Information Literacy as a graduate attribute: Are employers getting a good deal?

This event was a University of West London (UWL) event focusing on information literacy and its relationship to graduate attributes. Graduate attributes are qualities that a university aims for graduates to obtain (many universities have explicit lists of these expected qualities) and tend to be linked explicitly to the employability of students. With employability high on the agenda at universities I think most university libraries are keen to make sure that the value of information literate graduates is reflected in such discussions, so we were all eager to find out more.

Transport issues meant that I missed the introductory talks from the University of West London, but arrived in time for Ruth Stubbings’ talk. She got us all thinking about both the small and big picture of information literacy: what it meant to us personally, and then how it should be seen more globally. In the context of this event her broad perspective seemed very relevant, particularly her discussion of who ‘owns’ information literacy: practically I felt this was currently librarians, but the consensus was that this should be much wider, with discussion focusing on how information literacy could be ‘quality assured’ at governmental level.

Next up was Marc Forster, discussing information literacy as a graduate attribute in the context of nursing. Nursing is a profession with a heavy focus on evidence-based practice, with nurses needing to find up-to-date information on health. He had worked on a standalone module in UWL’s virtual learning environment, which is supported by nursing tutors (as first point of help) with Marc advising those tutors. Marc will be evaluating the course as part of his PhD on the experience of information literacy by nurses, the results of which I’m sure will be interesting reading.

Jason Eyre then discussed a project he’d been doing with information literacy in social work (another discipline with a focus on evidence-based practice). Jason had worked with key stakeholders in De Montfort University’s social work course to establish a mediated discussion board, intending to facilitate conversation between students (on placements and thus crossing student and practitioner boundaries), practitioners, the department, and the library. Although the discussion board received limited use, it’s development and evaluation allowed him to gather a whole range of data students’ experience of information behaviours. A particularly interesting finding was that while the academic environment encouraged written, formal and critical information seeking, the practitioner environment used verbal, informal information seeking, with a strong respect for authority. Jason concluded that ‘authentic’ tasks were needed, and that students needed to be supported in developing criticality as a verbal skill, to allow transition of evidence-based practice from the academic to practitioner environment.

The last talk was from Jo Lozinska from the University of West London’s Careers section spoke about trying to help students articulate and communicate the skills that they gained at university. She went through some application forms for graduate jobs, picking out areas where they had to demonstrate information skills, particularly problem solving and decision making skills. It was very interesting to see information literacy discussed in this context and to see someone from the ‘other side’ making these connections.

Finally, we split into groups to discuss whether we needed to reassess our information literacy teaching to make them relevant when students became graduates (short answer: yes!) and some of the issues around this. Key needs identified included making sure that the library, student development and careers gave out a consistent message.

This was a timely session with some highly thought-provoking presentations. I think my strongest resolution is to make more of an effort to think about the employment context that students will be (or, for professional courses, are) experiencing: how the information literacy support I provide will translate into that context, and how I can improve the likelihood of that translation.

Top 10 LRA Items for December 2011

Here are the most accessed articles on the LRA for the month of December 2011.

1. The BIOMASS mission: Mapping global forest biomass to better understand the terrestrial carbon cycle (Le Toan, T. et al)
2. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond)
3. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Sandell, Richard)
4. Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa (Ndako, Umar Bida)
5. Optimal Number of Response Categories in Rating Scales: Reliability, Validity, Discriminating Power, and Respondent Preferences (Preston, Carolyn C. et al)
6. The List of Threatening Experiences: a subset of 12 life event categories with considerable long-term contextual threat (Brugha, Traolach S. et al)
7. Measuring the efficiency of European airlines: an application of DEA and Tobit Analysis (Fethi, Meryem Duygun et al)
8. The Introduction of Virtual Learning Environment e-Learning Technology at a Sixth Form College: A Case Study (Osadiya, Taye Timothy)
9. Educational Leadership: an Islamic perspective (Shah, Saeeda J.A.)
10. Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ (Madge, Clare et al)

Deposit to LRA now via IRIS

As many readers will be aware over the past year the LRA team has been working with the Research Office and ITS to integrate Leicester Research Archive more closely with central systems; in particular the IRIS research information management platform.  As of late December this has now gone live - which means all non-thesis deposits of publications now need to go via IRIS; rather than being emailed to the LRA team as in the past.

Hopefully this will make it much easier for authors to check what they have/haven’t deposited as of yet; as well as for the LRA team too.  There is a guide to the process available from the Library webpages, which we’ll be updating over the coming weeks with answers to any FAQs that we receive.

