Study of American graduates and employers

The latest report of Project Information Literacy (PIL) is the output from interviews with 23 employers in the USA and 33 recent graduates from US universities. They were asked about the ways in which they were expected to work with information in the workplace. Similar results to some previous studies in this area emerged e.g. the need to find and present information to short deadlines and the need to work well with others to solve information problems. The graduates did feel that some of the skills the developed at university (e.g. being able to evaluate information) were valuable in the workplace and there are some interesting quotes. "This report is the first in a new research initiative at PIL called the "The Passage Studies." These studies investigate the information transitions young adults go through at critical junctures in their lives." The full report is at http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_fall2012_workplaceStudy_FullReport.pdf
There is a prereview video about the new study http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gOtjexhyvE&feature=youtu.be
Photo by Sheila Webber: Red leaves against blue sky, October 2012

Dissertations on information literacy

There are a few online PhD dissertations relevant to information literacy that can be accessed via the British Library's ethos service. You have to register (free). If the thesis are not already digitised (the ones below are) then you can pay £49 to get it digitised. They include
-- What is 'digital literacy'? : a pragmatic investigation. Beshaw, Douglas A. J. Durham University, Awarded: 2012 (as a shortcut, the download is actually from http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3446/)
-- Information literacy instruction for Kuwaiti students and the role of cultural relevance. Lesher, Teresa M. Loughborough University, Awarded: 2002
-- Negotiating information literacy pathways : learner autonomy in higher education. McDowell, Liz. University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Awarded: 2004.
-- Conceptions of effective information use and learning in a tele-health organization : a phenomenographic study of information literacy and knowledge management at work. Toledano O'Farrill, Ruben. Robert Gordon University, Awarded: 2008
-- Developing a new blended approach to fostering information literacy. Walton, Geoffrey. Loughborough University, Awarded: 2009. (Again, as a shortcut, the thesis is also availabe here https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/8148)
Photo by Sheila Webber: Green and gold, October 2012

UK major report: Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes

There are some new reports from Ofcom (the UK "watchdog" for the communications sector). The main report, published today, is a substantial 200 page document, and the other 2 reports which I'll mention supplement that one.
Ofcom (2012) Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report Research Document. Ofcom. http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/oct2012/main.pdf
The report is "designed to give an accessible overview of media literacy among [British] children and young people aged 5-15 and their parents/carers, as well as an indicative view of media use by children aged 3-4." Key research was 1,717 in-home interviews.
The report is packed with statistics about what kinds of device children access, and where they do so. 91% of children have internet access at home (for the first time, this is not an increase compared with the last report) - some children still do not access the internet anywhere. Unsurprisingly, mobile devices feature heavily, with gender differences in how the devices are used. Also, just picking up on a personal interest, in 8-11 year olds the only "creative or civic" activity that has gone up every year is creating an avatar in an online world (this year 48% had).
For some of the conclusions, I will be lazy and copy from the Executive summary.
" Children are using a wide range of media devices, and internet access is not confined to the desktop PC, laptop or netbook. Those aged 12-15 in particular are spending more time online, are more likely to go online using their mobile phone and are more likely to say that their mobile phone is the device they would miss the most.

"For the first time this report contains indicative data on the media habits of 3-4 year olds. This indicates that many in this age group are using a range of different media devices, including over a third who are going online using a desktop PC, laptop or netbook and 6% who are going online via a tablet computer.
"These trends have implications for how we consider children’s media literacy, as the requirement for media literacy skills begins at a young age, and the types of devices children need to be proficient on, and the opportunities for them to encounter media content, increase.
"Children, particularly 12-15s, are prolific social networkers with large numbers of friends – an average of 92 friends for 8-11s and 286 for 12-15s. This has implications for how children protect and share personal information, given that personal data available to “friends” on social networking sites is likely to be shared with large numbers of people."

