LILAC 2010

I see the LILAC 2010 draft programme for the parallel sessions are now posted on the LILAC 2010 website and that my presentation is first up in the parallel sessions for the conference.

Monday 29th March 2010

3pm - 3.45pm Begin at the beginning - Information Literacy in primary schools  - Christine Irving

4.25pm - 5.10pm  Employability and information literacy: a review of a training programme - John Crawford

Tuesday 30th March 2010

12.10 - 12.40 Developing an information literacy community of practice in Scotland - Lesley Thomson (the program has Thomson with an p)

12.45 - Scottish Government information literacy in the work place - measuring impact -Morag Higgison and Jenny Foreman

Will need to have a look and see who else is presenting plus presentations of interest.

The importance of paying close attention to your "market," adjusting your service model, and remaining relevant to your customers

Another gem from the Information Literacy Community of Practice. This time a posting from CCHS Library Learning Commons re the importance of paying close attention to your "market," adjusting your service model, and remaining relevant to your customers.  

In the world of school libraries the rats leaving the ship is analogous to finding your job on the cut list. By the time your program is on that list it is too late.

She does however offer some suggestions

How do you avoid this fate? Be curious, be bold, find out what the smartest school librarians and educational tech visionaries from around the world are doing and saying, and see how it can be implemented to the benefit of your students and faculty.  Embrace the unknown ...

Vist the original posting and read the rest for your self.

Helping Children Find What They Need on the Internet

Thanks to Lesley Thomson and Jenny Foreman (Scottish Government) for highlighting the following article in the Information Literacy Community of Practice

Article from the New York Times reporting on research sponsored by Google and developed by the University of Maryland and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, "aimed at discerning the differences between how children and adults search and identify the barriers children face when trying to retrieve information." Lesley Thomson

A very interesting article and not just relevant to understanding how children search. In our experience re: training in the Scottish Government, sometimes adults don't always understand the 'multi step question' as described in the article.

As for the 'Wonder Wheel' (see below) also mentioned, we have recently requested that our IT services enable this feature to be available in our training rooms so that we can demonstrate it. At present we are unable to view the 'Wonder Wheel' from our desktops because Active X isn't facilitated. Fingers crossed we'll be able to use it at least in the training rooms in the near future.

"In May, Google introduced Wonder Wheel, a graphical search tool aimed at making browsing easier. (To find it, click on “show options” on a page of search results; it appears halfway down the left column.) For a search on “apple,” the wheel shows prongs pointing to “apple fruit” or “apple store locator” in the left panel." Jenny Foreman

As they say it is an interesting article and there comments in relation to their experience of adults within the Scottish Government are interesting and useful. I did a search on Google for information literacy and had a look at Google's Wonder Wheel (see link below) which was great it's like a mind map of results. I also liked the options available for viewing your results:

• All results: Images; Videos; News; Blogs; Updates; Books; Forums 


• Any time: Latest; Past 24 hours; Past week; Past year; Specific date range


• Standard view: Related searches; Wonder wheel; Timeline


• Standard results: Images from the page; Fewer shopping sites; More shopping sites; Page previews; Translated search

Information Literacy Strategy for Wales

Sheila Webber has posted her presentation - International Perspectives on IL from the meeting on an Information Literacy Strategy for Wales on 30 November 2009 at Gregynogg Hall in Wales. John also spoke about the work of the Scottish Information Literacy Project and the lessons which Wales can learn from us his thoughts on the event were posted on the project blog .

Her presentation cover useful pointers for everyone and contains some amazing school librarian quotes. Worth a look.

Information Literacy Practitioner of the Year 2010 - award reminder

Email message that you may or may not have seen.

LILAC 2010 would like to remind all interested that the closing date for nominations for the Information Literacy Practitioner of the Year 2010 (A Joint CSG IL, CONUL and LAI Award)  is fast approaching (31st January 2010)! 

We welcome nominations from all sectors. Individuals or groups may self nominate or may be nominated by a colleague. The award is open to all working within the UK or Ireland.

The closing date for nominations is the 31st January 2010.

LILAC 2010 is taking place in Limerick from the 29th - 31st March. Further information can be found at: www.lilacconference.com/dw/awards/index.html