Just a quick post – my event report from LILAC 2010 has now been published in the latest issue of Journal of Information Literacy – go directly to the article or view the journal issue. As always, there are some really interesting articles in the issue; I particularly enjoyed reading Jane Secker‘s article about information literacy education in US libraries (I had many interesting conversations about this at LILAC so was good to read about it from someone who has visited – I’d love to do that some time!).

Also, a brief mention about the publication process – as it is peer-reviewed and all handled online this was a new experience for me (previously I’ve mainly dealt with the process through e-mail communication with the editor). It seems to work well – there were a few issues with the system in that it doesn’t alert the reviewer/editor when updates have been made, but it wasn’t too arduous to send a quick email to let them know. I really liked the ability to track the progress of the article, and online storage certainly helped in terms of version control to ensure the most up-to-date copy is being used. I know this approach is used by a number of peer-reviewed journals now and I can certainly see why – I can also see the opportunity to use this sort of system for any document control which needs to go through a similar reviewing and updating process (project documentation, theses and dissertations, and dreaded reading lists!).

Anyway, enough about that – read the article if you’re interested in what LILAC 2010 was all about, and you may also wish to read my blog posts from LILAC. Hopefully it won’t be the last LILAC conference I attend; I really did get a lot of value from it and would recommend it to all researchers and practitioners interested in information literacy.

Tweet this

The day after the Librarians as Teachers event was a similarly themed event focusing on a different element of the librarian role – Librarian as Researcher.

I wasn’t able to attend this event, but I followed it via Twitter thanks to @LISResearch and @lenocsor. You can see the tweets in relation to the event at the TwapperKeeper archive. Obviously, I didn’t get the benefit of attending the day’s events but I did get a flavour for the discussions and could follow up links mentioned and view presentations online.

I’m a keen advocate of research, making evidence-based decisions wherever possible. I’m involved in my own research as a librarian (for work-based projects and to inform elements of my job role), and I also spend my free time researching areas of interest -sometimes for articles, presentations or blog posts; sometimes just to increase my understanding.

One of the things I was really impressed by at LILAC 2010 was the emphasis on research-informed information literacy teaching, using both existing research and conducting original research to help make decisions about the approach to teaching.

Commitment to research by librarians is something I’d love to see more of, but I think all too often it’s overlooked as other activities take priority. Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet this

So, as I may have mentioned (I think it’s taking over my life at the moment!), I’m currently writing my dissertation for my MSc Information and Library Studies course. I’ll be doing my research over summer, but in the meantime I’m actually writing it in the correct order rather than leaving the literature review until the end, which I may have been guilty of when writing my undergraduate dissertation (on gender stereotyping in sport, bit of a change of subject!). I’ve noticed during this process though, that it’s incredibly easy to get out of the habit of writing in a more academic style.

I initially set up this blog to record my studying progress, although it developed into something more reflective and practical. Most of my blog posts either report on events I’ve attended, discussions I’ve had, books/articles I’ve read, my experiences… etc. There is usually some reason to my blog posts (although I appreciate at times it may not seem like there is!), and I usually refer to these reasons throughout the post. Most of my posts refer to background information, although these are primarily other websites or blogs to allow ease of follow up for anyone reading the post. I do think that most of my thoughts emerge through consideration of research and evidence, and although in a practical sense my blog posts might not be as detailed as my assignments and I don’t always seek out the opposite point of view, I do generally try to consider other points of view to help develop my own.

As an academic librarian, I spend quite a lot of my time working on an enquiry desk (almost half of my working week!) helping others find research. I’ve learnt to use different databases and use different techniques when searching specific research databases or search engines. I’ve become pretty good at tracking down research, and knowing the best places to start researching different topics (although there’s always more to learn!). So once I’d finalised my dissertation topic (strategic marketing in academic libraries), I was able to go off and find loads of really useful research relating to lots of different aspects of my topic.