2. Ofcom (2012) Websites visited by children: Nielsen analysis. Ofcom. http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/oct2012/Annex_3.pdf

The data is "derived from Nielsen's UK panel of households, comprising 45,239 individuals". This is short, but interesting in listing top 25/50 sites for 3 age groups. As with the other reports, data was gathered in 2012.
- 5-7 years old: top ten (1 to 10): Google, Google Search, BBC, Facebook, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing, YouTube, BBC CBeebies, Yahoo!, eBay, Ask Search Network
- 8-11 years: top ten (1 to 10): Google, Google Search, YouTube, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing, Facebook, BBC, YouTube Homepage, Google Image search, Wikipedia, Windows Live Messenger
- 12-15 years: top ten (1 to 10): Google, Google Search, Facebook, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing ,YouTube,Google Image Search, YouTube Homepage, Yahoo!, Wikipedia

3. Jigsaw Research (2012) Parents’ views on parental controls: Findings of qualitative research. Ofcom. http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/oct2012/Annex_1.pdf

The research used a purposive sample of parents (in the UK), with qualitative methods including focus groups and journaling (it gives details of the questions etc., useful for other researchers). Parents were more concerned about issues like cyberbullying and "grooming" and the impact of internet use on other parts of the child's life (e.g. exercise, writing), rather than issues to do with access to inappropriate content (partly because they didn't perceive it as a particular problem). Some quotes from the executive summary are:
"Overall, ensuring balanced and safe use of the internet was seen as an important parenting challenge, but one where parents were not always clear on how to get it right. This was because they could not necessarily draw on their own experiences growing up, and also because they felt that the issues and risks were constantly developing and shifting".
"Overall, technical controls were viewed as a supplement to, rather than replacement for, hands-on parenting. Supervision and other forms of parental mediation were felt still to be needed to prevent all of the day-to-day issues as well as risks emanating from children’s internet usage."
Photos by Sheila Webber: Autumn chrysanthemum blooms, October 2012

Imaginaires, représentations, pratiques formelles et non formelles de la recherche d'information sur Internet: PhD thesis

A French-language thesis on schoolchildren's concept of internet searching has just been put online.
Cordier, A. (2011) Imaginaires, représentations, pratiques formelles et non formelles de la recherche d'information sur Internet : Le cas d'élèves de 6ème et de professeurs documentalistes. UNIVERSITÉ CHARLES DE GAULLE – LILLE III. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00737637
I did not really spend enough time with it (considering my moderate French language skills) to give a good account of what it is about, but I think it is an investigation into 11-12 year old French schoolchildren's experiences of searching the internet, contrasting this experience with what the school librarians have as their goal for information literacy teaching. The latter are urged to pay more attention to the pupil's practice with information and technology.
This is the French abstract "L'objectif de ce travail est d'apporter une meilleure connaissance des imaginaires, représentations et pratiques non formelles développées par les élèves de 6ème sur la recherche d'information sur Internet, et d'effectuer un parallèle et une confrontation avec les pratiques de formation mises en oeuvre par les professeurs documentalistes. Pour ce faire, une étude qualitative, combinant entretiens semi-directifs et observation distanciée, a été menée au sein de trois établissements scolaires français. L'adoption d‟une éco-posture pour analyser la recherche d‟information sur Internet permet de considérer les pratiques de recherche et de formation de manière située, en tenant compte des contraintes opérées par les espaces d'action identifiés. Le sentiment d'expertise personnellement ressenti en matière de recherche sur Internet joue pour les deux types d'acteurs un rôle fondamental à la fois dans l'appropriation de l'outil et dans l'appréhension des séances de formation. L'étude révèle un écart important entre les pratiques de recherche ordinaires des élèves et les pratiques prescrites par les professionnels."
Photo by Sheila Webber: yet more anemones, October 2012

