17 December 2013

Blog winners

Congratulations to the winners of the tutors' "best team blog" award. We decided to award joint winners:

Team Q: Chloe Turner, Emily Wheeler, Yixuan Gao, Dongmei Han
http://teamqinf6350.blogspot.co.uk/

Team A: Roisin Cassidy, Jayne Drew, Catherine Hoodless, Lynsey Shenton
http://informationgroupa.blogspot.co.uk/

The criteria for judging were:
1. Sustained effort & team contribution
- contribution from whole team
- Minimum of a post on each of: team introduction; 7 Pillars; Information Universe; search tips; IL in context; Web 2.0

2. Are the posts relevant and interesting?

3. How good is the visual appearance of the blog? e.g.
- Can you read the text easily?
- Is it easy to find your way round the blog?
- Is the blog attractive to look at?
- Have they included visual elements?

4. Have the team used Blogger design & layout features? e.g.
- Have they included a list of links?
- Does it look like they have customised the blog layout?
- Have they included other Blogger widgets (e.g. page, followers, tag cloud, music)?

16 December 2013

"Information Literacy in our future careers" poster winners

In week 11 we announced the results of the most popular poster at the Information Literacy in our future careers exhibition:
Winner:
Team M: Marc Muller, Brigette Lee, Foteini Karagianni, Chao Yu
An example of a comment on their poster was was: "Very creative approach - love the 'old-style cinema' theme and the black & white pics of the team! Integrated, clear, attractive poster". The poster is shown on the right.

Runners up:
Team L: Jin He, Chuxiong Zeng, Jie Zhang, Jun Zhang
Team A: Roisin Cassidy, Jayne Drew, Catherine Hoodless, Lynsey Shenton
The picture shows members of teams M, L and A after receiving their prizes.

Evaluation forms:
Random draw: Luqing Zheng
Best comments (special judges prize) Brigette Lee
The picture shows the two prize recipients

Congratulations to all the winners!

10 December 2013

An international step forward for Information Literacy

The latest meeting of the UNESCO General Conference voted in favour of the draft resolution on Media and Information Literacy. The text of the draft resolution is here http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002242/224273e.pdf and I blogged a bit more detail here: http://information-literacy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/unesco-general-conference-endorses.html This short video shows the opening of the conference (with a good deal of clapping).

Teaching Information Literacy: some links

In week 9 you had a session from two of the librarians at Sheffield University: Vicky Grant, and Maria Mawson. Note that if this is a major interest for you, then the module Information Literacy Research will be relevant next semester.

There are a huge number of articles and resources about teaching information literacy, for those that are interested in this topic. A few examples are:

- This site, which has material from a project about a "New Curriculum" for Information Literacy: http://newcurriculum.wordpress.com/

- A "toolkit" developed by the London-based Clinical Librarians and Information Skills Trainers http://www.londonlinks.nhs.uk/groups/clinical-librarians-information-skills-trainers-group/trainers-toolkit

- Cardiff University's Handbook for Information Literacy Teaching http://www.cf.ac.uk/insrv/educationandtraining/infolit/hilt/index.html

- Wilson, C. et al. (2011) Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers. Paris: UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001929/192971e.pdf

- A number of the presentations from the 2013 LILAC (information literacy) conference: http://www.lilacconference.com/WP/past-conferences/lilac-2013/

- Presentations from the main USA conference on information literacy, LOEX (2013): http://www.loexconference.org/2013/sessions.html

- The Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online Database http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/directoryofleadership/sections/is/iswebsite/projpubs/primo

2 December 2013

Evaluating an article: Preparation for week 11

Individual assignment: a task for next week (week 11, 10 December)

You need to bring along an article which is relevant to you negotiated assignment topic. This article must be a research article i.e. it must contain a report of original research (so it should describe the research aims or question, the research methods, and findings and conclusions). You should have read the article beforehand. In class you will be evaluating the article.
You can increase your chances of finding a research article by e.g.
- Searching a source which contains large numbers of them (e.g. Emerald Library; Google Scholar; LISA)
- Using search features that restrict your search to research articles (e.g. on LISA you can just search for articles in “scholarly journals”; on Emerald you can search for “article type: Research paper” (a pull-down menu on the Advanced Search page)
- Where there is no such feature (e.g. on Google Scholar) adding words like “methodology” and “references” to your search(see example below)