Now that’s it’s actually time to write all this research and knowledge I’ve learnt from it up as a literature review, I have to confess I’m struggling a little. It’s not that I find it particularly difficult (although there are times I struggle to get my head around some of the more complicated research analysis despite having a Statistics A Level!), but moreso that the style of writing just doesn’t come naturally to me anymore. I think my time blogging, writing reports at work, and short articles for journals had changed my writing style to be more practical in nature and less formal (I guess more like conversational English). I’m now having to pad out my writing with extra points which I probably wouldn’t usually if they don’t add a lot to the purpose of the article/report/blog post.

I know which I’d rather write, and I know which I’d rather read (give me practical, experienced based advice any day over purely theoretical information), but for academic purposes I have to adapt my writing to prove that yes, I do always research my sources and try to discover alternative points of view, and yes I can critically evaluate research.

I can see the importance of demonstrating these skills, but I’m really beginning to appreciate why I find it easier to blog than to write assignments – of course there is also the fact that I can blog about whatever I choose to, but mainly the issue for me is adapting my writing style to use language I wouldn’t ordinarily use and include more of the theoretical rather than a focus on practical and experience-based information. Don’t get me wrong, I do actually love researching and am really looking forward to starting my data collection for my dissertation, but I’d be a whole lot more enthusiastic if I could write it in a more informal, reflective way.

What do you think? Do you think we may see a shift in the future to more assessed work being written in a similar way to blogs, or is it important to ensure academic writing standards remain the same? Do you struggle to adapt your writing style or is it just me? Am I just lazy and need to kick myself into shape?! I do recognise the irony of procrastinating by writing a blog post about how I’m struggling to write my literature review – almost 800 words added to my blog, zero to my literature review! I’d appreciate other people’s thoughts on my ponderings though.

Tweet this

I’ve recently co-authored an article with Christine Rooney-Browne for Refer, the journal of the Information Services group of CILIP, which has now been published in the Autumn 2009 issue. Refer offer some of the material from their journal online at REFERplus, and our article is available in pdf format, please feel free to read and let myself or Christine know what you think.

The article, “Blogging: an opportunity to communicate, participate and collaborate on a global scale”, is written primarily for reference librarians, although the majority of the material is general in nature. It was an interesting article to write; much of the material we already knew through our research interests and the fact that we both already blog ourselves, but it was interesting to research further into blogging and particularly some of the blogs written by, or for, reference librarians. We found blogs used internally for teams of reference librarians to assist each other in their work on the reference desk, reference blogs written about library services for the general public, and I also mentioned a personal favourite of mine, Swiss Army Librarian, which features a “Reference Question of the Week” – I always enjoy reading the enquiries he has had and how he answered them.

The process of co-writing the article was a new thing for me – we used e-mail and a wiki to communicate, and bought it all together towards the end in a Word document. I’ve also been trying out Google Wave recently though (feel free to get in touch if you’d like to add me as a contact), and I imagine something like Wave would make it even easier in the future to collaborate in such ways. It was good to bring our different knowledge and interests together in the article and I’m really quite pleased with the result. Many thanks to Christine, whom it was a pleasure to work with.

Tweet this

The latest issue of CILIP West Midlands journal, Open Access, is a special edition on Web 2.0. It contains articles from librarians throughout the region,and I was pleased to be asked to contribute. The editor, David Viner, asked if I could write about professional networking using Web 2.0 tools and I was happy to oblige – a similar article from the viewpoint of Amelia Luzzi, an information professional currently working outside a library is also presented which gives an interesting comparison. There are also practical guides for using Web 2.0, overviews of Web 2.0 projects within the region, and a look at the Semantic Web and Web 3.0.

CILIP members living in the West Midlands will receive a print copy of Open Access soon with their CILIP Update, but it is also available online for anyone to read from today. You can visit the website (previous editions of Open Access are also available from the Issuu account), or view the embedded version on here (trying out a new plugin!). Comments on the issue are welcome, although you do need an Issuu account first.

Hope you enjoy the special edition, I found the other articles really interesting and it’s great to highlight work going on in the region.

Tweet this