InformationMatters
Library and Information Studies at the University of Brighton
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Access, delivery, performance:the future of libraries without walls
Published by Juliet Eve | Filed under Uncategorized, Web 2.0
This is the title of a new publication from Facet Publishing celebrating the contribution to library and information studies made by Professor Peter Brophy, who retired this summer as Director of CERLIM (the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management), based in the Department of Information and Communications at Manchester Metropolitan University. I was very honoured to be asked to contribute a chapter by my two former CERLIM colleagues, Jill Griffiths and Jenny Craven, who have edited the collection. The chapter, entitled Sceptic 2.0? Social networking technologies in public libraries, takes, as the title suggests, a sceptical look at the hype around the Library 2.0 concept, and questions if the use of Web 2.0 technologies really amounts to a radical new way of delivering librray services, or is just another - potentially useful - tool, which should be implemented and considered with more caution. I was also very pleased to be able to travel to Manchester on Wednesday to attend the book’s launch, and presentation to Peter, and of course to celebrate afterwards with friends and colleagues from the Department.
CILIP SE branch - new chair
Published by Juliet Eve | Filed under Announcements
I have just been elected as Chair of CILIP South East branch, replacing my colleague Margaret Wallis, who has held the post for the last five years. Another University of Brighton, Audrey Marshall, is also on the South East branch Committee. I met some of my fellow committee members earlier this week to plan the agenda for our February meeting, and I am looking forward to working with them and other colleagues from the region over the coming year.
Share ThisThe Future of LIS Teaching
Published by Martin De Saulles | Filed under Research
Legal Information Management have just published my paper titled, The Future of Information Work: Designing Library and Information Courses for the Digital Age. It is based on a talk I gave at the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) annual conference in Dublin earlier this year. While the paper describes some of the work we have done in Brighton developing our new courses, it also reflects on some of the broader issues facing the profession. You can view an abstract HERE.
Anyone interested in where LIS teaching may be heading might also want to look at these blog posts:
The Lone Wolf Librarian’s blog
Share ThisPuLLS article wins Emerald Outstanding Paper Award
Published by Juliet Eve | Filed under Announcements, Research
A paper, co-authored by Juliet Eve, Margo de Groot and Anne-Marie Schmidt, entitled ‘Supporting lifelong learning in public libraries across Europe’ has been selected as a winner of one of Emerald’s Awards for Excellence 2008. The paper was published in Library Review last year, and reports on the results from a European Union funded project to support lifelong learning for adults in public libraries across Europe.
The paper can currently be accessed from the Emerald website, and is also available via the University of Brighton repository; other documents relating to the project can be found at the PuLLS (Public Libraries in the Learning Society) website.
Share ThisWeb 2.0: where are we, where are we going?
Published by Martin De Saulles | Filed under Web 2.0
On Friday I gave a talk at an ARLIS workshop at the Chelsea College of Art. They had asked me to speak about Web 2.0 and give an overview of where we, in terms of the information profession, currently are and where we might be going. You can download the slides in PDF format HERE (1.3 MBytes) or view them on slideshare below. Without my commentary some of the slides are rather abstract but there are some facts and figures on some of them. Feel free to email me if you have any comments or questions about them.
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SME article in Information World Review
Published by Martin De Saulles | Filed under Innovation
Information World Review have just published my piece on how some UK SMEs are using Web services in their businesses.
The online version here does not have the graphics - you will need the paper version for that.
Share ThisBeyond Google
Published by Martin De Saulles | Filed under Announcements
Jackie Chelin (University of the West of England) and I have produced a short (10 minutes) video titled: “Beyond Google: Developing Training Skills for Library and Information Students in Their Work With the Google Generation” (see below). The video outlines, through interviews with academics, librarians and students, some of the issues surrounding how students use the Internet as a research tool. It offers suggestions for developing and delivering training sessions for end users to help them look beyond mainstream Internet search engines and to explore subscription-based databases. The production was funded by the Higher Education Academy and I will be talking about it at the HEA ICS Conference in Liverpool later this month.
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‘The dad dancing at the wedding’ and other metaphors
Published by Juliet Eve | Filed under Announcements, Research
Tuesday July 29th saw the Library and Information Group’s (LIRG) AGM and annual address, held in London. As well as the usual AGM business, including the awarding of our annual prizes - the Research Award and the student prize for best dissertation - we had a presentation from last year’s Research Award winner, Jackie Chelin (and colleagues), followed by a set of linked presentations around the theme of the ACRL’s 2007 Environmental Scan, a horizon-scanning of issues relating (in particular) to academic libraries, published in January this year. ACRL is the Association of College & Research Libraries, a Division of the American Library Association. Further details on the Scan and the afternoon sessions are available on the Researchmatters blog.
