the project was to look at implementation for strategies at higher education institutions other than Cambridge, and in particular she’s been focusing on the University of Worcester and University of York St John.

Katy used different methods to look at implementation of ANCIL: surveys at York St John, and interviews at Worcester. People really do want to work together, Katy found—we recognize our own expertise (as librarians), and that of other people—and collaboration is happening and it’s happening a lot. It’s also a good way for librarians to show off! ANCIL doesn’t just improve our institution, but other institutions as well.

Katy found that there was a need for space for interprofessional sharing of information literacy resources and very strongly promotes the wiki as a place for this kind of inter-institutional collaboration.

13.02

Right then, session’s over, tummies are rumbling and I want to be first in line for the sandwiches. Many many thanks to the brilliant speakers for an engaging and informative session and thanks to anyone who’s stuck with me for this long. Many thanks particularly to Emma for getting lots of information about the session to me beforehand. I’ll aim to correct mistakes and typos as soon as possible and make note of any official edits.

Ciao for now!

Useful links

New Curriculum blog: here (for ongoing updates and the like)

Wiki: here (for case studies and resources)

YouTube clip: here

Go Mobile!

We've developed a mobile site for this year's Conference:

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/libraries/conference2012/mobile.html

Admittedly the url is on the long side, but there are ways to get around that:

1. Scan this QR code to take you directly to the site (this code will also be available at the venue on the day)

 

2. Make the url into a shorter link with a service such as Bitly:  http://bit.ly/vywypa

3. Bookmark on your phone before you get there!

This is our first attempt at a mobile-friendly site so all feedback is very welcome. 

The Conference Blog... Aims and Ambitions

Welcome to the libraries@cambridge 2012 Conference Blog!

This is a space in which to gather and collate information from and about the Conference as quickly and as easily as possible.

Of course we already have the Conference website but:

• A. only libatcam staff can update this and,
• B. it can't be updated on the fly (well, not easily anyway).

Based on the above and also the fact that you can't be in 3 places at once, we aim to document this year's parallel sessions here. We have invited 3 Guest bloggers: Katie Birkwood, Ange Fitzpatrick, and Helen Murphy , who have kindly offered to give up their time during the Conference, to write about what they hear and see in the parallel sessions. They will be aiming to get their blog posts up as soon as possible after the sessions to allow others to 'take part' as best they can.

The blog also intends to aggregate social media related to the Conference. As you can see, we've added gadgets to pull in photos from the libatcam Flickr photostream and a widget that searches for the #lac12 twitter hashtag. #lac12 tweets will also be archived on Twapper keeper.

You can view the blog on mobile devices so you can keep fully up to date during the Conference and we are also working on a quick reference mobile site containing all the practical information you will need throughout the day. This will be advertised as soon as it is ready.

We look forward to keeping you updated and thanks for reading!