Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Publications
  3. Publishing partners
  4. Facet Publishing
  5. Content Listing

Refine listing

Refine listing

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

5856 results in Facet Publishing

Page 199 of 293

  • 11 - Referencing in a 2.0 world

  • from PART 2 - CASE STUDIES
  • Edited by Peter Godwin, Jo Parker
  • Book:
    Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 119-124

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Referencing is part of an integrated approach to the digital and information literacy continuum that we are working on in our school and is a part of every assessment task. Let me put this into context. The Monte School is an independent Catholic secondary school in Sydney, Australia, with 1100 girls aged between 12 and 18. We work within the dual curricula of the New South Wales School Certificate and the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (MYP) for years 7–10 and offer the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IB DP) in addition to the New South Wales Higher School Certificate (HSC) in Years 11 and 12.

    We have been an International Baccalaureate (IB) school for five years and in this time the information literacy landscape has changed dramatically within our school. The need for absolute adherence to referencing systems has become apparent because IB DP assessment tasks are marked externally (all over the world) and the marking criteria award marks for accurate referencing. The other important factor in managing referencing is that we have recently become a ‘1:1’ school, with all students having their own Mac notebooks. This provides us both with opportunities, such as a guaranteed set-up for bibliographic tools on students’ computers, and also with an expectation that students will use their own computers to complete the tasks they are set.

    The school has had a school-wide referencing system for at least 10 years and in the past students were encouraged to use a computer program to create their bibliographies. We used a program called ‘Citation’ and recommended the Harvard method of referencing. However, we found that most databases we subscribed to didn't have a Harvard option for creating citations from articles. When we started looking for suitable tools we found that Harvard was often unsupported, so we chose to move to the similar APA (American Psychological Association) method.

    We use the ‘guided inquiry process’ to work through assessment tasks with students and have developed some strong partnerships with teachers (particularly in the senior years curriculum) which allow us to work in the ‘zones of intervention’ (intervention at critical points) with students working on extended assessment tasks for both the HSC and the IB DP. Helping students to develop referencing skills and showing them options for organizing resources is part of this process.

  • 20 - Information literacy: a path to the future

  • from PART 3 - WHAT IT MEANS FOR INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS
  • Edited by Peter Godwin, Jo Parker
  • Book:
    Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 229-240

  • Summary

    Introduction

    We can no longer think just in terms of 2.0. Its transformation into social media and merger with mobile devices require librarians to look right across the information landscape for the literacies that are required in the future. This has been a journey of discovery for me: for the first time many things have begun to make sense, and I want to share that vision with you. I hope that you last the whole journey and do not lapse into sleep and swerve dangerously into the ditch on the way!

    I believe we have to survey the whole information landscape if we are to understand the complex blend of literacies that we, as educators, and our students, as learners and 21st-century citizens, have to experience. Many writers have attempted to do this. As we go through some of these explorations we may see occasional shafts of light through the trees and clearings along the way, before we grasp that what we see keeps subtly changing and will always depend on the context.

    A confusion of literacies

    In recent years there have been a number of attempts to create maps of literacies, and this has sometimes implied that information literacy (IL) is no longer the central literacy for the 21st century. Twenty-first-century literacy is ‘the set of abilities and skills where aural, visual, and digital literacy overlap’ (New Media Consortium, 2005). As we have seen already, literacies can be divided into three main types: generic, situated and transforming. From the first type, Bawden (2001) traced a variety of skill-based literacies that fitted the requirements of the more varied information environment with its new technologies. This included the development of computer and, later, ICT literacy, which initially was frequently confused with IL. I will now briefly outline some of these literacies.

    Digital literacy (DL)

    This is ‘the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide variety of sources when it is presented via computers’ (Gilster, 1997). Gilster's view of DL went wider than the internet, which he saw as only one major digital source. It was more about literacy in the digital age. Discussions about IL and DL have not impinged much on the library practitioner (Bawden, 2001).