Share ThisSMEs and the Web - Executive Summary
Published by Martin De Saulles | Filed under Innovation, Research
Over the last few weeks I have been conducting an online survey of UK SMEs and how they use the Internet/Web to communicate, share information and market themselves. The survey was carried out amongst 2 groups of SMEs: Those operating in the Internet/new media sectors in the South East of England (Digital SMEs) and a more general group of SMEs operating across the UK and a range of sectors (All SMEs). Over 500 companies completed the survey and there are some interesting findings:
- More than 95% of all the respondents maintained a Web site;
- Apart from email, instant messaging is the most used (46%) tool for internal communications amongst Digital SMEs;
- Over 40% of Digital SMEs use Skype for communicating with clients and suppliers;
- Digital SMEs are active in their use of Web services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs as tools for marketing their services;
- Digital SMEs are approximately 4 times as likely to use blogs and wikis for communicating with clients and suppliers than the group, All SMEs.
You can download a PDF copy (600kb) of the executive summary from the link below:
http://www.coldlime.com/SMEWebSurveyJul08.pdf
Our YouTube channel
Published by Martin De Saulles | Filed under Announcements
We recently set up a YouTube channel to provide a central place for our video content. So far there are several videos posted to the channel showing teaching staff talking about their research and students talking about our courses. We will add more over the coming months. Visit the channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/infostudies - you can also comment on the videos.
SHARP 2008
Published by Nicola Smith | Filed under Uncategorized
I spent much of last week at the SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) annual conference held at Oxford Brookes University. The theme of the conference was Teaching and Text and there were a wide variety of responses. I really enjoyed the conference, the lovely thing about SHARP is the range of people who come, I chatted to librarians, archivists, historians, literary scholars and cultural historians. I took part in a panel organised by Toni Weller on behalf of LIHG (Library & Information History Group), our title was Searching for culture: etiquette, self-education & the aspirant classes. Toni and I were joined by Lauren Christos from Florida International University.
We were not the only LIHG members contributing, Peter Hoare, formerly the Librarian of the University of Nottingham spoke about libraries for the English visitors to Florence and Sarah Bromage from the Sapphire Project based at Napier University in Edinburgh spoke about her work on the Wayzgoose Project.
Share ThisResearch matters too…
Published by Juliet Eve | Filed under Announcements, Research
One of Information Matters bloggers, Juliet Eve, has recently set up a ’sister’ blog, ResearchMatters. The blog is designed to do two things: firstly to highlight and reflect upon research issues within the library and information world, with a particular focus on research into practice; and secondly, to suppport students taking their research methods module and completing their research dissertation as part of their MA in Information Studies. Useful research texts, resources etc. may also be of more general interest to anyone interested in LIS research.
Share This‘Botticelli, swill buckets and Paris Hilton’
Published by Juliet Eve | Filed under Announcements
yes, it can only be … University Challenge. This year we are very pleased that a team from Brighton University has made it through to the televised stages of the competition. Filiming will take place in Manchester in June. And, what is a quiz team without a librarian? One of our current MA Information Studies students, Beth Hewitt, has been selected for the University of Brighton’s team. Beth (pictured) says: ‘Having already demonstrated enough knowledge of Botticelli, swill buckets and Paris Hilton to have passed the auditions ,the team will be going to Manchester on the 21st June to take part in filming. It’s been an ambition of mine to go on the show for a long time so it is incredibly exciting to be finally doing it. It is also terrifying(!) I’m just hoping all those years of pub quizzes will finally pay off…’
We wish Beth, and the other team members (Stephen Blenkin (Captain), Ben Jordan and Jolyon Dales) the very best of luck.
Share ThisBIALL 2008
Published by Martin De Saulles | Filed under Web 2.0
On Thursday and Friday of last week I was at the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians annual conference in Dublin. They invited me to talk about Web 2.0 as well as developments in library and information courses and what we have been up to at the University of Brighton. I really enjoyed the 2 days and had some interesting discussions with the organisers and some of the 400 or so delegates.
For the Web 2.0 session on Thursday I made a short presentation (download slides HERE) and then sat on a panel with Sue Hill of Sue Hill Recruitment. Sue’s presentation was particularly interesting as she confessed to knowing next to nothing about Web 2.0 several weeks before but had become very interested in it while doing research for the session. She informed us that her company would be experimenting with blogs, RSS feeds etc over the coming months and using them to help share knowledge internally as well as promote their services externally.
On Friday morning I gave a presentation titled “The Future of Information Work: developing university courses” (download slides HERE). This was based on my experiences of working in the development of new courses at our university as well as my broader observations about possible future directions for the provision of university courses and the profession in general.
BIALL is certainly a dynamic group of library and information professionals and I hope to keep in touch with some of the people I met there.
