Archive for the ‘Information Literacy’ Category

« Older Entries

The October, 2009 Issue of the IFLA Journal is Now Available

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

Access the Complete Issue (35.3) (PDF)

This Issue (full text online, free) includes:

+ Editorial: Reading, Information Literacy and Professional Development

+Reading Sources and Reading Spaces in Honduras

+ Information Literacy and Scholarly Investigation: a British perspective

+ Our Space: professional development for new graduates and professionals in Australia

+ Open Access Repositories in Computer Science and Information Technology: an evaluation

+ The Library Services to People with Special Needs Section of IFLA: an historical overview

Access the Complete Issue (35.3; PDF)

Source: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions

Posted in Information Literacy, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

New Research Findings: Students and the Mobile Internet

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Some new research from the U.K.

From the Summary:

The qualitative research with second year undergraduate students from a range of disciplines and universities, consisted of four focus groups and eight depth interviews, held in Manchester and London. The research was conducted by FDS International on behalf of Intute and the findings reinforce the motivation behind the work of the project, which is to provide a user friendly mobile site that is fast and inexpensive to load, providing the right content, presented in the right order and with an adapted layout.

[Snip]

The extent to which the mobile Internet was used varied greatly, with only a small number of students using their mobile Internet for academic work. Given the cost and generally slow access to the Internet from mobile devices, primarily determined by the type of contract and the handset, most students only ever occasionally accessed the Internet using their mobile phone for social purposes and for short durations of time. Consequently, those most likely regularly to access the internet on their mobile phones possessed new telephones with large screens, and had a contract which included free internet access. These represented only a small fraction of those interviewed.

Despite the fact that students rarely used the mobile Internet for their university course, many stated that they would if:

+ their phones had larger screens;
+ it was quick and easy to load and navigate websites; and
+ it was cheaper or free (included in their contract) to access the Internet.

Access the Complete Summary

See Also: Mobilising the Internet Detective (August 14, 2009)

Source: Intute

Posted in Information Literacy, Technology and Internet, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

Spammers Continue to Abuse the Names of Top Government Executives by Misusing the Name of the United States Attorney General

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Spammers Continue to Abuse the Names of Top Government Executives by Misusing the Name of the United States Attorney General

As with previous spam attacks, which have included the names of high-ranking FBI executives and names of various government agencies, a new version misuses the name of the United States Attorney General, Eric Holder.

The current spam alleges that the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were informed the e-mail recipient is allegedly involved in money laundering and terrorist-related activities. To avoid legal prosecution, the recipient must obtain a certificate from the Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Chairman at a cost of $370. The spam provides the name of the EFCC Chairman and an e-mail address from which the recipient can obtain the required certificate.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Posted in Information Literacy, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Webcast: Cory Doctorow Interviewed about Copyright and Libraries at Internet Librarian International

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Internet Librarian International took place last week in London and one of the keynote speakers was writer, blogger, “copyright activist,” and editor of Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow.

Here’s an 11 minutes webcast where Doctorow chats with Jaap van de Geer about several topics including:

Copyright in the age of the Internet

What publishers are scared of

The future of publishers and libraries

A few quotes from Cory:

+ “Libraries need to get better embracing the wild and woolly nature of the Internet.”
+ “Explain to patrons how to be media literate about Wikipedia.”
+ “Wikipedia has lots of value if you know how to extract that value.”

eBooks

More Quotes from Cory:

+ “eBooks right now are very good for is they are very complementary to print books because they are searchable, because they’re portable, because they are good for reference where a print book is better for a long for reading experience.”
+ “Libraries need to watch out for a means of delivering DRM into their collections.”
+ “One thing I would love to see more libraries doing is having local copies of public domain works and Creative Commons works in their collections that can be freely lent and having that be the core of their eBook collection and having that be the standard by which all commercial eBook offerings are judged.”
+ “Inter-library loan is a wonderful thing.”

