Recent IL developments

Things seem to have moved quite fast lately, mainly involving Ian McCracken, Bill Johnston and me. On the 28^th July we had a very positive meeting with Amina Shah, the CEO of SLIC (Scottish Library and Information Council). She explained that SLIC is developing a national strategy for public libraries with a wide range of partners and that IL will have a place in it. She explained that the Scottish Government (SG) accepts that Scotland’s network of over 500 libraries is the best venue for digital participation training although the inclusion of information literacy (IL) training will be left up to individual libraries. She mentioned the work of digital champions and, in order to understand their work better, we will attend a digital champions meeting on the 15^th September. She also explained that the SG does not have the capacity to take the digital participation agenda forward and will rely on the voluntary sector to deliver training, a distributed model, although SG recognises a major role for libraries. There was some discussion about information needs which will have to be addressed and these include information about housing and housing associations, health information and welfare rights information. Another issue raised was whether SG still sees digital participation as a technical access and infrastructure issue or whether the agenda is moving towards skills development including IL skills. Amina indicated that the latter was the case and advised us to speak to SG civil servants.

Discussion then turned to the previously proposed IL symposium and it was agreed that it would be a cross sectoral event which would take place in early 2015. It was agreed that the CofP should play a major role in this. Potential participants and themes might include:

• Health & Health Literacy
• Education: all sectors + Learning Scotland/SQA
• Housing Associations/Local Authority Housing
• Scottish Govt.
• RSE
• CILIPS
• SLIC

Themes/Topics

• Best Practice in IL/Digital Participation

• Distributed V Integrated models
• City/Region/Rural models
• Person-centred models
• Research & Publication
• Where will we be in x years?

These suggestions will need refining

On the basis of the meeting we met with two SG civil servants, Alan Martin and Alan Rodden, the following day. They outlined the SG’s digital participation strategy especially in relation to the voluntary sector. We were impressed by their understanding of information literacy and its role as a necessary skill for the Scottish people and they also believe there is strong potential to raise awareness of IL in Scottish Govt thinking, possibly at Cabinet level, with a view to influencing policy and future programmes although this is dependent on SG priorities.  We also discussed various training packages and learning opportunities although these do not yet contain IL. We asked to be sent the relevant URLs and I agreed to send the URLs for the work the Scottish Information Literacy Project and others has done for Education Scotland. We also discussed issues concerning information about employability, housing and health. Contacts with appropriate bodies were also discussed including the NHS and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA).

Both Alans were happy to support the proposed symposium, perhaps even extending to providing a venue. They also mentioned the SG Campaign (Lets Get On), planned for the Spring of 2015 which might be linked to the symposium. We will continue to pursue appropriate contacts in the coming weeks. Official support for IL is very welcome

John Crawford, Bill Johnston, Ian McCracken