If you do have any particular questions – either comment here or drop a line to me or my team and we’ll do our best to answer!

Heron User Group Meeting

I recently attended, along with my colleague Rob, the 25^th Heron User Group Meeting at King’s College London.

The programme sat well with me as I am currently dividing my time between my usual Copyright Administrator activities and managing a JISC funded digitisation and OER project ‘Manufacturing Pasts’.

The presentations from Jane Secker (LSE), Donya Rowan (Derby) and June Hedges (UCL) about their recent OER projects activities and findings were therefore very interesting, and in many ways they encountered the same 3^rd party © issues as I did as IPR Administrator for the Phase 1 OTTER project.  In speaking about her work on the OSTRICH project, I was pleased to hear Donya mention OTTER, and see that she found my ‘Copyright and OERs: Do’s and Don’ts’ factsheet useful when assessing/clearing material.  It was good to see Derby’s adaptation of OTTER CORRE process model too.

In was very pleasantly surprised to hear June talking her success in empowering contributors to risk assess their own materials before their release as OERs.  By asking them to list content they weren’t sure about, and discard anything that wasn’t integral to their materials, the outcome was a minimal amount of 3^rd party © requiring clearance.  Whilst this was music to my ears I’m not sure whether it’s possible to roll this approach out institution wide.  As Copyright Administrator part of my role is to educate module writers about the legalities of including 3^rd party material, and alternative sources of © cleared materials, but the one thing I can’t do is give them more time to stop and check their materials.

Following on from this the CLA very bravely stepped up to answer questions from the floor.  Sarah Brear confirmed that the CLA hoped to have a new licence agreed for the next academic year, and confirmed that the USA lookup tool was still in it early stages, but the intention was to roll it out to other territories once it was up and working properly.  There was also a request for the CLA to release anonymised photocopying data, which Sarah promised to look into.

During the afternoon George gave a presentation on Heron’s Packtracker software, which we started using earlier this year.  Although we knew the basics, it was very helpful to see some of the areas we don’t currently use fleshed out, so both Rob and I picked up a number of potential ways to streamline our processes, which we hope to put into practice shortly!

Top LRA Items for November 2011

Here are the most accessed items on the LRA in November 2011

1. Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa Ndako, Umar Bida
2. High Performance Work Practices: Work Intensification or ‘Win-win’? Sparham, Eimer et al
3. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths Sim, Chow Yen Desmond
4. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change Sandell, Richard
5. Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ Madge, Clare et al
6. Ethics and Plagiarism – helping undergraduates write right Willmott, Christopher J.R. et al
7. Introducing undergraduate students to scientific reports Willmott, Christopher J.R. et al
8. The List of Threatening Experiences: a subset of 12 life event categories with considerable long-term contextual threat Brugha, Traolach S. et al
9. Measuring the efficiency of European airlines: an application of DEA and Tobit Analysis Fethi, Meryem Duygun et al
10. Optimal Number of Response Categories in Rating Scales: Reliability, Validity, Discriminating Power, and Respondent Preferences Preston, Carolyn C. et al

An interesting split with the top half of the table being mainstays from recent months, but with the lower half all being new materials. Notably the articles by Chris Willmott (et al) had been actively marketed by the academic this month, with links back to the LRA as the primary access route. Notably, fewer theses than in recent months are also seen in the table.

Don’t forget you can follow all the new additions to the LRA on twitter – UoLLRA.

Social media and networking – my friend or my foe?

Yesterday, while some folks were otherwise engaged, I was teaching the first version of our new staff development course Social Media Friend or Foe?: Navigating the Legal Minefield Successfully.  As regular readers will remember I flagged up a few months back that myself and Tania Rowlett the Copyright Administrator had been asked by the Staff Development Office to run this course.  At first we thought this might be a simple amplification of some elements from our popular Copyright for Academic Modules session, but it rapidly became clear that this wasn’t going to work.

It does rather seem that over the past three weeks I’ve done little else other than eat, sleep and breathe Web 2.0 copyright (although strangely my diary seems to indicate I’ve done a heck of lot of other things as well).  My especial thanks to Tania who has had to put up with me constantly appearing at her desk to help me clarify a point and provide a lot of guidance into the structure and content of the course.  I can say that it has been a challenging but deeply interesting exercise, trying to distill down the wisdom of others into a bite sized course.  I did slightly jokingly suggest to Tania that each of our slides could last an hour if we really got into the details – but as our intention was to really flag up the various risks, and ways around them that wasn’t likely to be a working format.