You also may want to look at the optional reading for next week:
Booth, A. and Brice, A., eds. (2004) Evidence-Based Practice for Information Professionals: A Handbook. London: Facet.
Chapter 9, ‘Appraising the evidence’ is available online at
http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/downloads/file/sample_chapters/481.pdf

26 November 2013

Searching the Emerald Journal collection

I produced a 5 minute video about using advanced search on Emerald Insight (journal article collection which is strong in information and management/ marketing topics). The Emerald collection is at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ (log into MUSE before searching)

19 November 2013

Another excellent powerpoint from Karen Blakeman

This focuses on alternatives to Google, and as usual is very up to date and useful



Searching tips from class members, on team blogs

These are links to blog entries in which class members identify what search tips they would give, or found most useful.

A Team: Group A http://informationgroupa.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/more-google-database-search-tips.html and http://informationgroupa.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/google-database-search-tips.html

B Team: Simple  http://simplealamanda.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/database-search-tips.html and http://simplealamanda.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/database-search-tip.html

C Team: JATA :) http://inf6350teamc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/database-or-google-search-tip.html

D: TEAM D http://6350teamd.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/search-tip.html and http://6350teamd.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/google-search-tip-linxi.html and http://6350teamd.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/jan-google-search-tip.html

E : Team E for INF6350 http://inf6350team.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/matta-database-searching-tips.html and http://inf6350team.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/searching-tips.html

F: Team F6350 http://teamf6350.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/database-or-google-search-tips.html

G: Team G Blog http://teamginfoliteracy2013.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/top-tip-for-database-searching.html

H: Hey ischool! http://ihteam.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/database-or-google-search-tip.html and http://ihteam.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/broaden-academic-searching-field.html and http://ihteam.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-essential-information-searching.html

I: Group I INF6350 blog http://inf6350-groupi.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/yiwens-google-search-tips.html

J Team: Team J http://teamj123.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/using-google-scholar-in-study-of.html

K: Team K's blog http://teamkinfolit.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/search-databases-tip.html and http://teamkinfolit.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/search-tip-shuai-first-is-to-find-rover.html and http://teamkinfolit.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/search-tip.html

L Team: Team L http://jzhang35.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/google-database-search-session-tips.html

M Team: The Literate Librarian http://litlib.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/information-via-web-and-databases.html and http://litlib.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/googledatabase-searching-sessions.html  and http://litlib.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/know-much-about-google.html and http://litlib.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/utilising-more-of-google-and-databases.html

N: Team N !! http://group2teamn.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/new-finding-about-google.html

O Team: We Are 'O' So Good! http://weareosogood.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/database-search-tip.html


Q: Team Q's INF6350 Blog http://teamqinf6350.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/search-tips.html and http://teamqinf6350.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/emily-top-tips-for-searching.html and http://teamqinf6350.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/chloes-search-tip.html

R: Team R - Group Blog 2013 http://teamrinfolit.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/double-trouble-my-information-needs-and.html


U: INF6350teamU http://inf6350teamu13.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/my-best-searching-tip.html

V Team: First Day http://firstdayinfolit.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/jaynes-searching-tips.html

W: Team W http://teamnorthw.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/tips-for-google-and-database-search.html

4 November 2013

Wise use of Wikipedia: an introduction

Many people have used Wikipedia, or equivalents in other countries. Also, many people have heard warnings about the quality of Wikipedia entries. You will be discussing an article about Wikipedia in week 7, in smaller seminar groups. This cartoon illustrates one problem that can occur (though obviously this problem of someone publishing an unchecked (untrue) "fact" in a reputable publication does not only happen with Wikipedia!

One thing you can do is to find out more about how Wikipedia works, and use all the parts of a Wikipedia page: not just the entry itself but the "View History" tab to see what changes have been made (you can also look at previous versions of the entry) and the "Talk" tab.