Recent articles

A few assorted articles I hadn't picked up before:
- Kelley, J. (2012) "Off the Shelf and Out of the Box: Saving Time, Meeting Outcomes and Reaching Students with Information Literacy Modules" Library Scholarship. Paper 15. http://dc.cod.edu/librarypub/15
- Limberg, L., Sundin, O. and Talja, S. (2012) "Three Theoretical Perspectives on Information Literacy" HumanIT. 11 (2) http://etjanst.hb.se/bhs/ith/2-11/llosst.pdf [I had already blogged the other papers in this issue, I think this one must have been added later]
- Gunton, L., Bruce, C., & Stoodley, I. (2012) "Experiencing religious information literacy : informed learning in church communities." Australian Library Journal, 61(2), 119-132. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/51026 I already blogged an earlier article on the same research
- Emami, M. and Seify, S. (2012) "Determining the information literacy competence (ILC) of faculty members in University of Applied Sciences and Technology." Interdisciplinary journal of contemporary research in business. 3 (9), 1488-1495.
http://www.journal-archieves14.webs.com/1488-1495.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: Autumn starts to touch the beech leaves.

2 short research papers: Social Media as Information Source, and; Developing an IL game

Kim, K., Yoo-Lee, E. and Sin, S. (2011) Social Media as Information Source: Undergraduates’ Use and Evaluation Behavior. In: Proceedings of the 74rd ASIST Annual Meeting Retrieved 18 September 2012 from http://asist.org/asist2011/proceedings/submissions/283_FINAL_SUBMISSION.pdf
An interesting short paper that reports on a survey of what sources students used, what they used them for and what evaluative strategies they used. For example Wikipedia was used for initially scoping a topic, and evaluated through looking at the links and sources, whereas Youtube was used for recreation and for instructions on how to do things, and was evaluated through the video quality and people's opinions.

Markey, K. and Leeder, C. (2011) The Effect of Scoring and Feedback Mechanisms
in an Online Educational Game. In: Proceedings of the 74rd ASIST Annual Meeting. Retrieved 18 September 2012 from http://asist.org/asist2011/proceedings/submissions/38_FINAL_SUBMISSION.docx

This describes the stages of piloting this information literacy game, and the changes that needed to be made as a result.

I discovered these 2 papers (and further interesting ones) as part of the October 2011 ASIST annual conference proceedings; http://asist.org/asist2011/proceedings/openpage.html.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Blackheath Farmers' Market, September 2012

The Value of Information Literacy: Conceptions of BSc Nursing Students at a UK University

I'm currently travelling to the Special Interest Group Phenomenography and Variation Theory conference in Sweden (my first blog post from a plane! (Norwegan airlines) and so it is appropriate to highlight a recently completed PhD using the phenomenographic approach: Dr Antony Osborne's The Value of Information Literacy: Conceptions of BSc Nursing Students at a UK University. This investigated the perceptions of nursing students at a UK university. In phenomonography you aim to discover what the differences are in the way in which people experience or conceive of a phenomenon. You normally do this by conducting indepth interviews probing this experience or conception, and then you put all the interview data together and identify the qualitatively different ways in which people are experienncing/ conceiving of the phenomenon. I haven't had time to read the thesis yet (actually I'm having family health problems which mean I'mjoining the conference later than intended) but you can find the whole thing at: http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/14577/
Photo by Sheila Webber: View from St Thomas' Hospital ward (of Houses of Parliament and Big Ben etc.), August 2012

IFLA #wlic2012 E-Learning in Information Management Education in Sri Lanka: discussion of the impact of information literacy

Liveblogging at the IFLA World Library and Information Conference in Helsinki, Finland. By the way, the connection failed during Li Wang's talk (actually it came and went in this talk too), so I'll blog that later. Next is E-Learning in Information Management Education in Sri Lanka: discussion of the impact of information literacy, presented by Namali Suraweera (pictured), presenting her PhD research.
She started by identifying current issues and barriers in IM education, a subject offered in three colleges, all in Colombo. The fact that they are all in the capital means that there is a problem about students physically attending, plus a lack of equal services to part timelearners.
The investigation was a case study using the Hutter-Hennink qualitative research cycle (I think, as outlined in this book http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book229185). Data was gathered through interviews, documents and focus groups and coded thematically. Findings included that:
- Information workers as learners are not familiar with student-centred education and found it difficult to navigate e-learning systems and other computer-based study tools. They lacked information literacy and a sense of autonomous learning.
- Secondly, the study found that the academics themselves were not familiar with constructivist approaches, as well as lacking information literacy. There is no incentive to develop IL at the school level, because of the transmissive approach of teaching. This lack of student-led approach in education is perceived as a definite barrier to development of effective e-learning programmes.
- Thirdly, there is little partnership between librarians and academics. The librarians themselves need to learn how to teach, as well.
The conclusions include that lack of staff awareness about information skills, lack of understanding about constructivist pedagogy and lack of training opportunities; learning theories, pedagogy and e-learning are not yet incorporated into Information Management education in Sri Lanka.