The ownership of a book (vs, records and movies)

Author recognition of copyright issues

Librarians

Final Quote from Cory

+ “The reason librarians want to make works available is because they are bonded to the holy goal of universal access to all human knowledge not because they have some little self interest. This is approximately true of most the people who work in publishing too.

Source: CrapHound.com

See Also: Congratulations to Cory for being named by the UTNE Reader as one of “50 Visionaries Who are Changing Our World.”

A figurehead for “copyfighters” everywhere, he’s on a crusade against a corporate monopoly on patent law. Doctorow thinks replication feeds a culture of creativity and might even be programmed into our DNA; it should be encouraged, not criminalized.

The entry is loaded with links to help you get to know (if you don’t already) Cory and and his work.

Posted in E-books, Information Industry, Information Literacy, Intellectual Property, Libraries and Librarianship, Webcasts and Podcasts | No Comments »

How to Spot a Hoax Twitter Account – A Case Study

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

How to spot a hoax Twitter account – a case study

If you were following the Jan Moir-Stephen Gateley story that was all over Twitter today you may have come across a Twitter account claiming to be Jan Moir herself – @janmoir_uk. It wasn’t her – but it was a convincing attempt, and I thought it might be worth picking out how I and other Twitter users tried to work out the account’s legitimacy.

Source: Online Journalism Blog

Posted in Information Literacy, Search News, Social Media, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

An Interview with Info Literacy Expert Sharon Weiner from Purdue University

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Place this post in you good to see and read file.

At the beginning of October we posted that it’s Information Literacy Month. Our post included some words about info literacy by President Obama. It includes a mention of libraries.

Today, a Q&A interview with Sharon Weiner, the W. Wayne Booker Endowed Chair in Information Literacy for Purdue Libraries and the vice president of the National Forum on Information Literacy.

Questions include:

+ What is Information Literacy?

+ What sector would you say lacks the most literacy, or is less publicized?

+ What can a reference librarian do that I can’t do on Google?

+ And Several Others

Source: BoilerStation.com (Part of the The Journal-Courier, Lafayette-West Lafayette, IN)

See Also: Direct Link to the National Forum on National Literacy

See Also: Sharon Weiner’s Bio ||| More About Her Position Here

Posted in Information Literacy, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

How to Read Articles About Health and Healthcare

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

How to read articles about health and healthcare (PDF; 189 KB)

If you’ve just read a health-related headline that’s caused you to spit out your morning coffee (”Coffee causes cancer” usually does the trick) it’s always best to follow the Blitz slogan: “Keep Calm and Carry On”. On reading further you’ll often find the headline has left out something important, like “Injecting five rats with really highly concentrated coffee solution caused some changes in cells that might lead to tumours eventually. (Study funded by The Association of Tea Marketing)”.

The most important rule to remember: “Don’t automatically believe the head- line”. It is there to draw you into buying the paper and reading the story. Would you read an article called “Coffee pretty unlikely to cause cancer, but you never know”? Probably not.

Before spraying your newspaper with coffee in the future, you need to interrogate the article to see what it says about the research it is reporting on. Bazian (the company I work for) has interrogated hundreds of articles for Behind The Headlines on NHS Choices, and we’ve developed the following questions to help you figure out which articles you’re going to believe, and which you’re not.

Source: Dr. Alicia White (Behind the Headlines) via Boing Boing

Posted in Information Literacy, Media, Search News | No Comments »

UK: 1 in 3 Kids Think Top Search Rankings Most “Truthful”

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land Writes:

A new and wide ranging report from the UK regulatory agency Ofcom about media literacy finds that 32 percent of UK kids aged 12-15 years old believe that the links/listings shown at the top of search results are the most “truthful.”

The post continues with a summary of the full report along with a graph that shows statistics about the “Understanding of Search Engine Web Sites” by 12-15 year olds.

Source: Search Engine Land

See Also: UK Childrens’ Media Literacy, Executive Summary
This is the report discussed in the article.