  • 6 - Informed learning in online environments: supporting the higher education curriculum beyond Web 2.0

  • from PART 1 - RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN INFORMATION LITERACY AND LIBRARY 2.0
  • Edited by Peter Godwin, Jo Parker
  • Book:
    Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 65-80

  • Summary

    Introduction

    As boundaries between physical and online learning spaces become increasingly blurred in higher education (HE), how can students gain the full benefit of Web 2.0 social media and mobile technologies for learning? How can we, as information professionals and educators, best support the information literacy (IL) learning needs of students who are universally mobile and Google focused? This chapter presents informed learning as a pedagogical construct with potential to support learning across the HE curriculum, for Web 2.0 and beyond.

    Informed learning (Bruce, 2008) responds flexibly to the dynamic information-learning environment of HE, embracing the opportunities of learning and teaching with new and emerging media. It supports a holistic learning approach whereby students consciously engage in a process of using information to learn specific content or practices. By promoting enquiry and problem solving, and the adoption of discipline- or context-specific knowledge and practices, it enables learners to develop the flexibility and confidence to use information in constantly evolving information environments. In this way, informed learning shifts the focus of IL education from mastering information skills to using information critically, ethically and creatively to learn within the wider context of students’ disciplinary learning.

    After outlining the principles of informed learning and how they may enrich the HE curriculum, we explain the role of library and information professionals in promoting informed learning for Web 2.0 and beyond. Then, by way of illustration, we describe recent experience at an American university where librarians simultaneously learned about and applied informed learning principles in reshaping the IL programme.

    Informed learning for the online-intensive HE information-learning environment

    The contemporary HE information-learning environment is online intensive and dispersed. Learners and educators are culturally and socially diverse and often physically remote from their institution's home campus. They have access to an ever-widening range of Web 2.0 resources from myriad international and local sources, way beyond the controlled environs of their institution's learning management systems (LMS) such as Blackboard and Moodle. Since Web 2.0 media are in a constant flux of evolution and extinction, students need to develop the confidence and flexibility to take the changes in their stride. However, while contemporary learners (of all ages) are increasingly IT savvy, they tend to demonstrate quite limited critical and strategic approaches and tend to rely on familiar, popular tools such as Google (Head and Eisenberg, 2010; Hughes, 2009; Lorenzo and Dziuban, 2006).

  • 8 - Practical cataloguing: bringing it all together

  • Anne Welsh, Sue Batley
  • Book:
    Practical Cataloguing
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 159-166

  • Summary

    When we first started to write this book, we thought that the gap in the market was for a text that would describe how to catalogue from start to finish, using the new cataloguing standard, RDA.

    In practice, RDA was not as close to implementation as we thought, and instead we have written a book about cataloguing standards in transition, and cataloguing practice, consequently, in flux.

    So what does practical cataloguing look like during this time of change? There were two surveys of cataloguer attitudes towards RDA in 2010, one on each side of the Atlantic, and they each asked slightly different questions.

    The North American survey conducted by Elaine Sanchez (Texas State University SanMarcos) attracted responses from 668 people, with 49.2% (326 respondents) working in college or university libraries and 22.5% (149 respondents) employed by public libraries (Sanchez, 2010). The survey attracted responses from all over the world, but less than 4% were from outside North America.

    Sanchez has said ‘I'm a cataloguer, not a surveydesigner or statistician’ and she invited others to perform secondary analysis on her data (Sanchez, 2011). As a nonstatistician, she collected data on one of the most difficult areas for people to describe – their feelings – asking the question ‘Please select the word or words that most closely match your personal feelings toward RDA’ and eliciting a response that showed ‘Uncertainty’ out in the lead, with 388 people selecting it as (one of) their emotion(s) (Figure 8.1 overleaf).

    Another interesting finding in this survey comes in response to the question ‘Please rate your knowledge of Cataloging on the Semantic Web, using the scale of 1–5, with 1 as the lowest:’ 1 “No ‘knowledge”’ and 5 as the highest ‘Expert knowledge’ (Figure 8.2). In the survey 258 respondents rated themselves at 1, while another 210 skipped the question.