This is the "About" page on Wikipedia: from here you can find out a lot about how it is compiled and edited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

For those of you really interested in this topic, there is an interesting ethnographic study of Wikipedia editors:
Sundin, O. (2011). Janitors of knowledge: constructing knowledge in the everyday life of Wikipedia editors. Journal of Documentation, 67(5), 840-­862. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1949863
This is the open access preprint version http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1693489&fileOId=2277516

3 November 2013

Monitoring 3: How to sign up to Feedspot

Monitoring 2: Adding feeds to blogger

There are some features on Blogger itself that can be used for monitoring, so you could use these for your team blog. I made this video in 2011 showing two ways to add a feed from another blog onto your team blog. Once you have done this, links to the latest posts on your chosen blog appear on your blog. I’m afraid at the moment I’m not able to make a revised video, but the only changes since then are to do with how you find the page for editing the blog layout. Now (instead of clicking a tab at the top) you click on Layout, which is on the menu on the left hand side of the page.
In this video I firstly demonstrate adding an RSS feed from another blog, so that the latest few posts from that blog dispay on your blog, and then I demonstrate a way of adding a list of blog links.
If you look on this blog: I have used the first technique to add a feed of new articles from the Journal of Documentation (at the bottom of this page) and the second technique to add a list of the team blogs (on the right)




Monitoring using Web 2.0: 1 - what is monitoring and what is RSS?

There will be a couple of posts about monitoring. This is part of the SCONUL 7 Pillars "gather" pillar. By monitoring, I mean keeping up to date with news, new articles, new books etc. A useful way to monitor blogs and journals that interest you (to be alerting to the latest posts or articles) is to use RSS. The little picture above is the symbol for RSS, so look out for that on journal and blog pages.

K12 Learning 2.0 (2012) explains that: “RSS is a special type of computer code that allows users to know automagically when new "stuff" is added to their favorite websites. ... RSS, which stands for Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication, allows web users to subscribe to multiple websites and have new content delivered to them automatically in one location, called an RSS reader. Instead of visiting each website to check for new information, the user simply checks his or her reader, which has collected and organized all of the new content using RSS.”

There is also a video that explains what RSS is in “plain English", here (sorry, I can’t embed it): http://www.commoncraft.com/video/rss
The useful CPD23 blog had a post in which they explain Current awareness (monitoring) and specifically talk about using Twitter and RSS feeds to keep up to date, and Storify to create your own collection of Web 2.0 posts and tweets about a topic. http://cpd23.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/thing-4-current-awareness-twitter-rss.html

How can you find out what the web address (url) is for the RSS feed?

Look for the little RSS logo on a page or simply the phrase "RSS Feed".

Here are 2 screenshots showing how I found the right RSS web address for the Journal of documentation.



Reference:
K12 Learning 2.0 (2012) Thing 5 (Week 3): Getting Started with RSS. http://k12learning20.wikispaces.com/5-rss

Web 2.0 (and Netvibes)

This is the Netvibes page in which I have linked a number of resources about Web 2.0
http://www.netvibes.com/sheilawebber#Web_2.0_in_general
Go there to find out what Web 2.0 is, or look at the introductory powerpoint (on MOLE from Monday 4th)

If you are interested in using Netvibes yourself as a page for gathering links and feeds (which we won't cover in class) you might be interested in the presentation: Using Netvibes as a home page, by Phil Bradley:

22 October 2013

Legal use of information

It is important for people to respect the law concerning intellectual property, particularly if you are librarians or information managers! There is international agreement about copyright and related laws, and the World Intellectual Property Organization http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en is the organisation that aims to develop an international system that is fair to both creators and users of intellectual property.

They define intellectual property as:
"creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce." (WIPO, 2012) They identify two types of intellectual property: Industrial property (e.g. patents, trademarks) and copyright (e.g. literary and artistic works, which includes digital works). This also includes the rights that performers have in their performances (dance, theatre etc.)