+ Access the Full Text of the Report (46 pages; PDF)

+ Report Annex: Top 50 Websites Visited by Children (UK) (9 pages; PDF)

Posted in Information Literacy | No Comments »

President Obama Names October 2009 National Information Literacy Awareness Month

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

From the News Release:

The American Library Association (ALA) joins President Obama in highlighting the importance of ensuring all Americans have the skills necessary to effectively navigate the Information Age.

Yesterday, the president issued a statement proclaiming October 2009 as National Information Literacy Awareness Month and calling “upon the people of the United States to recognize the important role information plays in our daily lives, and appreciate the need for a greater understanding of its impact.”

The president’s statement also makes the key point that [our emphasis] “though we may know how to find the information we need, we must also know how to evaluate it.”

{Here’s the full text of the paragraph, note the mention of libraries.]

“Though we may know how to find the information we need, we must also know how to evaluate it. Over the past decade, we have seen a crisis of authenticity emerge. We now live in a world where anyone can publish an opinion or perspective, whether true or not, and have that opinion amplified within the information marketplace. At the same time, Americans have unprecedented access to the diverse and independent sources of information, as well as institutions such as libraries and universities, that can help separate truth from fiction and signal from noise.

“In libraries across the country, librarians are helping the public achieve this goal,” ALA President Camila Alire said. “During this month of awareness, ALA encourages more Americans to visit their local libraries to take full advantage of the services they provide to help the public develop strong information literacy skills.”

Alire also said robust broadband is the critical underlying infrastructure needed to effectively navigate the Information Age. ALA commends the president on the $7.2 billion for broadband included in the stimulus and specific inclusion of libraries (public computer centers) as key hubs for information literacy.

+ Read the Complete Statement from President Obama (via WhiteHouse.gov)

Source: ALA

Posted in Information Literacy, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Is that Really Factual?: Focus on Healthcare Reform—Don’t Believe Everything You Read

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

In her latest Newslink Spotlight, Information Today’s NewsBreaks Editor, Paula Hane, takes a look at several resources that can help you verify and “fact check” stories being discussed or debated in the news. Hane’s is the healthcare debate in this article.

The first service mentioned is FactCheck.org, a non-partisan and non-profit site/service from the University of Pennsylvania where journalists and others do the fact checking.

Paula puts it this way:

As a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters, FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. It monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Its goals are to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship and to increase public knowledge and understanding. It’s definitely a good site to know about when the fur is flying over important issues such as healthcare reform.

The article goes on to discuss a similar service from the St. Petersburg Times named PoliFact

Reporters and editors from the Times fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists, and interest groups and rate them on a Truth-O-Meter.

The article then provides several sites that focus specifically on the healthcare debate including:

Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a grass roots effort and Fix Health Care Policy from the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation

The article concludes by offering even more links and resources.

Much Much More in the Complete Article

Access FactCheck.org

Access Access PoliFact.org

Access HealthCareNow

Access FixHealth Care Policy

Source: Information Today

Posted in Access to Information, Information Literacy, Information Seeking | No Comments »

NIH Wants to Learn More About Consumer Health Information Interests and Behaviors for Seeking and Using Health Information

Monday, September 28th, 2009

From the Federal Register Announcement (PDF):

President Obama issued a directive to all Federal agencies calling for greater transparency, public participation, and collaboration. In response to this Directive, and in keeping with the work that has already been done by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to encourage public input and provide science-based health resources and science information to the public, NIH posts this Request for Information (RFI) to offer a new public input opportunity. [Our Emphasis] The RFI will provide insight and better understanding of the health information needs and information-seeking behaviors of NIH health consumer audiences. Information gathered will assist the agency in developing and disseminating health, medical, and scientific information to a broader variety of audiences. The agency anticipates using new outreach strategies and tools, from community level outlets to Internet-based social media. Members of the public as well as organizations are invited and encouraged to participate in this public input opportunity.

