The criteria for judging were:
1. Sustained effort & team contribution
- contribution from whole team
- Minimum of a post on each of: team introduction; 7 Pillars; Information Universe; search tips; IL in context; Web 2.0
2. Are the posts relevant and interesting?
3. How good is the visual appearance of the blog? e.g.
- Can you read the text easily?
- Is it easy to find your way round the blog?
- Is the blog attractive to look at?
- Have they included visual elements?
4. Have the team used Blogger design & layout features? e.g.
- Have they included a list of links?
- Does it look like they have customised the blog layout?
- Have they included other Blogger widgets (e.g. page, followers, tag cloud, music)?
In week 11 we announced the results of the most popular poster at the Information Literacy in our future careers exhibition: Winner: Team M: Marc Muller, Brigette Lee, Foteini Karagianni, Chao Yu
An example of a comment on their poster was was: "Very creative approach - love the 'old-style cinema' theme and the black & white pics of the team! Integrated, clear, attractive poster". The poster is shown on the right.
Runners up: Team L: Jin He, Chuxiong Zeng, Jie Zhang, Jun Zhang Team A: Roisin Cassidy, Jayne Drew, Catherine Hoodless, Lynsey Shenton
The picture shows members of teams M, L and A after receiving their prizes.
Evaluation forms: Random draw: Luqing Zheng Best comments (special judges prize) Brigette Lee
The picture shows the two prize recipients
In week 9 you had a session from two of the librarians at Sheffield University: Vicky Grant, and Maria Mawson. Note that if this is a major interest for you, then the module Information Literacy Research will be relevant next semester.
There are a huge number of articles and resources about teaching information literacy, for those that are interested in this topic. A few examples are:
Individual assignment: a task for next week (week 11, 10 December)
You need to bring along an article which is relevant to you negotiated assignment topic. This article must be a research article i.e. it must contain a report of original research (so it should describe the research aims or question, the research methods, and findings and conclusions). You should have read the article beforehand. In class you will be evaluating the article.
You can increase your chances of finding a research article by e.g.
- Searching a source which contains large numbers of them (e.g. Emerald Library; Google Scholar; LISA)
- Using search features that restrict your search to research articles (e.g. on LISA you can just search for articles in “scholarly journals”; on Emerald you can search for “article type: Research paper” (a pull-down menu on the Advanced Search page)
- Where there is no such feature (e.g. on Google Scholar) adding words like “methodology” and “references” to your search(see example below)
You also may want to look at the optional reading for next week:
Booth, A. and Brice, A., eds. (2004) Evidence-Based Practice for Information Professionals: A Handbook. London: Facet.
Chapter 9, ‘Appraising the evidence’ is available online at http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/downloads/file/sample_chapters/481.pdf
I produced a 5 minute video about using advanced search on Emerald Insight (journal article collection which is strong in information and management/ marketing topics). The Emerald collection is at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ (log into MUSE before searching)
Many people have used Wikipedia, or equivalents in other countries. Also, many people have heard warnings about the quality of Wikipedia entries. You will be discussing an article about Wikipedia in week 7, in smaller seminar groups. This cartoon illustrates one problem that can occur (though obviously this problem of someone publishing an unchecked (untrue) "fact" in a reputable publication does not only happen with Wikipedia!
One thing you can do is to find out more about how Wikipedia works, and use all the parts of a Wikipedia page: not just the entry itself but the "View History" tab to see what changes have been made (you can also look at previous versions of the entry) and the "Talk" tab.
There are some features on Blogger itself that can be used for monitoring, so you could use these for your team blog. I made this video in 2011 showing two ways to add a feed from another blog onto your team blog. Once you have done this, links to the latest posts on your chosen blog appear on your blog. I’m afraid at the moment I’m not able to make a revised video, but the only changes since then are to do with how you find the page for editing the blog layout. Now (instead of clicking a tab at the top) you click on Layout, which is on the menu on the left hand side of the page.
In this video I firstly demonstrate adding an RSS feed from another blog, so that the latest few posts from that blog dispay on your blog, and then I demonstrate a way of adding a list of blog links.