Some principles are agreed internationally, and there is harmonisation, for example, within countries of the European Union (although even then there are some details of difference between EU countries). Sheffield University Library has a copyright guide http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/services/copymuch

The base line is that is generally illegal to copy things unless
- EITHER it specifically allowed by law (e.g. acknowledged quotations of up to a certain length are allowed for academic purposes or in reviews: "acknowledged" means there are quote marks and the source is clearly stated)
- OR the rights owner (author/creator) has said that it can be used. Creative Commons licenses http://creativecommons.org/ have made it much easier for an author of a digital work (article, video, photograph etc.) to say how their work can be used. There are a series of licences that you can use, ranging from "anyone can do anything with my work" to (for example) saying that people can use them privately, but must not publish them publicly or use them commercially. This is one of the presentations on the CC site on Sharing Creative Works: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Sharing_Creative_Works

"Derivative" works are works that change the original in some way (e.g. if you cropped a picture, or photoshopped it). Some people do not want their work altered, and since it is their intellectual property, they have the right to say you mustn't.

Flickr
When you search Flickr you can specify you want to be able legally to reuse the image. Scroll down to the bottom of this advanced search page http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/?
and you will see that you can "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content". They explain it clearly here: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
You will usually have to say who the creator of the photo is, and link back to the original photo on Flickr. Once you have found the picture you want you can copy the html code from Flickr to embed it in your blog. I did a 5 minute video showing you how to find an image you are allowed to use on Flickr and then embed it in a blog post:



Another way to generate the html code including a link to the author is to use this application: http://www.imagecodr.org/get.php


Google
In the advanced search option on Google Images you can specify the usage rights, e.g. only search for images that can be re-used.

If you can't find what you want, then Phil Bradley has a list of search engines that search images and video: http://www.philb.com/mediaengines.htm (but some of them might consist mainly or entirely of images that you cannot legally reuse).

Music and more
This page actually offers search for images etc. as well as several music searches http://search.creativecommons.org/

I did a 5 minute video showing you how to find an image you are allowed to use on Jamendo, via asearch on ccsearch, and then embed it in your blog:



Your task is to make sure that you are not copying text, videos or images illegally, on your blog and on your poster! (or indeed anywhere else)

References
- World Intellectual Property Organization. (2012) What is intellectual property? Retrieved 21 October 2012 from http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/
- Creative Commons logo used with permission; see http://creativecommons.org/about/downloads under an Attribution license

21 October 2013

Open Access Week

This week is Open access week. Open access is mentioned in the "Information Universe" presentation. Find out more here:http://www.openaccessweek.org/

20 October 2013

Please post your database or Google search tip!

You already had a session from Alastair in week 2 (on Google etc. searching) and you will have a further session from him either last week (Groups 1 and 2) or this coming week (Groups 3 and 4)

What you need to do
Once you have had the 2nd session from the Alastair make an individual post on your team blog, listing one new thing you learnt about Google or database searching.

A few of you have had a lot of experience in libraries before joining the course: so if you were already a search engine/ database wizard when you came to Sheffield, just say what your best searching tip is. The kitten is waiting to hear about your tips! (photo taken today in Istanbul, where I am about to attend the European Conference on Information Literacy)

15 October 2013

Information Literacy in context: links etc.

Here are some links to items on the initial reading list, and as mentioned in the Information Literacy presentation, plus a few more. If you are not sure where to start: look at the first video (below) which is 17 minutes long and Bonnie Cheuk's paper (the first article linked below) is a nice example of blending practice and theory of information literacy in a workplace.



Information Literacy and the workplace

- Cheuk, B. (2008). Delivering business value through information literacy in the workplace. Libri, 58(3), 137-143. Retrieved 14 October 2013 from http://www.librijournal.org/pdf/2008-3pp137-143.pdf

- Herring, J.E. (2011). From school to work and from work to school: information environments and transferring information literacy practices. Information Research, 16(2). Retrieved 10 September 2013 from http://InformationR.net/ir/16-2/paper473.html

- Hoyer, J. (2011) Information is social: information literacy in context, Reference Services Review, 39(1), 10 - 23. Abstract

- Lloyd, A. (2005). Information literacy: different contexts, different concepts, different truths? Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 37 (2), 82-88. Abstract.