    These two questions in Sanchez's survey have captured a snapshot of cataloguers who feel wary about change and underconfident in the knowledge needed to embrace that change.

  • 9 - The birth of RDA and the death of MARC?

  • Anne Welsh, Sue Batley
  • Book:
    Practical Cataloguing
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 167-172

  • Summary

    One of the challenges of writing this book has been incorporating the many changes that have occurred since we began work on it in 2008. It has been hard to establish when precisely might be the right moment to bring this book into the light. When exactly would we have enough information to know what an RDA record would really look like?

    Arguably, the right time would be once RDA has been implemented in a substantial number of libraries. What do we mean by ‘a substantial number’? Well, certainly more than the three libraries that at time of writing (Autumn 2011) have declared they adopted RDA in order to participate in the US National Tests, and will continue to use RDA, even ahead of the Library of Congress's own adoption of the standard.

    However, by the time that RDA becomes widespread, we could expect that a book like this one will not be needed. There is a genuine interest, across the cataloguing community, in how our practices and workflows might change. So we have written a book that reports on change and speculates on what will happen next.

    Since completing the first full draft of the book, the US National Tests have reported. This chapter summarizes the recommendations contained in the test reports and in the related review of the MARC standard that the Library of Congress announced in mid-2011.

    Testing resource description and access: final Recommendations

    The US national libraries carried out tests on RDA throughout 2011. The Library of Congress, National Agricultural Library and National Library of Medicine were the three lead testers, but an open call was made for volunteers throughout the USA, from which 23 institutions were selected to join the three national libraries, including OCLC Metadata and Contract Services, the University of Chicago, Stanford University, Columbia University, the Music Library Association/OLAC and Backstage Library Works. A full list of testers is provided on page 31 of the final test report (US RDA Test Coordinating Committee, 2011). There were also a large number of ‘informal testers’ – insti tutions that contributed data for analysis by the Test Coordinating Committee.

  • 3 - Bibliographic elements

  • Anne Welsh, Sue Batley
  • Book:
    Practical Cataloguing
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 17-48

  • Summary

    A bibliographic description, whether created using AACR2, RDA or any other set of cataloguing rules, is composed of a series of individual bibliographic elements. As well as telling the catalogue user the title of a work and who created it, for example, some of those elements specify and describe the physical manifestation of the item.

    This means that the publication format of the item being described influences the content of parts of the catalogue record. One of the primary drivers for the change in cataloguing standards is the proliferation of new physical storage media and eformats, which have led to challenges to accommodate them in bibliographic description.

    Format first

    Many of the issues encountered in AACR2 stem from its being based upon precomputer age principles (mainly to suit the card catalogue). Critics charge it with placing too much emphasis on publication format – and, indeed, following a general section that outlines general principles applicable to any and all formats (Part I1), the rest of Part I is taken up with rules relating to specific formats:

    1 General Rules for Description 1-1

    2 Books, Pamphlets, and Printed Sheets 2-1

    3 Cartographic Materials 3-1

    4 Manuscripts (Including Manuscript Collections) 4-1

    5 Music 5-1

    6 Sound Recordings 6-1

    7 Motion Pictures and Videorecordings 7-1

    8 Graphic Materials 8-1

    9 Electronic Resources 9-1

    10 ThreeDimensional Artefacts and Realia 10-1

    11 Microforms 11-1

    12 Continuing Resources 12-1

    13 Analysis 13-1

    (Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR, 2005)

    This structure means that before cataloguing an item we have to decide what format it takes, and then apply rules from the relevant sections of AACR2. For example, a paperback edition of the latest Dan Brown thriller is catalogued following I1 (General Rules) and I2 (Books, Pamphlets, and Printed Sheets), while the video of his first blockbuster, The Da Vinci Code, is catalogued following I1 and I7 (Motion Pictures and Videorecordings). Cataloguers quickly get into the habit of following this structure, which can be summed up as follow I1 (General Rules) except when you are instructed to do something else in a later, formatspecific section.