If you look on this blog: I have used the first technique to add a feed of new articles from the Journal of Documentation (at the bottom of this page) and the second technique to add a list of the team blogs (on the right)
There will be a couple of posts about monitoring. This is part of the SCONUL 7 Pillars "gather" pillar. By monitoring, I mean keeping up to date with news, new articles, new books etc. A useful way to monitor blogs and journals that interest you (to be alerting to the latest posts or articles) is to use RSS. The little picture above is the symbol for RSS, so look out for that on journal and blog pages.
K12 Learning 2.0 (2012) explains that: “RSS is a special type of computer code that allows users to know automagically when new "stuff" is added to their favorite websites. ... RSS, which stands for Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication, allows web users to subscribe to multiple websites and have new content delivered to them automatically in one location, called an RSS reader. Instead of visiting each website to check for new information, the user simply checks his or her reader, which has collected and organized all of the new content using RSS.”
Go there to find out what Web 2.0 is, or look at the introductory powerpoint (on MOLE from Monday 4th)
If you are interested in using Netvibes yourself as a page for gathering links and feeds (which we won't cover in class) you might be interested in the presentation: Using Netvibes as a home page, by Phil Bradley:
It is important for people to respect the law concerning intellectual property, particularly if you are librarians or information managers! There is international agreement about copyright and related laws, and the World Intellectual Property Organization http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en is the organisation that aims to develop an international system that is fair to both creators and users of intellectual property.
They define intellectual property as:
"creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce." (WIPO, 2012) They identify two types of intellectual property: Industrial property (e.g. patents, trademarks) and copyright (e.g. literary and artistic works, which includes digital works). This also includes the rights that performers have in their performances (dance, theatre etc.)
Some principles are agreed internationally, and there is harmonisation, for example, within countries of the European Union (although even then there are some details of difference between EU countries). Sheffield University Library has a copyright guide http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/services/copymuch
The base line is that is generally illegal to copy things unless
- EITHER it specifically allowed by law (e.g. acknowledged quotations of up to a certain length are allowed for academic purposes or in reviews: "acknowledged" means there are quote marks and the source is clearly stated)
- OR the rights owner (author/creator) has said that it can be used. Creative Commons licenseshttp://creativecommons.org/ have made it much easier for an author of a digital work (article, video, photograph etc.) to say how their work can be used. There are a series of licences that you can use, ranging from "anyone can do anything with my work" to (for example) saying that people can use them privately, but must not publish them publicly or use them commercially. This is one of the presentations on the CC site on Sharing Creative Works: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Sharing_Creative_Works
"Derivative" works are works that change the original in some way (e.g. if you cropped a picture, or photoshopped it). Some people do not want their work altered, and since it is their intellectual property, they have the right to say you mustn't.
Flickr
When you search Flickr you can specify you want to be able legally to reuse the image. Scroll down to the bottom of this advanced search page http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/?
and you will see that you can "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content". They explain it clearly here: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
You will usually have to say who the creator of the photo is, and link back to the original photo on Flickr. Once you have found the picture you want you can copy the html code from Flickr to embed it in your blog. I did a 5 minute video showing you how to find an image you are allowed to use on Flickr and then embed it in a blog post:
Another way to generate the html code including a link to the author is to use this application: http://www.imagecodr.org/get.php
If you can't find what you want, then Phil Bradley has a list of search engines that search images and video: http://www.philb.com/mediaengines.htm (but some of them might consist mainly or entirely of images that you cannot legally reuse).
You already had a session from Alastair in week 2 (on Google etc. searching) and you will have a further session from him either last week (Groups 1 and 2) or this coming week (Groups 3 and 4)
What you need to do
Once you have had the 2nd session from the Alastair make an individual post on your team blog, listing one new thing you learnt about Google or database searching.
A few of you have had a lot of experience in libraries before joining the course: so if you were already a search engine/ database wizard when you came to Sheffield, just say what your best searching tip is. The kitten is waiting to hear about your tips! (photo taken today in Istanbul, where I am about to attend the European Conference on Information Literacy)
Here are some links to items on the initial reading list, and as mentioned in the Information Literacy presentation, plus a few more. If you are not sure where to start: look at the first video (below) which is 17 minutes long and Bonnie Cheuk's paper (the first article linked below) is a nice example of blending practice and theory of information literacy in a workplace.