Therefore recommendations include a need to update IM curricula and generally increase awareness of constructivist and e-learning pedagogies in teachers.

Full paper at: E-Learning in Information Management Education in Sri Lanka: discussion of the impact of information literacy NAMALI SURAWEERA, CHERN L. LIEW and JOCELYN CRANEFIELD (School of Information Management, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand)

Project Information Literacy seeks volunteers

The USA's Project Information Literacy (PIL) is seeking further volunteer colleges and universities with calls to participate in forthcoming PIL research studies. In autumn they will begin "a year-long investigation of first-time freshmen in US colleges and universities" I think you have to be located in the USA. The PIL project does the actual research, only some time acting as liaison person is required. http://projectinfolit.org/volunteer/volsample.asp
Photo by Sheila Webber: Olympic park and cable car, on Saturday, viewed from the motorway bridge.

New book: Ways of Experiencing Information Literacy

Out in September: Andretta, S. (2012) Ways of Experiencing Information Literacy: Making the case for a relational approach. Woodhead Publishing. ISBN 1 84334 680 X; ISBN-13: 978 1 84334 680 7; £47.50 / US$80.00 / €55.00
More information at http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=2571&ChandosTitle=1
Photo by Sheila Webber: Hydrangea, Sheffield, August 2012

relationship between Internet user type and user performance when carrying out simple vs. complex search tasks

New-ish article: Singer, G. et al. (2012)'The relationship between Internet user type and user performance when carrying out simple vs. complex search tasks' First Monday, 17 (6).
"It is widely known that people become better at an activity if they perform this activity long and often. Yet, the question is whether being active in related areas like communicating online, writing blog articles or commenting on community forums have an impact on a person’s ability to perform Web searches, is still unanswered. Web searching has become a key task conducted online; in this paper we present our findings on whether the user type, which categorises a person’s online activities, has an impact on her or his search capabilities. We show (1) the characteristics of different user types when carrying out simple search tasks; (2) their characteristics when carrying out complex search tasks; and, (3) the significantly different user type characteristics between simple and complex search tasks. The results are based on an experiment with 56 ordinary Web users in a laboratory environment. The Search–Logger study framework was used to analyze and measure user behavior when carrying out a set of 12 predefined search tasks. Our findings include the fact that depending on task type (simple or complex) significant differences can be observed between users of different types."
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3960/3245
Photo by Sheila Webber: cherry blossm, March 2012

German study in web-skill differences when looking for health info

Feufel, M. and Stahl, S. (2012) "What do web-use skill differences imply for online health information searches?" Journal of Medical Internet Research, 14 (3). http://www.jmir.org/2012/3/e87/ This was a German study (undertaken by 2 researchers at the Harding Center for Risk Literacy, Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin) involving 10 people under 30 who were more skilled in web search, and 12 people aged 50 and over who were less skilled. Participants did a digital literacy test as well, and education was another demographic factor. The researchers observed participants doing 3 web searches "to identify health information seekers’ cognitive strategies and attitudes". There were differences between less skilled and skilled users e.g. before going online the less skilled were worried about overload and their ability, whilst more skilled expressed awareness of quality issues, but interestingly "although people voice concerns about data quality issues, once they access a website, even skilled Web users are preoccupied with processing website contents" (i.e. once they actually found something that seemed relevant, the quality issue faded to the background).
Image is a Tagxedo of the article.