- Lloyd, A. (2009). Informing practice: information experiences of ambulance officers in training and on-road practice, Journal of Documentation, 65 (3), 396-419. Abstract

- Lloyd, A. (2004). Working (in)formation: conceptualizing information literacy in the workplace. In Proceedings of 3rd International Life Long Learning Conference, 13-16 June. (pp. 218-224). Rockhampton, Australia: Central Queensland University Press. Retrieved 14 October 2013 from http://acquire.cqu.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/cqu:1415

Information Literacy in other subject disciplines

- Association of College and Research Libraries. (2012) Information literacy in the disciplines. http://wikis.ala.org/acrl/index.php/Information_literacy_in_the_disciplines (lots of links to articles and materials relevant to students studying different subjects e.g. chemistry, history).

- Webber, S., Boon, S. and Johnston, B. (2005). A comparison of UK academics’ conceptions of information literacy in two disciplines: English and Marketing. Library and information research, 29 (93), 4-15. Retrieved 14 October 2013 from http://www.lirgjournal.org.uk/lir/ojs/index.php/lir/article/view/197/242


Information literacy in specific countries

- Dokphrom, P. (2013). Information Literacy of Undergraduate Students in Thailand: A Case of the Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University, Thailand. In M. Hepworth and G. Walton (eds.), Developing People’s Information Capabilities. (pp.111-126). London, England: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/books.htm?chapterid=17093192

- Hepworth, M. and Duvigneau, S. (2012) Building Research Capacity: Enabling Critical Thinking Through Information Literacy in Higher Education in Africa. Brighton, England: British Library for Development Studies at the Institute of Development Studies. Retrieved 14 October from http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/2301/BuildingResearchCapacityR1.pdf?sequence=1

Information Literacy as a discipline

- Johnston, B. and Webber, S. (2006). As we may think: Information Literacy as a discipline for the information age. Research strategies, 20(3), 108-121. Retrieved 14 October 2013 from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0734331006000097

Expert frameworks and models of Information Literacy

The links to the SCONUL 7 Pillars model are here: http://inf6350-2013.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/information-literacy-and-sconul-7.html

Continuing and Professional Education and the University Libraries at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have teamed up to produce this video which outlines the concepts and practices of the Information Literacy Standards as defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).

This is a link to the actual standards http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency: at the moment a task force is revising the standards, and a consultation on this is in progress.

Please add any links below or (even better!) feature them in posts on your team blog.

Feedback on each others' Team blogs

Today we want you to start by looking at your partner team's blog and giving them some feedback. Aim to give at least:
- one comment which highlights something good about their blog
- one comment which points out a way they could improve their blog.
We will give you a little time to examine your partner team's blog, and note your comments. Then we will ask you to give each other feedback.

Later in the semester (about week 10) the tutors will be announcing the "best team blog". This was the post that announced the 2012 best team blog: http://inf6350-2012.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/team-blog-winners-congrats-to-team-a.html

Today, please consider the following points, which are similar to the ones the tutors will consider when judging the best team blog:

How good is the visual appearance of the blog? e.g.
- Can you read the text easily?
- Is it easy to find your way round the blog?
- Is the blog attractive to look at?
- Have they included visual elements (pictures or videos), where appropriate, in the posts?

Have the team used Blogger design and layout features? e.g.
- Have they included a list of of links?
- Does it look like they have customised the blog layout to make it distinctive?
- Have they included other Blogger widgets (e.g. text box, followers, tag cloud)?

How much have they blogged?
- Have they done at least an introductory post, a post on the 7 Pillars, and posts on the Information Universe?
- Are the posts relevant and interesting?
- Has the whole team contributed to the blog, or do the posts seem just to be done by one person?
*Note with this section, please consider that some people are "beginner" bloggers, whilst others are more experienced. At this stage we do not expect perfect posts, but still we hope for the basic number of posts, and for more than one person to have blogged, so everyone gets a chance to learn blogging*


This is connected with the Present pillar of the SCONUL 7 Pillars of Information Literacy.