- Herring, J.E. (2011). From school to work and from work to school: information environments and transferring information literacy practices. Information Research, 16(2). Retrieved 10 September 2013 from http://InformationR.net/ir/16-2/paper473.html
- Hoyer, J. (2011) Information is social: information literacy in context, Reference Services Review, 39(1), 10 - 23. Abstract
- Lloyd, A. (2005). Information literacy: different contexts, different concepts, different truths? Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 37 (2), 82-88. Abstract.
- Lloyd, A. (2009). Informing practice: information experiences of ambulance officers in training and on-road practice, Journal of Documentation, 65 (3), 396-419. Abstract
- Lloyd, A. (2004). Working (in)formation: conceptualizing information literacy in the workplace. In Proceedings of 3rd International Life Long Learning Conference, 13-16 June. (pp. 218-224). Rockhampton, Australia: Central Queensland University Press. Retrieved 14 October 2013 from http://acquire.cqu.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/cqu:1415
- Webber, S., Boon, S. and Johnston, B. (2005). A comparison of UK academics’ conceptions of information literacy in two disciplines: English and Marketing. Library and information research, 29 (93), 4-15. Retrieved 14 October 2013 from http://www.lirgjournal.org.uk/lir/ojs/index.php/lir/article/view/197/242
Information literacy in specific countries
- Dokphrom, P. (2013). Information Literacy of Undergraduate Students in Thailand: A Case of the Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University, Thailand. In M. Hepworth and G. Walton (eds.), Developing People’s Information Capabilities. (pp.111-126). London, England: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/books.htm?chapterid=17093192
Continuing and Professional Education and the University Libraries at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have teamed up to produce this video which outlines the concepts and practices of the Information Literacy Standards as defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).
Today we want you to start by looking at your partner team's blog and giving them some feedback. Aim to give at least:
- one comment which highlights something good about their blog
- one comment which points out a way they could improve their blog.
We will give you a little time to examine your partner team's blog, and note your comments. Then we will ask you to give each other feedback.
Today, please consider the following points, which are similar to the ones the tutors will consider when judging the best team blog:
How good is the visual appearance of the blog? e.g.
- Can you read the text easily?
- Is it easy to find your way round the blog?
- Is the blog attractive to look at?
- Have they included visual elements (pictures or videos), where appropriate, in the posts?
Have the team used Blogger design and layout features? e.g.
- Have they included a list of of links?
- Does it look like they have customised the blog layout to make it distinctive?
- Have they included other Blogger widgets (e.g. text box, followers, tag cloud)?
How much have they blogged?
- Have they done at least an introductory post, a post on the 7 Pillars, and posts on the Information Universe?
- Are the posts relevant and interesting?
- Has the whole team contributed to the blog, or do the posts seem just to be done by one person?
*Note with this section, please consider that some people are "beginner" bloggers, whilst others are more experienced. At this stage we do not expect perfect posts, but still we hope for the basic number of posts, and for more than one person to have blogged, so everyone gets a chance to learn blogging*
This is connected with the Present pillar of the SCONUL 7 Pillars of Information Literacy.
In either week 3 or week 4, you will have a session on The Information Universe with Sheila or Nigel. This class will focus on Information Resources. Understanding the different types of information resources and their relationships will help you to use information in your assessed coursework.
The preparation for the information universe session is as follows:
1. Think about a time when you needed to find information – for yourself or for others (for example, for a course assignment or a library enquiry). Make notes on the kinds of information that you used in that particular search.
2. Review your notes and identify the different types of reference resources or sources of information found. (By types of resources, we mean categories of material – such as “blog”, “directory”, “report” or “textbook” – not specific titles.)
This is not a competition, so you can discuss it among yourselves if you wish, but you must produce your own list of types of information resources. You can use your own words to describe the types of resource; there is not one particular list of types we want you to use.
3. Please post your list as an individual entry on your team blog, by the end of Monday, 14th October. As you are doing this outside class time, you may prefer for each person to post separately. However, each person should be posting to the team blog.
We shall be looking at examples from different blogs in the class. If you look on the main blog you will see there are links to a couple of examples from last year.
Ask Sheila Webber for help, if you are not sure how to post things to your blog. Sheila will be in the Regent Court lab RC-205 4.15-5pm on Monday 14th October for any last minute help with blog postings. There will also be time to look at team blogs in the week 3 session.