  • 17 - TeachMeet: librarians learning from each other

  • from PART 2 - CASE STUDIES
  • Edited by Peter Godwin, Jo Parker
  • Book:
    Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 191-202

  • Summary

    In summer 2010, Isla Kuhn, Reader Services Librarian at Cambridge University Medical Library, blogged about a particular type of event popular among school teachers, and wondered whether this ‘TeachMeet’ idea would be of interest to librarians (Kuhn, 2010). Several other librarians at the University of Cambridge responded enthusiastically and LibTeachMeet was born.

    So what is TeachMeet?

    First established in 2005 (Hallahan, 2010), TeachMeet is an ‘unconference’ organized by teachers, for teachers. These open, friendly and loosely structured events provide an opportunity for teachers to share classroom experiences and to learn from each other. The idea is that everyone is an active participant in the event – even those not presenting are ‘enthusiastic lurkers’, as opposed to passive ‘attendees’.

    TeachMeets are free to attend, but sponsorship may be sought to cover costs such as venue hire and provision of refreshments. The events themselves consist of seven-minute micro-presentations and two-minute nano-presentations. Presenters are encouraged to talk about a tool or technique they have tried themselves. Presentation topics are usually registered in advance using a wiki, but the order of speakers is selected at random on the day. There are no keynote speakers or sales pitches and participants are welcome to come and go throughout the presentations. Presentations can be in any style or format but the original TeachMeets encouraged the use of more imaginative presentation techniques than PowerPoint presentations.

    Why TeachMeet for librarians?

    Recent research undertaken on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Research by Design Ltd, 2010) found that 71% of information professionals use training skills and 50% use teaching skills in their current roles, while 63% expect to be using these skills a lot or a little more in 10 years’ time. Despite the evident importance of the educational role of the librarian, educational theory and teaching skills are not included as a compulsory component of many librarianship courses in the UK, so information professionals require alternative opportunities to develop these skills. Just as many teachers work on their own in their classrooms, many librarians teach in isolation, with little opportunity to share advice and experiences. Alternative methods of training and sharing are needed and this is where the TeachMeet model can help.

    TeachMeets are quick and cheap to organize, given the emphasis on informality, and offer a convenient opportunity to meet up with colleagues outside of expensive conferences or other large-scale training events.

  • 22 - Last word: information literacy beyond Library 2.0

  • from PART 3 - WHAT IT MEANS FOR INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS
  • Edited by Peter Godwin, Jo Parker
  • Book:
    Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 257-260

  • Summary

    Web 2.0 has become social media and is here to stay. The opening up of the web to everyone, and the authoring and sharing capabilities inherent in this, have been embraced by libraries. We may not be speaking about Library 2.0 any more, but the possibilities opened up for libraries have by no means been exhausted. Take-up has been variable and the opportunities for marketing have sometimes obscured the educational possibilities exemplified by IL.

    In the past, IL has too often been seen as a higher education (HE) concern. We should see it as a process, from childhood, through school, college, university and into lifelong learning. This only begins to make sense if we always view IL as conditioned by its context: the social conditions, the discipline and the language used within its discourse. IL is a social construct, and what it means to be information literate will vary according to the context. It will even vary according to the individuals within a group, because the participants will be creating their own meaning. The concept of informed learning (see Chapter 6) is helpful here because it explains how students can use information to learn, and then reflect upon their own learning. The curriculum can allow us to use information to develop individual and collective exploration of information, to enable learners to develop their own experience. It is no longer about rote learning, or being directive in terms of the ‘best’ way to do things: we do not write prescriptions, we encourage and guide.

    IL is not just for librarians: yet amongst librarians is mostly where it is discussed, and it is rarely discussed outside the library silo. Other players have actually been interested in IL for years, but they call it different things – critical thinking, workplace skills, learning to learn and so on. IL is far more than bibliographic instruction, user education or how to use a library. In our policy documents we may speak about IL, but in our marketing and delivery we adapt our language to suit the consumer. We need to take a broad view, work with colleagues from other departments and be as unafraid of veering into their territory as they often are when they venture into ours. IL is far bigger than librarians, but we are extremely well placed to help with the multifaceted challenge that is 21st-century IL.