In the end the session and the slightly-longer-than-I-intended-booklet did come together well enough for a furst run through.  I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to offer this session again in the new year with a few more delegates, as from the feedback those in attendance found it well worth their while.  I can exclusively reveal that I’ve already sketched out a number of revisions to the 2.0 version of the session, more interaction, more case study elements and hopefully even more quality content.  Although that’s going to push the session length up to a good 3hrs (the v1.0 was 2hrs and felt a bit rushed at times as a result).

As normal we’ve made the materials for the session available on the Copyright webpages for consultation, and continue to welcome feedback and comments from anyone working with or in the social media/networking field.

Research data management

Yesterday I attended a meeting of the University Science and Technology Librarians’ Group in Cambridge, on the subject of Data Management.   

Research data management is an essential skill for researchers.   What data do they delete?   What do they back up and how?   Who will be able to access the data when they have left the University?   What counts as “data”?    How can they store and structure the data?   A horror story was told in which someone left computer equipment containing five years of PhD data in the pub, with no backup…

Two papers looked at projects in the area of data management training.   Incremental produced training material available at www.lib.cam.ac.uk/dataman.  DaMSSI used the Sconul 7 Pillars and Vitae Researcher Development Framework to develop a skills framework for training.  There is more information at www.tinyurl.com/DaMSSI-DCC and www.tinyurl.com/DaMSSI-RIN.   DaMSSI also produced career profiles, to show the relevance of data management skills to a range of scientific careers.

Yvonne Nobis of Cambridge University described interesting research undertaken at Cambridge.     There are projects at Cambridge where people from different areas work together – the Pathgrid project, for example, uses image analysis software developed by astronomers to analyse pathology slides.   This came about because of a conversation over lunch.   Are there any formal mechanisms for helping this happen?  The research aimed to discover whether potentially useful software developed for one purpose was shared with or discovered by people in other disciplines.     It looked at physics and at bioinformatics.   Interviews conducted for the research indicated that some researchers were involved in writing code from scratch because they did not know that someone had already written what they needed.    At the same time, it uncovered reasons why researchers did not share code they had written – these included not wanting requests for support, errors being uncovered, and problems getting recognition for your work if it was useful outside of your field.   The argument was well made that as research data these days is often derived from other data, using software, that software is a research output that should be made available alongside the data itself. 

What is the role of the library in data management and in curating software?   It was suggested that libraries are seen as the people who deal with information, and so it falls within our remit.  It was further suggested that we might help by running training and producing training materials, by facilitating a workflow to make software discoverable, and by devising ontologies (the JISC-SWOP project has done this, in fact).

I can see the argument here, although I can also see that the subject falls within others’ remit as well.  I wonder what is already on offer at Leicester from IT Services, Research Support Office, from College doctoral training programmes and the Skills for the Professional Researcher training, and from departments.    That would be interesting to know, and perhaps help us to decide if we do have a role, in coordinating existing provision or offering new training.  

On another matter I have offered to write a short piece for the Health Libraries Group Newsletter to publicise USTLG to health and medical librarians who find themselves looking after science.   One colleague present yesterday was a medical librarian who had added science to her portfolio.

DREaMing of a Library and Information Science research network

Last week I attended the first workshop of the AHRC-funded DREaM project. DREaM stands for ‘Developing Research Excellence and Methods’ and the project aims to create a network of Library and Information Science researchers across the UK. As an academic librarian with a research background I’m very enthusiastic about the potential for research to improve our practice, and I was delighted to be given a new professional’s travel bursary by the DREaM project, and to have my attendance supported by the Library. In return for my support from Leicester, I’ve been asked to think about how the methods discussed in each workshop might contribute to better understanding the community our academic library serves, and improving our services.

The DREaM workshops are being very thoroughly documented by the team running them: both slides and videos of the presentations are available at the Workshop 1 webpage. I’ll link to, rather than replicate, that content, and focus on my personal thoughts about each method from my own practitioner-researcher perspective.

Introduction to ethnography – Dr Paul Lynch
Ethnography is an approach used to understand culture, usually through immersion within that culture. Better understanding the culture of academic library users, students and staff, is clearly key to improving our service. My MA Librarianship dissertation used ethnographic interviews to look at how students viewed and understood library space, and I think there’s a lot more to be done on understanding how students use and want to use libraries.

In the workshop, Paul Lynch discussed the dual role of the ethnographer – as insider (participant in a culture) and outsider (observer of a culture). I suspect my ability to produce an ethnography of library users is limited by my increased distance from both student and academic roles, so this method may be out for me.

Introduction to social network analysis – Dr Louise Cooke
Social network analysis looks at the networks which exist within groups, and patterns in links between individuals, by asking members of a group to report on their own relationships. During the workshop I could immediately see the relevance of this method to my own work: a major part of my role is acting as liaison between the Library and academic departments, and recording the existence and nature of links between librarians and academic staff would be absolutely fascinating.

I could never use this method with my own departmental contacts: asking individuals to report on their relationships with yourself would be ethically unsound (and probably produce inaccurate results!) However, there is clearly potential to apply this technique elsewhere within the university: perhaps looking at networks between librarians, other academic support staff, and lecturer / researchers within one of the Colleges I don’t directly support.

Introduction to discourse analysis - Professor Andy McKinlay
Discourse analysis is a technique for analysing gathered data, rather than a method for gathering data itself. It involves analysis of what people say (or write) through understanding of the context in which it is said: the social norms embedded in that context, and how language is used to construct a way of seeing the world.

There’s clearly expectations, norms and values implicit in how users talk about the Library. One of the most common comments at from students walking into the David Wilson for the first time is ‘Where are all the books?’ I think that one sentence (and all its implicit assumptions about libraries) could keep a discourse analyst going for days! I could see focus groups, or even analysis of how students describe the Library to each other, on- and off-line, as a really useful way to surface these concepts, and work with, or think about changing them.

Unconference and ethics discussion
The workshop also included bonus research-related sections. In the middle of the day, an unconference session encouraged us to discuss what we wished: I outed myself as a methodological pluralist (i.e. one who believes there is no one best method for studying the world, and has dabbled in several!) and learned about the research interests and priorities of others in our emerging network. At the end of the day, Professor Charles Oppenheim led a section in which we debated ethics in a number of research-related scenarios.

Both these additional sessions really got me thinking about my role as a practitioner-researcher. There are a limited number of participants with dual roles in the DREaM network, but plenty of participants who have been on both sides of the divide at different times in their careers. I think there are lots of interesting discussions to be had about how practitioners use and carry out research, and I look forward to these workshops starting a few. Perhaps we can even kick off here: I’d be pleased to get feedback on some of my suggestions so far…

Copyright and reusing objects in the social world

Myself and my trusty Copyright specialist Tania have been tagged to run a course in late November looking at the copyright implications of using social media.  Entitled “Social Media – friend or foe: Navigating the legal minefield successfully” it follows on from a segment we included in last year’s Copyright for Academics workshops we delivered through staff development.  While I think it’s an exciting and timely topic to address, it’s a bit daunting to try and pull the right guidance together.

In many respects personally I don’t want to stifle the use of and reuse of material in the social online world; but obviously we want to make people aware of the risks and especially how they can mollify them.  I’m already reaching out to a few local experts to pick their brains on sources, references and generally for suggestions for content; but obviously I’d welcome further discussions with any one on this topic.

While I suspect our probable overall line will be along the lines of “Know the risks, and play carefully” it would be nice to make the content a bit richer than that.  Given that we’ve got two hours to fill.

Top LRA Items for September 2011

Here they are, the most heavily accessed articles on the LRA from the past month (and with a newly added article topping the list as well).

1. Reflective Social Portfolios for Feedback and Peer Mentoring (Cann, Alan James et al)
2. Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa (Ndako, Umar Bida)
3. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond)
4. High Performance Work Practices: Work Intensification or ‘Win-win’? (Sparham, Eimer et al)
5. Optimal Number of Response Categories in Rating Scales: Reliability, Validity, Discriminating Power, and Respondent Preferences (Preston, Carolyn C. et al)
6. Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ (Madge, Clare et al)
7. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Sandell, Richard)
8. The electrodeposition of composite materials using deep eutectic solvents (El ttaib, Khalid)
9. Creative industries and cultural development: still a Janus face? (Gibson, Lisanne)
10. Measuring the efficiency of European airlines: an application of DEA and Tobit Analysis (Fethi, Meryem Duygun et al)

And don’t forget you can follow all the new additions to the LRA on twitter – UoLLRA.

LRA: Top research items for August 2011

As always here’s the summary of the top accessed items on the LRA for the month of August 2011:

1. Fault Tolerant Sliding Mode Control Schemes With Aerospace Applications (Alwi, Halim)

• The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond)
• Systematic Development of a Limited Authority Flight Control System for Helicopters (Nair, Arun)
• Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa (Ndako, Umar Bida)
• Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ (Madge, Clare et al)
• Optimal Number of Response Categories in Rating Scales: Reliability, Validity, Discriminating Power, and Respondent Preferences (Preston, Carolyn C. et al)
• Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Sandell, Richard)
• High Performance Work Practices: Work Intensification or ‘Win-win’? (Sparham, Eimer et al)
• Pedagogical models for podcasts in higher education (Edirisingha, Palitha et al)
• Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care (Pitchforth, Emma et al)

Distance Learning Postal Loan Limits – survey results

A few weeks ago I asked the UK educational library community some questions about levels of postal loans that they mail out to their students from stock. 35 individuals responded on behalf of their institutions and as such this is by no means a comprehensive survey, but merely indicative of the trends in postal loans as evidenced by the responding institutions.  As promised here are the results of that work – my grateful thanks to all those people whom took the time to respond to my survey!

For contrast to the national picture you can read about University of Leicester’s service here.

Do you post items from library stock?

Response	Percentage
Yes: UK based users only	51%
Yes: Overseas based users only	0%
Yes: All distance learners	23%
Yes: UK and Ireland	4%
Yes: Part-time students/anyone who has difficulty accessing the library	5%
Yes: Any student off campus (not just DL)	2%
Yes: BFPO addresses	5%
No	9%

Do all categories of users have the same limits?

Response	Percentage
Yes: All users have the same limits	37%
No: Limits vary by course level	40%
No limits	17%
N/a	3%
No: Limited to p/t DL students only	3%

What is the maximum number of items a distance learner may have on postal loan at any one time?

Response	Percentage
2 items (shipped at any one time), unlimited**	3%
3 items (shipped at any one time), unlimited**	3%
5 items max	6%
8 items max	6%
10 items max	3%
12 items max	12%
13 items max	3%
15 items max	12%
20 items max	3%
Unlimited (to normal borrowing quota)	44%
N/a	6%

**Values not included in Unlimited percentage

There is some variance hidden in the unlimited figure, due to the maximum number of loans varying by degree level for most institutions.  Many of those reporting an unlimited level of postal loans commented that few users took advantage of it; due the cost of returning items.  For some institutions this made a potential ceiling of 40 items on postal loan per user at any one time (ResPG students). The single institution that set a ceiling of 10 books for postal loan applies a £5 per item charge any items over and above this level.

How closely are any loan limits applied?

Response	Percentage
Strictly (virtually no exceptions)	61%
Broadly (limited exceptions above normal level)	19%
Flexibly (limits are guidelines only)	3%
No limits	16%

 Other comments

Additional comments were received from respondents amplifying the information they had given.  The following are selected highlights.

• A number of respondents noted that the service was a lowly used one, and hence their loan ceiling was set generously high.  However, at least one noted that were the service to take off more that they would struggle to staff it with their current resource.
• A number of institutions (4 in the sample) noted making a charge for the loan to cover postage costs.  Some have a flat rate, while others make a variable charge depending on where in the world it is being sent. Rates of between £1.40 to £5 per loaned item were quoted.  One institution offers a discounted rate where items are bundled, while another charges strictly on a per item basis.
• Most, that noted it, pay for the outgoing postage and expect the student to pay the return costs.  One institution commented that departments are liable for the outgoing postage charges, and the students for the return.  Another noted that students themselves were liable for outgoing and return charges.
• Many of the respondents noted a photocopy from stock supply service or scan to email service operated alongside their postal loan service.  Only one institution noted an active policy of eBook purchasing for distance learning students through faculty librarians encouraging academics to purchase these in preference to the print.

Key findings

From the sample it is possible to conclude:

• The majority (91%) do post items from stock, mainly to distance learning students.
• The modal value for postal loans is at an unlimited level, up to the maximum allowed by degree level.
• UK based students (85%) are more likely to have a postal loan service than overseas students (37%).
• Most institutions impose limits (80%) on the number of items postal loaned.
• Some student loan limits (43%) vary by course level (PG/UG) or type (P/T or F/T).
• Most institutions adhere closely to their postal loan limits (96% of those with limits).
• A small number of institutions charge for the service, or make students or departments liable for outgoing postal loans.
• The majority cover outgoing postal costs but expect students to cover payment for the return shipping.
• Other supply services (photocopy, emailed PDFs and eBooks) operate in partnership with postal loan services at most institutions.