14 October 2013

Information Literacy month in the USA!

It is Information Literacy month in the USA.The USA's National Forum on Information Literacy got Barack Obama to endorse the first IL month, and they also have a campaign for USA States to sign up for the month. This is the page for this year: http://infolit.org/october-2013-national-information-literacy-awareness-month/
The image is a direct link to the image on the NFIL website, courtesy of NFIL.

7 October 2013

Week 3 preparation: Information Universe

In either week 3 or week 4, you will have a session on The Information Universe with Sheila or Nigel. This class will focus on Information Resources. Understanding the different types of information resources and their relationships will help you to use information in your assessed coursework.

The preparation for the information universe session is as follows:

1. Think about a time when you needed to find information – for yourself or for others (for example, for a course assignment or a library enquiry). Make notes on the kinds of information that you used in that particular search.

2. Review your notes and identify the different types of reference resources or sources of information found. (By types of resources, we mean categories of material – such as “blog”, “directory”, “report” or “textbook” – not specific titles.)

This is not a competition, so you can discuss it among yourselves if you wish, but you must produce your own list of types of information resources. You can use your own words to describe the types of resource; there is not one particular list of types we want you to use.

3. Please post your list as an individual entry on your team blog, by the end of Monday, 14th October. As you are doing this outside class time, you may prefer for each person to post separately. However, each person should be posting to the team blog.

We shall be looking at examples from different blogs in the class. If you look on the main blog you will see there are links to a couple of examples from last year.

Ask Sheila Webber for help, if you are not sure how to post things to your blog. Sheila will be in the Regent Court lab RC-205 4.15-5pm on Monday 14th October for any last minute help with blog postings. There will also be time to look at team blogs in the week 3 session.

Here are a few examples from previous years. Your blog post does not have to be as long as these, but it gives you an idea of what we have in mind:
- From Chao Sun in 2012: http://ilteamq.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/preparation-of-thing-5-chao-sun.html
- From Anna in 2012 http://the-part-timers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-information-universe.html
- Tseng Peng Chun in 2012 http://inf3650teamb.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/my-information-universe-tseng.html
Note - we want your own example of finding information, do not use anyone else's ;-)

2 October 2013

Team blogs are all linked!

I just added all the links to your team blogs: the list of links is on the right of this page.

1 October 2013

Information Literacy and the SCONUL 7 Pillars

The SCONUL 7 Pillars model of Information Literacy gives you a framework for understanding areas of information handling that are important for academic study. The 7 Pillars model was first published in 1999, and it was revised in 2011. We will be using the revised version.

The SCONUL 7 Pillars model was developed by a group of British university librarians: SCONUL is the Society of College, National and University Libraries.

The document describing the pillars can be found here: http://www.sconul.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/coremodel.pdf

There is an Open Educational Resource that explains about the pillars and includes clickable diagrams of Pillars at http://repository.leedsmet.ac.uk/xerte_output/Sconul_7_Pillars/ (produced by Nick Sheppard)

Post about the 7 Pillars and your team
The purposes of this exercise are to get you familiar with the 7 Pillars, and to start thinking about your own information literacy, and also to get to know each other further as a team.
  • Think individually 1) what is your strongest pillar? 2) What is your weakest pillar? 3) Can you think of a time when you were particularly information literate?
  • As a team, share your strongest/weakest pillars.
  • Write a team blog post on your blog. Discuss what you think are the team’s strongest Pillars and why (you don't have to mention your weakest pillars!), and give at least one example of being information literate.
  • Add labels to your blog post and publish it

Blogs: what to do today

1. One member of each team should set up a blog using their Sheffield University identity (logging into MUSE, clicking Google Mail, then selecting More, then clicking on Blogger, then creating a blog).
At this point you may have to sign up for Blogger. Everyone in the team needs to sign up to Blogger, as once your team blog is set up, all team members have to be invited in as authors.