  • 8 - Using games as treatments and creative triggers: a promising strategy for information literacy

  • from PART 2 - CASE STUDIES
  • Edited by Peter Godwin, Jo Parker
  • Book:
    Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 91-102

  • Summary

    Introduction

    How do librarians build creativity into information literacy (IL) and keep students engaged so that they learn and retain valuable, transferable IL skills? As teaching librarians, we should be exploring whether there are more creative IL teaching approaches that we can adopt in order to foster effective teaching and engagement, and to cultivate more opportunities for creative thinking about information-seeking concepts amongst students. Teaching librarians want to empower students with lifelong research skills, in a context where many higher education students are becoming more disengaged. Facilitating creativity and innovation is also now expected in the educational setting (Barrett and Donnelly, 2008).

    In this chapter, some dimensions of educational games will be explored. New game ideas, specifically designed for face-to-face IL sessions, will be presented, with an illustration showing games used with Irish nursing and midwifery students. Finally, the chapter will explore Library 2.0 and 3.0 initiatives that may assist teaching librarians to encourage the widespread adoption of IL games.

    The objective of this chapter is to prompt more teaching librarians to:

  • • become IL games advocates

  • • consider creating their own customized games for IL

  • • share and evolve their games and game-design skills for IL face-to-face sessions or smart learning environments, with the help of Library 2.0 and 3.0 initiatives

  • • use games to become leading innovative practitioners in higher education

  • and thus promote the value and expertise of librarians.

    • Games as educational treatments in IL

    This section will cover how games treat disengagement, trigger creativity and innovative thinking, cultivate effective learning and provide inherent benefits and retention and knowledge transfer properties. It will also detail some of the challenges in using games and the overall benefits of games for librarians and libraries.

    Games treat disengagement

    Librarians involved in IL delivery look to best practice in education so as to draw on pedagogical tools and solutions appropriate for IL. Student disengagement is a growing challenge in higher education generally, and with IL in particular. The new generation of students is characterized as having low boredom thresholds (Fink, 2003) and there is evidence that some lectures are ineffective, especially for these learners (Smith, 2007). As Barrett and Donnelly (2008) state: ‘Pedagogy should be focused on arousing student imagination and engagement.’ Games that have an educational intent provide a platform for active learning, where students can discover IL concepts in an engaging way.

  • 19 - Change has arrived at an iSchool library near you

  • from PART 3 - WHAT IT MEANS FOR INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS
  • Edited by Peter Godwin, Jo Parker
  • Book:
    Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 215-228

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Since the start of the third millennium, the educational services of a good school library have become more important than ever – this at a time when school librarians or teacher librarians have been warned of their irrelevance, with some school libraries also having been closed. At the centre of this misguided scenario are the changes brought about by technology and the digitization of our lives, online, on devices, in a variety of formats and in a socially networked world. Our students have been born into a digital era that is significantly changing their literacy and information encounters and the ways in which they can learn. Participative new media tools have altered the shape and experience of learning and provided school librarians in the changing learning environment with new skills, new tools and new ways of working with literacy, information literacy and digital fluency in Library 2.0 (O'Connell, 2008). The iPad and other mobile devices have changed school libraries forever. While we are not yet quite sure what the implications of these changes will be over the long term, the era of the iSchool library has definitely arrived. In the 21st century information ecology, the school library is evolving into a school-wide, future-oriented library service, sometimes described as the iCentre (Hough, 2011) or Learning Commons (Loertscher and Marcoux, 2010). In this new library, both physical and virtual spaces are being changed. Many schools (Corbett, 2011; Subel, 2007) have transformed the library's physical space into collaborative work areas or spaces for relaxation, designed for reading; information gathering, analysis and sharing; and media creation. With improved delivery of digital content for use in new flexible learning spaces, libraries are being purposefully designed to become active agents of learning.

