Archive for the ‘Information Literacy’ Category
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 »
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 »
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Direct to Complete Conference Paper by Joe Murphy and Heather Moulaison (6 pages; PDF)
From the Paper:
The social networking literate librarian possesses the skills necessary providing services in and with online social networking sites
Social networking sites are extremely popular across age groups and are central forums for accessing and sharing information. Librarians are responding to the popularity of social networking sites and their expanding role in the creation, use, and sharing of information by engaging them as a central medium for interacting with library patrons and providing services to meet their information needs.
Librarians need a new branch of skill sets specific to utilizing and leveraging social networking sites to provide quality services and maintain their role as information experts in a Web 2.0 world.
Source: Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 14th National Conference, Pushing the Edge: Explore, Engage, Extend., Seattle, Washington (via E-LIS)
Posted in Information Literacy, Libraries and Librarianship, Social Media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Blogola: The FTC Takes On Paid Posts
Readers of Adventures in Babywearing, a blog for parents, got an up-close look at the Ergo, a $135 embroidered baby carrier in a shade called “organic blue” in a May 14 post on the site. Blog operator Stephanie Precourt was impressed. “The Ergo truly is now my first choice for long-term wear as well as nursing and doing chores around the house,” she wrote.
Money can’t buy that kind of advertising for Maui (Hawaii)-based ERGObaby. Or can it? As Precourt wrote in her blog, the company sent the carrier free, along with a matching pouch and backpack. Precourt says it’s legitimate to blog about a product she’s been given by its manufacturer. “I try to keep my blog filled with personal stories and real-life content so that when I do happen to write about something that I’ve been given, it’s credible,” she says in an e-mail.
But such back-scratching endorsements could become tougher under a coming set of Federal Trade Commission guidelines designed to clarify how companies can court bloggers to write about their products. This summer, the government agency is expected to issue new advertising guidelines that will require bloggers to disclose when they’re writing about a sponsor’s product and voicing opinions that aren’t their own. The new FTC guidelines say that blog authors should disclose when they’re being compensated by an advertiser to discuss a product.
Source: Business Week
Hat tip: PW
Posted in Information Literacy, Search News, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
Direct to Table of Contents (via Pubmed Central)
Articles include:
+ A case study: using social tagging to engage students in learning Medical Subject Headings
+ Search strategies to identify information on adverse effects: a systematic review
+ Development of a new academic digital library: a study of usage data of a core medical electronic journal collection
+ A bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature on Internet, video games, and cell phone addiction
+ The great contribution: Index Medicus, Index-Catalogue, and IndexCat
+ Web usability testing with a Hispanic medically underserved population
+ Disappearing act: decay of uniform resource locators in health care management
journals
+ Medical librarians’ uses and perceptions of social tagging
+ Embedded librarians: one library’s model for decentralized service
and Much More.
Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Literacy, Information Science, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
This fee-based book is available from ALA’s Book Shop. A very interesting topic!
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) announces the publication of a new title, “Library Rx: Measuring and Treating Library Anxiety” by Martina Malvasi, Catherine Rudowsky and Jesus M. Valencia.
“Library Rx” presents research findings on library anxiety in college and university students. There is strong evidence that library anxiety, the inadequate feeling students have when lost in overwhelming buildings that present mountains of information in all formats and professionals who may seem busy and unapproachable, has a negative impact on undergraduate student performance. The authors review existing research on student reactions to the library environment, describe the finding of a research project on library anxiety and present ideas for its treatment.
Malvasi, Rudowsky and Valencia compare and test various treatments for library anxiety, including traditional instruction, online tutorials and one-on-one teaching moments, as well as the effects of no library intervention or treatment at all. Using statistical analysis, the effectiveness of the various treatment methods is presented. In addition, anecdotal evidence of library initiatives and events used to reduce library anxiety is provided. “Library Rx” prescribes relevant solutions for library anxiety in all types of academic libraries.
Look for sales information at the bottom of the ALA/ACRL post here.
Posted in Information Literacy, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
From the Article:
In a bid to tackle ethical pitfalls in technology before they become a problem, a new research project will identify the Information and Communications technologies (ICTs) that are likely to emerge in the next 10 to 15 years.
The two-year study called Ethical Issues of Emerging ICT Applications (ETICA), coordinated by De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) aims to help researchers identify new technologies that could become as famous as Facebook and Twitter and enable them to devise a strategy for dealing with the unforeseen drawbacks that these emerging technologies bring along.
Source: IWR
Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Information Literacy, Information Science, Information Seeking, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
From the Announcement:
The organizers of the popular Sparky Awards, which recognize the best new short videos on the value of information sharing, are calling on colleges and universities to organize their own campus video competitions in 2009 to get maximum benefit from the third-annual installment of the contest.
Well-suited for adoption as a class assignment, the Sparky Awards invite contestants to submit videos of two minutes or less that imaginatively portray the benefits of the open, legal exchange of information. The contest is an opportunity to promote library services, including media services or the information commons, where students can edit video, browse media, work collaboratively and learn about copyright.
Direct to Sparky Awards Web Site
Source: SPARC
Posted in Information Literacy, Scholarly Publishing, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
From the Web Site:
At SDSU [San Diego State University], the Information Literacy and Instructional Services librarians are working in collaboration with several teaching and learning units on campus to strengthen student learning and effective teaching practices. This unique partnership allows us to leverage our resources and expertise for pedagogical design, explore new collaborative and social technologies, and move toward common goals for student learning and faculty development.