2. Firstly, invite in all the other member of the team, using their Sheffield University email address. This is on tab Settings, Basic, Permissions.
If there is someone who doesn’t have a Sheffield University email address, then use another Google-identity email for now. If they are using another email address, they will have to sign into that email account to accept the invitation and log on. When they respond, upgrade them to admin status so they can change features of the blog.

3. Secondly, email Sheila (s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk) or just tell Sheila, what the web address and name of your blog is, so she can link to it from this main blog.

4. Customise your team blog’s appearance (Template and Layout)
  • Change the template first (Template tab)
  • Change the background picture
  • Try different typefaces and colours for the blog title, text etc.
  • Note that if you change your template, you lose any changes you made in Layout, so decide on the template first. However, it is ok to make changes to the font etc. of your template at any time.
  • In Layout arrange and add widgets
  • - - You must add a links gadget and include a link to this main Inf6350 blog, http://inf6350-2013.blogspot.co.uk/ and to the link of your partner team
    - - If you have time add some more widgets e.g. a feed from another blog, a poll, features that allow people to subscribe to or follow your blog.
  • If you have yet more time, add a page (by selecting Pages, New Page) saying a bit more about your team

5. Post to your blog.
  • For your first group post, introduce yourselves
  • For your second group post, find another blog you like, and write a couple of sentences about it, with a link

6. Label your posts, so that later on you can find all the posts on the same topic. You describe the subject of the post with words and phrases. Click on Labels (right of screen) and click done when you have finished.

Blogs: What are they and why blog?

Weblogs, or blogs, have some key characteristics:
  • Blogs have posts which may contain text, links, pictures or embedded media. This (what you are reading) is a blog post.
  • The posts are published one at a time, over a period of time.
  • The blog entries are arranged in reverse chronological oder (most recent first)
  • Blogs are often written by one person, but there are also collaborative blogs
If you are unfamiliar with blogs, you may want to watch this video: http://www.commoncraft.com/video/blogs

Will blog for chocolateThere are various kinds of blog, for example:

Here are some articles, and one book, that explain why and how blogging is useful for business and in libraries:
  • Cohen, H. (2013, January 20). Blogging ROI: 15 Ways Blogs Make Money [Web log post]. Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://heidicohen.com/blogging-roi-15-ways-blogs-make-money/ (Short article from a consultant)
  • Crosby, C. (2010) Effective blogging for libraries. London, England: Facet.
  • Li, C. and Stromberg, C. (2007) The ROI of blogging. Retrieved 20 September 2013 from http://www.ieecho.com/pdfs/ROI-of-Blogging.pdf (A Forrester report on the Return on Investment of corporate blogging)
  • Liao, Q. et al. (2011) Enterprise blogging in a global context: comparing Chinese and American practices. CSCW ’11 Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer Supported Coperative Work, pp35-44. Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1958824.1958831
  • Potter, N. (2010) Everything you've ever wanted to know about library blogs and blogging! Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=783 (Includes “thewikiman’s” seminar materials)
  • Yardi, S. Golder, S. and Brzozowski, M. (2009). Blogging at work and the corporate attention economy. CHI '09 Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems ACM. Retrieved 20 September from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1519016
Blogging can also be a subject for your research. A number of Masters students in the Sheffield University iSchool have written Masters dissertations which include investigations of blogging e.g.

Please do add comments if you have examples of useful blogs, or want to say why you blog.

25 September 2013

How to get from Regent Court to the Inf6350 lab

This video shows you how to get from regent Court (where the iSchool is) to the lab in the Mappin Building which is the base class room for Inf6350 Information Resources and Information Literacy.

Inf6350 Information Resources and Information Literacy

This blog is part of the Inf6350: Information Resources and Information Literacy module; Inf6350 for short. On the module outline we say that the module aims to enable students to:
- understand from both theoretical and practical perspectives the concepts of information literacy and information behaviour;
- understand the nature and function of different types and forms of information resources;
- develop their own information literacy and understanding of its application to their future lives; and
- develop specialised skills in searching for, evaluating and packaging information, by carrying out an indepth search and synthesising and presenting the results.
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