    Our students now need help in navigating diverse information pathways within their personal and creative learning environments. They need a range of literature and information options, delivered to them via a variety of physical and virtual means – from books to all manner of media and digital objects – via a plethora of digital devices. They need to know how to juxtapose text, sound, media and social connections in real time, and how to filter, then mix and match what they see, hear and experience in order to build personal knowledge and understandings of the curriculum.

  • 7 - MARC 21

  • Anne Welsh, Sue Batley
  • Book:
    Practical Cataloguing
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 131-158

  • Summary

    What is MARC 21?

    The idea to use computers for cataloguing was developed by the Library of Congress from the 1950s. Various studies were carried out, resulting in the Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) project; from 1966 Library of Congress MARC data was sent out to 16 libraries on tape (Chan, 2007). A similar initiative took place in the UK under the auspices of the British National Bibliography, and such was the success on both sides of the Atlantic that in 1968 the projects came together to form the MARCII format, an attempt to produce a standard AngloAmerican format (Bowman, 2007).

    This attempt was only partially successful, and during the next 25 years over 50 different MARC formats developed across the world, including UKMARC and USMARC. Eventually, in 2001 the British Library ceased use and maintenance of the UKMARC format and adopted the harmonized US and Canadian format, MARC 21 (Bowman, 2007).

    Lois Mai Chan (2007) identifies five current types of MARC 21 formats:

  • • MARC 21 for bibliographic data

  • • MARC 21 for authority data

  • • MARC 21 for classification data

  • • MARC 21 for holdings data

  • • MARC 21 for community information.

    • We have already looked at MARC 21 for authority data. This chapter considers MARC 21 for bibliographic data, which is used by many libraries for their catalogue records.

    Essentially, MARC 21 for bibliographic data exists to provide a structure for catalogue records. The MARC 21 website describes it as a ‘communication format’ – it is a structure in which data from one computerized catalogue can be shared with another computerized catalogue.

    Catalogue format, not cataloguing code

    It is vital to understand that the MARC format provides the structure while other cataloguing codes provide the rules. Although the MARC website provides lots of useful examples, MARC 21 does not set out to be a cataloguing code. This is highlighted in the introduction to the format:

    The content of the data elements that comprise a MARC record is usually defined by standards outside the formats. Examples are the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), AngloAmerican Cataloguing Rules, Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), or other cataloging rules, subject thesauri, and classification schedules used by the organization that creates a record.

    This chapter is designed to be used alongside MARC 21's website and AACR2, which is still the main cataloguing code used in libraries.

  • 2 - Information literacy and Library 2.0: an update

  • from PART 1 - RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN INFORMATION LITERACY AND LIBRARY 2.0
  • Edited by Peter Godwin, Jo Parker
  • Book:
    Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 19-26

  • Summary

    We could easily have coined the phrase ‘Information Literacy 2.0’ when we wrote our first book. There was very little usage of this term at that time, but we have no regrets. To use such a label then would have threatened hours of creating a definition, satisfying no one! Since then, Špiranec and Zorica (2010) have interpreted Information Literacy 2.0 as a subset of information literacy (IL), and we shall return to this later. It was an exciting time, and I believe it was useful then to concentrate more on how the tools could be used to deliver IL. We could, however, have spent more time considering the effects it would have on what it meant to be information literate. That is the aim of this chapter!

    What is IL?

    In the past the seemingly endless debates about what information literacy is and whether it is a good label have been a huge bore. It is so easy to say that we must define something before we can do anything about it. Most practising librarians who are involved with educating their users just get on with it and don't agonize over the niceties. It concerns me that much of the research in IL never really permeates down to practitioners, not least because of the portentous language used in the name of scholarship to make it appear appropriately impressive. How many paradigm shifts have you read about? Should I be concerned about the ontological and epistemological positions of my praxis?! Julien and Williamson (2010) are similarly concerned about the disconnect between researchers and practitioners, but for rather different reasons. They are concerned that researchers criticize the IL standards approach but, with some exceptions, are not replacing it with anything based on sufficient observed behaviour.