Source: EDUCAUSE
Posted in Information Literacy, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »
Saturday, March 7th, 2009
The Future of Fact Checking
Remember Jayson Blair, the New York Times “reporter” who fabricated tens of articles by gliding through a loop hole in the reporter’s code of honor? Some established magazines like The New Yorker or The Atlantic can afford to pay fact checkers, but even the Times — whether for reasons of deadline or budget — must rely on reporters to fact-check themselves, taking any heat from the public if they misquote or misrepresent.
Obviously, there is even less impetus or resources to fact-check blogs. In blogging, commentary is so instantaneous that a moment of reflective delay costs its writer timely influence on the cacophonous dialogue of interested voices. Toss in the patina of ideology, opinion, and just plain gossip, which can characterize the blogosphere both left and right, and you have a recipe for old fashioned, low and dirty rumor-mongering.
Source: Internet & Democracy Project
Posted in Information Literacy, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Friday, March 6th, 2009
From the Introduction:
In the past, the research process began with two, distinct phases: discovery and access. After determining a topic, a researcher would enter the discovery phase, in which he or she would look through library catalogs and article indices to identify resources that might pertain to his or her research. During this phase, the researcher would sift through records containing resource descriptions, not the resources themselves. Then, after assembling a list of promising records, the researcher would use these records to try to locate the resources in order to evaluate them. The goal of the researcher during this access phase was to get a physical copy of the resource. The Internet and advancements in search engine technology and library information systems have made research easier in some ways and more difficult in others. The change that has the greatest implications for UC-eLinks – and for library services in general – is the collapsing of the discovery and access phases into a single workflow.
The desired end result of this new workflow remains the same, although most researchers now prefer an electronic version of a resource to a physical one. The process still begins with discovery, but once researchers start entering queries into a search engine and getting search results back, they want to be able to immediately evaluate the results. They repeat this searchand- evaluate cycle as many times as needed. Thus, the research workflow has evolved from search-then-evaluate to search-and-evaluate.
Direct to Complete Report (15 pages; PDF)
Source: California Digital Library
Posted in Information Literacy, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News | No Comments »
Friday, March 6th, 2009
From the Pandia Post:
How about a one-stop-shop that offers technical know-how for parents and teachers who want to teach internet literacy to young people? The Council of Europe offers an extensive handbook for free.
The handbook is available in HTML and Flash format for free and a printed version is available for EUR 13 (USD 20).
The content is divided into 25 fact sheets on themes such as searching for information, spam, chat, games, creativity, privacy, security, social networking, Web 2.0 and becoming an active e-citizen. Each fact sheet contains a general introduction to the theme, ethical considerations, best practice examples and links to further information.
Direct to Web-Based Versions of the Report
Source: Council of Europe (via Pandia)
Posted in Information Literacy | No Comments »
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
From the Abstract:
Information-seeking behavior remains an important research area. Libraries and other information providers strive to understand users’ information needs and how they try to fulfill these needs. This understanding helps design and offer appropriate user-centered information systems/services. Bruce (2005) states that, “information plays a significant role in our daily professional and personal lives and we are constantly challenged to take charge of the information that we need for work, fun and everyday decisions and tasks.” In the digital era, research on information-seeking behavior has taken on even more importance worldwide. Most of the literature on information-seeking behavior comes from developed countries, while conditions in developing countries vary significantly. The scarcity of studies on information-seeking behavior in Pakistan is revealed in a recent article by Anwar (2007), who establishes the need of such studies in a Pakistani context.
Direct to Article
Source: Library Philosophy and Practice
Authors: Muhammad Rafiq and Dr. Kanwal Ameen
Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Literacy, Information Seeking | No Comments »
Friday, February 20th, 2009
Take a brief quiz from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
From the Web Site:
Do you cringe when your cell phone rings? Do you suffer from withdrawal when you can’t check your Blackberry? Do you rush to post your vacation video to your Web site? The questions below allow you to place yourself in one of the categories in the Pew Internet Project’s Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users. To identify the typology group to which you belong, please answer the questions below. When you press the ‘Calculate My Results’ button, a new page will tell you in which group you fit, along with a description of the general characteristics of that group.
Direct to Quiz
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Literacy, Information Science, Information Seeking | No Comments »
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
From the Web Site:
Project Information Literacy is national research project, based in the University of Washington’s Information School. We are currently collecting data from early adults enrolled in community colleges, pubic colleges and universities, and private colleges and universities in the U.S.
Our goal is to understand how early adults conceptualize and operationalize research activities for course work and “everyday use” and especially how they resolve issues of credibility, authority, relevance, and currency in the digital age.
Direct to Progress Report February, 2009 (14 pages; PDF)
Source: Project Information Literacy (University of Washington)
Hat Tip: ACRLog
Posted in Information Literacy | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
A 2008 article by Birger Hjørland.
From the Abstract:
This paper considers “information literacy” as a scholarly skill associated with knowledge about information sources, “source criticism”, critical thinking and theory of knowledge. From the perspective of Library and Information Science (LIS) it should be defined in relation to the research field of LIS: What we can offer and what we should offer in relation to this concept? It is argued that the core issue is the critical understanding of knowledge production and knowledge claims and how to enable users to make rational decisions in the overloaded information ecology. Emphasis should be put on the functions of the scholarly communication system considered from sociological and epistemological perspectives
Source: PRISMA.COM (via d-LIST)
Posted in Information Literacy, Information Science, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »
