What I've been reading in November

Google

Lane Wilkinson, Life after Google (Start of a 3 month experiment to not use any Google products for 3 months)

Phil Bradley, Google Verbatim tool (searches Google for what you actually asked it for)

eBooks

Andy Woodworth, The Amazon Lending Library is NOT the Library Apocalypse 

Jessamyn West & Dan Smith, The Kindle lending experience from a patron's perspective "a wolf in book's clothing"

Save Libraries

Benedicte Page, Campaign against library closures has scored a vital victory

Lauren Smith, DMBC Must Take Equalities Duties Seriously

Gamificationj

Cathy Foster, My Library Induction Recipe (bringing games into school library inductions)

Niamh O'Donovan, Library Scavenger Hunt

Cataloguing

Céline Carty, Training the Cataloguing Trainer: Interesting Conversations on Twitter, Part 1

Freedom of Speech

Ian Clark, Blog comments: to censure or not to censure? 

Ian Clark, A classic case of playing the victim

Simon Barron, Freedom of Speech 2.0

Misc.

David Lankes, Beyond the Bullet Points: Don't be the Mud 

Seattle Central Library by Thomas Hawk on Flickr

 

What I've been reading in October

Save Libraries

Peter Walker and Alison Flood, High Court Bid to Halt Library Closures Fails 

Lauren Smith, Just Another Liberal Whinger? (A brilliant response to this article by John McTernan) 

Alison Flood, Philip Pullman declares war against 'stupidity' of library closures

Voices for the Library, 22nd October 2011: Library Campaign Conference (includes full speech of Philip Pullman's speech) 

Library Camp

Paul Stainthorpe, Let them tweet cake: why Library Camp was unconferencing done right

Gaz Johnson, Camping

Saint Evelin, Library Camp: Call me Sarah if it makes things easier...

Presenting

Ned Potter, 5 Easy Ways to Create Fabulous Slides 

Ned Potter, Student Induction, Libraries, Prezi, and Interactive Maps

Digital Resources

Micah Vandegrift, The Digital Public Library of America

Dan Cohen, Digital Ephemera and the Calculus of Importance

eBooks and eReaders

Simon Barron, Why I got a Kindle

Ian Clark, Why I have not got a Kindle... (I'm considering buying something to read ebooks on - Kindle, Kobo or Android tablet - so Simon and Ian's posts came at a great time! Any other advice would be very much appreciated.)

Digital Divide

Ian Clark, Follow your dreams - but it will cost you

Mark Herring, Fool's Gold: Why the Internet is no Substitute for a Library (London: McFarland, 2007)

Jobs and Careers

#uklibchat, Summary: Thursday 22nd Sept 2011. LIS Jobs and Careers 

Simon Barron, Thoughts on Military Librarianship

Carley Deanus, My Graduate Trainee Year: On Reflection... 

Games and Gamification

 Gerard LeFond, Why Education Needs to Get It's Game On

by Cindiann on Flickr

#libcampuk11 session 1: Managing the Transition between School and University

The first session I went to was run by Jo Alcock and Jean Allen. This turned out to be the most formal session I went to during the day, and was extremely interesting (not to mention topical, as we are still doing induction tours for new students at the library at the moment).


As we took it in turns to introduce ourselves, we also said what we hoped to get out of the session. There were a mixture of Further and Higher Education librarians, as well as librarians from other sectors and library school students who had an interest in  learning more about this area. Induction tours were mentioned quite often, and there seemed to be a general feeling that FE librarians don't know enough about what goes on in HE and vice versa.


The discussion can be pretty much split up into problems and suggested solutions (of which there were lots, which is always nice!)


Problems:

• Students arrive at university with few or no research skills.
• Kids are often taught about the internet etc in primary schools and then at uni, but not in between.
• When information and research skills are taught they are often taught in a vacuum, not embedded into the curriculum (this is sometimes the fault of the librarian if they are too protective over their info skills sessions!)
• School curriculums don't make transferable skills explicit.
• Teachers in schools don't realise the value of a qualified librarian as a resource, as they're trying to meet grade targets and cover the curriculum they often don't think they have time for wider skills. 
• University students don't want to get lesson on induction when hungover - they only think about this when essay is due and they are in a panic!  However often induction is the only chance we'll get to hook them in.

Suggestions:

• Librarians, teachers and parents need to work together from the beginning - skills should be taught embedded in the curriculum not in a "library skills lesson". These are life skills.
• Not just library staff, but teachers and management should be on board.
• Librarians have to be in your face, WE CAN SAVE YOU TIME AND IMPROVE YOUR STUDENTS GRADES. Nab new teachers with cake and booze, get them on your side!
• Start with what is readily available i.e. Google advanced search as they will most often turn to Google anyway. Then use Google Scholar as a stepping stone to library resources.
• Practice inductions on local sixth form students. Encourage local schools to bring project groups into university libraries.
• Don't be precious about info lit training, encourage teachers and lecturers to deliver sessions, to embed in curriculum. (Emma Illingworth - this is being done at the University of Brighton)
• Sarah Barker - Interview with academic staff before start of term, what do you want from library? They usually say eresources, reading lists.
• Important not to assume everyone has access to PCs/internet at home. Also important to remember that nfo literacy includes the physical library, not just eresources.
• Children are only in schools for 15% of waking hours. Public libraries underpin whole process, beginning with BookStart.

Things to look at:

• Arcadia project by Emma Coonan and Jane Secker 'A new curriculum for information literacy'
• #sch2uni tag on twitter and delicious.
• School Library Association.