    When necessary, we have to provide IL documentation for institutional learning and teaching plans or reviews, and these tend to refer to generally recognized frameworks like the Big Six or SCONUL Seven Pillars. This can be extremely useful to aid discussion and understanding among colleagues from outside the library. The danger is that they become the blueprint for our IL initiatives day by day. Such frameworks too easily become a series of tick-boxes for skills development. Markless (2009) questioned whether we should ‘continue to present students with generic IL frameworks, models and processes’: IL has always been more complex than this.

  • 14 - An online course on social media for student librarians: teaching the information skills and literacies of social media

  • from PART 2 - CASE STUDIES
  • Edited by Peter Godwin, Jo Parker
  • Book:
    Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 151-162

  • Summary

    Introduction

    [W]eb 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and social networking sites … have become important tools for equipping new library and information science (LIS) graduates with the competencies and skills that fit with the dynamic, changing information market.

    (Al-Daihani, 2010)

    This chapter describes the development of a new online course on social media offered by the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. The creation of a course on an information and communication technology (ICT) topic involves consideration of many theoretical, practical and structural matters, and it requires perseverance on the part of instructors with regard to devising content. Social media, and how library and information professionals use them to serve users, is a constantly shifting domain. The field itself is incredibly volatile. A few social media tools seem stable enough (think of Facebook, Wikipedia or Twitter), but generally speaking, new tools appear (and disappear) with regularity. Not surprisingly, it complicates the teaching of a subject when there is a lack of evidence and the components making up the whole landscape shift regularly. As a set of tools for learning, technology is rarely enough to ensure that learning will take place (Bawden et al., 2007). On the contrary, in teaching the use of specific tools, the instructor should emphasize skills and literacies over discrete tasks (Secker, 2008; Giustini, 2008).

    And so it is with social media. The two learning objectives that arose repeatedly in the development of this course were: 1) the importance of exposing students to new digital formats and channels of information on social networking sites; and 2) critiquing the use of social networking tools in the provision of information services. In addition, the course makes an effort to focus attention on assessing the quality, accuracy and relevance of information found through social media. Fortunately, developing content is an iterative, dynamic process – and with each new offering, the instructor has a chance to ‘get it right’. My chapter is a reflection on these scholarly matters and on what I have learned from teaching LIS students about social technologies.

  • 4 - Access points and headings

  • Anne Welsh, Sue Batley
  • Book:
    Practical Cataloguing
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2012, pp 49-82

  • Summary

    What are access points and why do we need them?

    When confronted for the first time with the phrase ‘access points’ you might think that you are being faced with a piece of modern cataloguing jargon. And you might be right.

    However, the phrase is indicating the concept of providing structured headings that the catalogue user can predict and, therefore, use to form successful search strategies – search strategies that retrieve the information they are seeking (and ideally only the information they are seeking).

    In its ‘Explanation of Key Terms’, RDA 5.1.4 states, ‘The term access point refers to a name and/or title, term, code, etc., under which information pertaining to a specific work will be found.’

    In other words, an access point is the catalogue user's route into the bibliographic record for the publication (book, CD, website and so on) she is seeking. More specifically, an access point is a specific piece of data that catalogue users can and should expect to provide them with a way into the bibliographic record.

    For example, if I am looking for Jane Eyre, I expect to be able to search under the title ‘Jane Eyre’ and find all the records in the catalogue for those books, film and TV adaptations, music scores and so on with the phrase ‘Jane Eyre’ in their title. In other words, I expect that knowing the title will give me access to the item's record. If I run a search for the title ‘Jane Eyre’ and nothing is returned, I may assume that the library does not have a copy of that book or film, or any other adaptation of Jane Eyre.

    ‘Every reader his book’

    This clearly relates the function of access points back to Ranganathan's Laws discussed in Chapter 1:

    Every book its reader.

    Every reader his book.

    (Ranganathan, 1957)

    In providing access points like title, author(s) and subject, we are essentially predicting the most common ways in which our catalogue users will want to search for an item and ensuring that when they search in these ways they will find the item they are looking for.

Page 199 of 293