[Snip]

The Request for Information (RFI) serves as a vehicle to obtain public comments on how NIH can best address communication challenges and requirements for the 21st century in the face of increased demands and shrinking resources. The purpose of the RFI is to obtain information aimed at helping the NIH strengthen short- and long-term communications strategies while identifying cost-effective, meritorious, innovative, and legally sanctioned methods and outlets for disseminating health information to the public. Specifically, the RFI seeks information on the following:
+ The current state and range of health information-seeking behaviors and trends;
+ The range of health information of interest to the public;
+ How the public accesses and uses health information; and
+ The barriers that might impede NIH’s ability to communicate with health consumers.

Responses will be accepted through December 30, 2009. Please limit responses to the maximum number of words indicated for each response.

The complete RFI with a complete set of directions will be posted here in the next few days.

Source: Federal Register / National Institutes of Health
Hat Tip: M.Z.

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Information Literacy, Information Policy, Information Seeking, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Medical Journals See a Cost to Fighting Industry-Backed Research

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Medical Journals See a Cost to Fighting Industry-Backed Research

The Journal of the American Medical Association saw a 21 percent drop in industry-financed research after it began requiring that data in company-sponsored medical trials be independently verified by university researchers, a study has concluded.

The study, by a team of medical researchers in England and Florida, found that two of JAMA’s competitors saw their proportions of industry-backed research grow after JAMA decided to impose the requirement in 2005 to deter companies from shading descriptions of medical-test results to favor their products.

The findings suggest JAMA could face significant financial pressure to abandon the policy, given the reliance of medical journals on corporate dollars, said one of the study’s authors, Benjamin Djulbegovic, a professor of medicine and oncology at the University of South Florida.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

See also: Ghostwriting: The Dirty Little Secret of Medical Publishing That Just Got Bigger (PLoS Medicine)

Posted in Information Literacy, Scholarly Publishing, Search News | No Comments »

Ghostwriting: The Dirty Little Secret of Medical Publishing That Just Got Bigger

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Ghostwriting: The Dirty Little Secret of Medical Publishing That Just Got Bigger

If you are an editor, author, reviewer, or reader of medical journals, or if you depend on your doctor or health care provider getting unbiased information from medical journals, then the 1,500 documents now hosted on the PLoS Medicine Web site should make you very concerned and angry. Because, quite simply, the story told in these documents amounts to one of the most compelling expositions ever seen of the systematic manipulation and abuse of scholarly publishing by the pharmaceutical industry and its commercial partners in their attempt to influence the health care decisions of physicians and the general public.

Source: PLoS Medicine

Posted in Information Literacy, Papers and Presentations, Scholarly Publishing, Search News, Source File | No Comments »

Now Online: Summer 2009 issue of the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Quarterly

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

From the Description:

The Summer 2009 issue of the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Quarterly is now available at http://www.loc.gov/teachers/tps/quarterly/. This issue focuses on the theme of using primary sources to support inquiry learning.

Previous issues on the themes of literacy integration, promoting critical thinking, differentiated instruction, and technology integration are also available in both html and pdf versions through the TPS Quarterly archive.

PDF Version of Summer, 2009 Issue (8 pages)

TPS Quarterly Archive (2008-)
Access to Past Issues

Source: Library of Congress

Posted in Information Literacy, Resources, Resources for Educators, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Information Literacy Training for All: The Outliers

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

From the Summary:

Lark Birdsong shares how the University of Washington Information School’s Information Literacy Initiative has led her to work with many information-needy groups, from disadvantaged youth to homeless women.

Source: Searcher

Posted in Information Literacy | No Comments »

Should You Trust Health Advice from the Web?

Friday, July 31st, 2009

From the Article:

If you regularly turn to a search engine to find out whether, say, you should put ice on a twisted ankle, you’re far from alone. Sixty-one per cent of American adults seek out health advice online, according to a survey published last month by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Around a third of those surveyed admitted they changed their thinking about how they should treat a condition based on what they found online. Yet a growing body of evidence suggests that much online health information is unreliable.

