Friday
Nov072008
Welcome to the Scottish Information Literacy Project
Friday, November 7, 2008 at 4:00PM
Welcome everyone to the Scottish Information Literacy Project and weblog we are delighted with the help we received from the invaluable Warren Smith in IT in setting it up. Things are reasonably good at the moment as we are currently funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Many Thanks to this body for keeping the show on the road. However although we are funded until the end of September 2009, now is not too soon to be thinking about finding future funding.
We have recently been doing our first piece of consultancy, some subcontracting work for Becta. This has proved to be very informative and it shows that Becta is becoming aware of information literacy or digital literacy as they prefer to call it. There is also growing interest in the early years/parental involvement agenda, the role of information in these areas and media literacy which is something we are interested in having previously had contacts with Ofcom Scotland. It was also flagged up strongly when I visited Washington in October last year to meet US experts on information literacy. However I feel that, while LIS research is using educational findings, I do not think that, on the whole, the converse is true. I attended a discussion last month on a pre print about digital natives and although information literacy was discussed in the text there were no references to LIS journals or research.
Christine and I are currently scurrying about meeting employers' organisations, the STUC, the Employability & Skills Division of the Lifelong Learning Directorate and Skills Development Scotland who are interested in the role of IL in careers guidance. There is no doubt at all that the skills agenda is going to play a big part in the future of IL development and it is essential that it should be seen as a discrete skill and not just buried under umbrella terms like 'problem solving' and 'soft skills'. A recurring problem for us is that we have no policy formulated by our professional body (CILIP) to show them. An issue for the Policy Forum?
I am a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) which has a strong interest in vocational education and skills development. We recently had a meeting with the RSA Outreach Officer who has agreeed to promote IL awareness among IL members.
Best wishes
John Crawford
Project Director
We have recently been doing our first piece of consultancy, some subcontracting work for Becta. This has proved to be very informative and it shows that Becta is becoming aware of information literacy or digital literacy as they prefer to call it. There is also growing interest in the early years/parental involvement agenda, the role of information in these areas and media literacy which is something we are interested in having previously had contacts with Ofcom Scotland. It was also flagged up strongly when I visited Washington in October last year to meet US experts on information literacy. However I feel that, while LIS research is using educational findings, I do not think that, on the whole, the converse is true. I attended a discussion last month on a pre print about digital natives and although information literacy was discussed in the text there were no references to LIS journals or research.
Christine and I are currently scurrying about meeting employers' organisations, the STUC, the Employability & Skills Division of the Lifelong Learning Directorate and Skills Development Scotland who are interested in the role of IL in careers guidance. There is no doubt at all that the skills agenda is going to play a big part in the future of IL development and it is essential that it should be seen as a discrete skill and not just buried under umbrella terms like 'problem solving' and 'soft skills'. A recurring problem for us is that we have no policy formulated by our professional body (CILIP) to show them. An issue for the Policy Forum?
I am a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) which has a strong interest in vocational education and skills development. We recently had a meeting with the RSA Outreach Officer who has agreeed to promote IL awareness among IL members.
Best wishes
John Crawford
Project Director
Reader Comments (4)
Hi John and Christine,
Great to see a blog on IL activity in Scotland! Have just come into post of Information Literacy Librarian at Aberdeenshire, so will be checking regularly for news of what's happening in public libraries.
CILIP has not been entirely inactive in this area and the wealth of resource available on information literacy, much of it developed by a very active Information Literacy Sub-Group (part of the Community Services Group) can be seen via this http://www.cilip.org.uk/policyadvocacy/learning/informationliteracy/.
Additionally, the Youth & School Libraries Joint Committee wish to do some work on information literacy skills underpinning the new National Curriculum. This was also a theme of CILIP's recent discussions with the Training & Development Agency.
There remains a need to focus this resource and this work into a more explicit policy statement on the role of library and information professionals, to go alongside the existing definition of Information Literacy.
As suggested, this is likely to be a consideration for the Policy Forum, which will shortly be considering policy priorities for next year.
Thanks Sue will try to keep adding items.
Thanks Chris,
As you say what is needed now is a CILIP Task & Finish Group to formulate an information literacy for all sectors of the profession. What was it Winston Churchill said - 'Action this day'