Information literacy in e-environments: Proposal of a holistic approach

A new article I co-authored with a former PhD student (afraid it is a priced publication). Nazari, M. and Webber, S. (2012) “Loss of faith in the origins of information literacy in e-environments: Proposal of a holistic approach.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 44 (2), 97-107. "The original concept of information literacy (IL) identifies it as an enabler for lifelong learning and learning-to-learn, adaptable and transferable in any learning environment and context. However, practices of IL in electronic information and learning environments (e-environments) tend to question the origins, and workability, of IL on the grounds that the generic models of IL are inadequate for the complex and evolving context of e-environments. Conducting an analytical review of the literature on the approaches taken to adapt IL in e-environments, we discuss how a failure in understanding the dynamic context and components of e-environments and IL have resulted in the emergence of a marginalised way of viewing and practicing IL in these environments. Drawing on Nazari’s (2011) contextual study of IL in an online distance learning programme, we propose a holistic way of viewing and practicing IL in EL environments which is aligned with IL origins; it enables the e-learner to conceptualise IL and customise it to their actual learning style and needs. This study can be of value to IL scholars and practitioners who are interested in the concept and practice of IL in e-environments."
Photo by Sheila Webber: Fountain, Sheffield, June 2012

Survey on librarian's view of literature review

Wendy Highby, a Reference Librarian at the University Libraries of the University of Northern Colorado, USA, is investigating academic librarians' concept of the literature review and their experiences in teaching students about the literature review process. Participants should be working, or have worked, as an academic librarian. The online survey form is here: https://unco.us.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_55CJutgxiQwLQWg
Any questions to wendy.highby@unco.edu
Photo by Sheila Webber: Sunlit escholtzia, May 2012

The ways that young people experience information

Marian Smith gained her PhD from Loughborough University in 2010, with an interesting dissertation about children's perceptions of information (I was external examiner at her viva) entitled "Young people: a phenomenographic investigation into the ways they experience information". Mark Hepworth, who supervised Marian at Loughborough, recently did a blog post in which he outlines the framework she identified, that could be used to guide information literacy teaching to children. His blog post is here: http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/young-peoples-perception-of-their.html and Marian's full dissertation is here: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/6632
Photo by Sheila Webber: Wildflowers, Maryon Park, May 2012

Social Media Use By Students With Disabilities

This looks an interesting article: Asuncion, J. et al (2012) "Social Media Use By Students With Disabilities." Academic Exchange Quarterly, 16 (1). http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/cho4973.htm They surveyed a convenience sample of 723 students/recent graduates with disabilities, in 2009, in Canada. They asked which social media they used, which were most difficult/easiest, what improvements could be made etc. The most used service was Youtube (91%). The top 5 recommendations were: Having a simpler or better layout; Improving privacy/ security; Fixing accessibility issues (e.g., CAPTCHA); Enlarging features on website; Having captions/ subtitles.
Photo by Sheila Webber: My daffodils, April 2012

Planet Wikimedia & Wikilit: review of wiki literature

Whilst googling to see whether I could find an open access version of the article I blogged yesterday, I came across a couple of interesting sites. Firstly, Planet Wikimedia. http://en.planet.wikimedia.org/ "The Planet Wikimedia is a weblog aggregator operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, to bring together on-topic posts about Wikimedia projects, other wiki sites, the free culture movement, the "wisdom of crowds", etc." Since it aggregates a lot of blogs, there is some duplication and some slightly baffling (to me) content, but also a lot of useful news, views and links.
One of the links I found was to WikiLit: A literature review of scholarly research on Wikipedia, http://wikilit.referata.com/wiki/Main_Page. There is a draft paper ("The People’s Encyclopedia Under the Gaze of the Sages: A Systematic Review of Scholarly Research on Wikipedia") which outlines the methodology and starts to summarise selected papers. On the Wikilit home page you can expand some fairly broad categories (e.g. Quality of Wikipedia) to reveal titles of identified articles and then you click through to see the extraction sheet with the details of the article.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Cherry blossom in Botanic Gardens, March 2012.