Several studies to be published in medical journals this year highlight the issue. Pia López-Jornet and Fabio Camacho-Alonso of the University of Murcia, Spain, found that information on oral cancers on the top websites gathered by Google and Yahoo searches was “poor” (Oral Oncology, DOI: 10.1016/j.oraloncology.2009.03.017). Among other things, the websites failed to attribute authorship, cite sources and report conflicts of interest. And a study by a team at the Charité University Medical Centre in Berlin, Germany, of googled advice on how to deal with heartburn found that “the evidence for most of the recommendations is weak to nonexistent” (European Journal of Integrative Medicine.

Source: New Scientist

See Also: US Doctors Rely on Wikipedia (via The Inquirer)

See Also: The Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey Mentioned in the Article
We first linked to the report on June 11, 2009.

Posted in Information Literacy | No Comments »

Information Literacy Seven Corners: Improving instruction by reviewing how librarians, faculty culture, professional literature, technology, and today’s college students converge

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

From the Abstract:

This article reviews library and education literature, as well as the author’s personal observation of undergraduate information literacy (IL) instruction sessions, and provides a range of ideas and suggestions for ways in which librarians can increase the effectiveness of IL instruction sessions. The author asserts that there are five major influences that present challenges and opportunities to librarians who wish to increase authentic collaboration with faculty for course-integrated instruction that more fully addresses the higher-thinking skills true information literacy requires. In today’s world of expanded electronic access to information and the impact ubiquitous Internet searching has had on students entering or returning to post-secondary education, new strategies must be employed to facilitate instruction that goes beyond procedural skills – the conceptual aspects of information literacy and critical thinking must come to the forefront of library and classroom instruction.

Access the Full Text (Preprint)

Source: Library Journal (via E-LIS)

Posted in Information Literacy, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Library à la Carte: Research and course guides made to order

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

From the Article:

With increasing demands on their time, librarians seek speedier, easier ways to create library course pages and subject research guides. Many libraries have turned to LibGuides, LibData, and other content management systems (CMS) to meet this need.1 Add to this mix, Library à la Carte, formerly Interactive Course Assignment Pages (or ICAP) Tool. Created by librarians and a programmer at Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries, Library à la Carte is a CMS originally designed to create course pages. Library à la Carte was recently enhanced to build subject pages. This open source tool is freely available to all libraries.

Direct to Library à la Carte Web Site

Source: C&RL News

Posted in Information Literacy, Libraries and Librarianship, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Conference Paper: Information Literacy in the Knowledge Society: Empowering Learners for a Better Tomorrow

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

This paper was written by Rupak Chakrvarty and was presented at “Trends and Strategic Issues for Libraries in Global Information Society, March 18-19, 2008, in Panjab, India.

From the Abstract:

We are finding ourselves in a rapidly growing and complex digital environment which has in turn increased our dependency on information. But there is increasing evidence that our information skills are not keeping pace in any systematic fashion. We all need help to sharpen the techniques and skills to manage information. Present paper is an attempt to present the current status of information literacy and the emerging roles of libraries and schools of LIS education in augmenting the information literacy campaign.

Direct to Full Text Paper (21 pages; PDF)

Source: DList

Posted in Information Literacy, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Both Sides Now: Librarians Looking at Information Literacy from High Schools and College

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Robert Schroeder Writes:

I initially became interested in the transitions students make from high school to college when I worked as a librarian in a community college in Washington state about ten years ago. At Portland State University I am currently the liaison to the General Education Department (called University Studies), and so still teach research and information literacy skills to thousands of freshmen each year. These freshmen come to college with a wide variety of research and information literacy skills.

Direct to Complete Article

Source: Educators’ Spotlight Digest

Posted in Information Literacy, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

« Older Entries