The SCONUL 7 Pillars model of Information Literacy gives you a framework for understanding areas of information handling that are important for academic study. The 7 Pillars model was first published in 1999, and it was revised in 2011. We will be using the revised version.
The SCONUL 7 Pillars model was developed by a group of British university librarians: SCONUL is the Society of College, National and University Libraries.
Post about the 7 Pillars and your team
The purposes of this exercise are to get you familiar with the 7 Pillars, and to start thinking about your own information literacy, and also to get to know each other further as a team.
Think individually 1) what is your strongest pillar? 2) What is your weakest pillar? 3) Can you think of a time when you were particularly information literate?
As a team, share your strongest/weakest pillars.
Write a team blog post on your blog. Discuss what you think are the team’s strongest Pillars and why (you don't have to mention your weakest pillars!), and give at least one example of being information literate.
1. One member of each team should set up a blog using their Sheffield University identity (logging into MUSE, clicking Google Mail, then selecting More, then clicking on Blogger, then creating a blog).
At this point you may have to sign up for Blogger. Everyone in the team needs to sign up to Blogger, as once your team blog is set up, all team members have to be invited in as authors.
2. Firstly, invite in all the other member of the team, using their Sheffield University email address. This is on tab Settings, Basic, Permissions.
If there is someone who doesn’t have a Sheffield University email address, then use another Google-identity email for now. If they are using another email address, they will have to sign into that email account to accept the invitation and log on. When they respond, upgrade them to admin status so they can change features of the blog.
3. Secondly, email Sheila (s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk) or just tell Sheila, what the web address and name of your blog is, so she can link to it from this main blog.
4. Customise your team blog’s appearance (Template and Layout)
Change the template first (Template tab)
Change the background picture
Try different typefaces and colours for the blog title, text etc.
Note that if you change your template, you lose any changes you made in Layout, so decide on the template first. However, it is ok to make changes to the font etc. of your template at any time.
In Layout arrange and add widgets
- - You must add a links gadget and include a link to this main Inf6350 blog, http://inf6350-2013.blogspot.co.uk/ and to the link of your partner team
- - If you have time add some more widgets e.g. a feed from another blog, a poll, features that allow people to subscribe to or follow your blog.
If you have yet more time, add a page (by selecting Pages, New Page) saying a bit more about your team
5. Post to your blog.
For your first group post, introduce yourselves
For your second group post, find another blog you like, and write a couple of sentences about it, with a link
6. Label your posts, so that later on you can find all the posts on the same topic. You describe the subject of the post with words and phrases. Click on Labels (right of screen) and click done when you have finished.
Crosby, C. (2010) Effective blogging for libraries. London, England: Facet.
Li, C. and Stromberg, C. (2007) The ROI of blogging. Retrieved 20 September 2013 from http://www.ieecho.com/pdfs/ROI-of-Blogging.pdf (A Forrester report on the Return on Investment of corporate blogging)
Liao, Q. et al. (2011) Enterprise blogging in a global context: comparing Chinese and American practices. CSCW ’11 Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer Supported Coperative Work, pp35-44. Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1958824.1958831
Potter, N. (2010) Everything you've ever wanted to know about library blogs and blogging! Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=783 (Includes “thewikiman’s” seminar materials)
Yardi, S. Golder, S. and Brzozowski, M. (2009). Blogging at work and the corporate attention economy. CHI '09 Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems ACM. Retrieved 20 September from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1519016
Blogging can also be a subject for your research. A number of Masters students in the Sheffield University iSchool have written Masters dissertations which include investigations of blogging e.g.
Wang, J. (2011) Use of blogging, social networking sites and microblogging for knowledge sharing, focusing on Information Management students in group work. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2010-11/External/JWang_100220696.pdf
This video shows you how to get from regent Court (where the iSchool is) to the lab in the Mappin Building which is the base class room for Inf6350 Information Resources and Information Literacy.
This blog is part of the Inf6350: Information Resources and Information Literacy module; Inf6350 for short. On the module outline we say that the module aims to enable students to:
- understand from both theoretical and practical perspectives the concepts of information literacy and information behaviour;
- understand the nature and function of different types and forms of information resources;
- develop their own information literacy and understanding of its application to their future lives; and
- develop specialised skills in searching for, evaluating and packaging information, by carrying out an indepth search and synthesising and presenting the results.