Share ThisAcademics are from Mars, practitioners are from Venus?
Published by Juliet Eve | Filed under Announcements, Research
On Thursday 12th June, I was invited to be a keynote speaker at SINTO’s (the Information Partnership for South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire) AGM and Members Day, held at Sheffield Hallam University. The subject of their Member’s Day was Research into Practice, so I was very pleased to be asked to talk about this issue, as I like to get up on my soapbox about it as often as possible (see article, co-authored with Noeleen Schenk, who undertook the research with me, in CILIP’s Update in June 2007). My talk was based on research carried out in 2006 for the AHRC, one of their sector interaction studies to examine the impact of funded academic research on practice in the library and archive worlds. An overview of the project and findings was published in Library and Information Research, and a copy of the article can be downloaded from the University of Brighton’s institutional repository. The Update article, and my presentations on the topic over the last couple of years, have in part been an examination of the highly persistent culture gap between academics and practitioners in the LIS world (and not just in our area; similar studies in education and marketing reveal identical issues), and a ‘call to arms’ to do something about it - both on the part of academics, and practitoners. Sadly, there is usually an aspect of the ‘preaching to the converted’ at these events, as those already engaged with this issue are those who come to seminars on it.
To quote my own article:
‘Practitioners, why don’t you ask researchers to help you find solutions in the same way you might ask a colleague? Can you really afford not to engage with research and the wider debates and demand to be treated as a professional?
Researchers, what is wrong with seeking out practitioners in the same way you seek out fellow researchers to discuss your research and test ideas? Can you really afford not to disseminate your ideas and research results as widely as possible?
National organisations, we need a co-ordinated research policy and strategy, which emphasises relevance to practitioners as one of the criteria for funding research, and sends out a key message to the profession and the wider world: without a thriving research culture, we will not become a thriving profession. ‘
This is not to say that there are not some excellent examples of good practice out there - some academics are highly committed to multiple forms of dissemination, and some practitioners not only find time to research, but ensure they publish it too. Organisations like the Library and Information Research Group (of which I have been a committee member since 2001) do a lot of good work in promoting academic/practitioner partnerships and research in all its forms (for example, the student prize for best dissertation, and the LIRG Research Award). However, what emerged (again) at the SINTO Member’s Day was the lack of co-ordinated, national leadership in this area. This issue is being taken forward by LIRG and a number of other organisations. This is a continuation of the discussions initiated by the British Library, at the seminar they organised in November 2007, papers from which were published in a Special edition of LIRG’s open access journal, Library and Information Research.
The other keynote speaker was Ian Rowlands, from UCL, one of the researchers on the JISC/BL study into the ‘Google generation’. What particularly struck me from Ian’s talk was the finding from a market research study that (contrary to popular rhetoric, though in line with similar results emerging from a variety of research) only 20% of this generation are ‘wired up’, with 60% designated as ‘average Jo/es’, and another 20% have already become ‘digital dissidents’ (possibly in reaction to their ‘Crackberry’ - first time I’d heard the phrase - parents). This seems to me to be highly significant, and a potential warning for those developing services and policy on the back of the rhetoric, rather than the research.
Which brings me full circle, to the need for research to support library theory, policy, and practice. It’s nice to see that the Public Library Group conference, currently hotly debating issues of leadership and governance, has apparently highlighted the need for research and evidence to support practice, according to the Out of the Stacks blogger, Abigail Luthmann, who won a sponsored place to the conference this year, and is a former graduate of our MA Information Studies degree (shameless plug!).
The Members day was rounded up nicely by two excellent presentations on current research - firstly, by Lix Brewster who has just won the SINTO Bob Usherwood Prize, awarded to a student at the University of Sheffield, for the ‘postgraduate dissertation that makes a significant contribution to improving professional practice or understanding related to co-operation and partnership working across sectors in the SINTO area’. This is another good example of promoting practice-focused research. Liz won the prize for her work, Medicine for the Soul: bibliotherapy and the public library. The study investigates the experience of bibliotherapy in the public library from the staff perspective. A PDF file of this dissertation is available from Sheffield University’s database of student dissertations. Bob himself (who always showed exemplary practice in disseminating his own research and has been a long-standing contributor and champion of this issue) was chairing the day. Secondly, two enthusiastic and committed information advisors from Sheffield Hallam’s Learning Centre presented the results of their work introducing information literacy skills to first year undergraduates - and promptly got badgered by Bob and myself about when and where they were intending to publish it…
To round up the day, a panel discussion attempted to debate some of the issues raised - not terribly successfully, but there was definite support for national leadership in this area. As happens so often, I did not feel terribly inspired or confident about an imminent change of culture, but I did leave Sheffield cheerful (as I always do when I get out of the office and chat to colleagues about research), and with an emerging research idea…
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