EnIL network - News and activities 2013

December 20, 2013  (EnIL participation)

ECIL 2013 proceedings publication
Basili, Carla (2013) Information Literacy Policies from a European Commission's Perspective. In Kurbanoğlu, S., Grassian, E., Mizrachi, D., Catts, R., Akça, S., & Spiranec, Sonja (Eds.)  Worldwide Commonalities and Challenges in Information Literacy Research and Practice. Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL 2013), Hacettepe University Department of Information Management, Istanbul, Turkey, pp. 61-69.

December 4, 2013

Project Information Literacy (PIL) - seventh research report released
"Learning the Ropes: How Freshmen Conduct Course Research Once They Enter College," Alison J. Head, Project Information Literacy Research Report, December 4, 2013. (Two different versions available: Text with appendices, 48 pages, 6.2 MB or text without appendices, 35 pages, 5.8MB).
“In this study, we investigated the challenges facing today’s college freshmen and the information competencies and strategies they develop and use as they advance from high school to college.
At the same time, we examined differences between high school and college information resources and how the students' research activities evolve. Finally, we asked what insights can be gleaned from studying this process in the hope that it will lead to improvements in preparing them for success in the digital age.”
Major Findings
1) Once freshmen began to conduct research in college for assignments, they soon discovered that their college library was far larger and more complex than their high school library had been. The average college library in our sample had 19 times as many online library databases and 9 times as many books and journals as the average high school library.
2) It was daunting to conduct online searches for academic  literature. Nearly three-fourths of the sample (74%) said they  struggled with selecting keywords and formulating efficient  search queries. Over half (57%) felt stymied by the thicket of irrelevant results their online searches usually returned.
3) Learning to navigate their new and complex digital and print  landscape plagued most of the freshmen in our sample (51%).  And once they had their sources in hand, more than two-fifths of the freshmen (43%) said they had trouble making sense of, and tying together, all the information they had found.
4) Most freshmen said their research competencies from high school were inadequate for  college work. As they wrapped up their first term, freshmen said they realized they  needed to upgrade their research toolkit.
5) Many freshmen were in the process of trading out Google searches that satisfied high  school assignments for searching online library databases that their college research  papers now required. Yet other students said they still relied on their deeply ingrained  habit of using Google searches and Wikipedia, a practice that had been acceptable for  research papers in high school.
6) In the short time they had been on campus, a majority of first-term freshmen said they  had already developed some adaptive strategies for shoring up their high school research  skills. Most often, this meant they were becoming accustomed to reading academic  journal articles. Some had discovered the usefulness of abstracts to save time and help  them make selections.
7) Freshmen said they found campus librarians (29%) and their English composition  instructors (29%) were the most helpful individuals on campus with guiding them through  college-level research. They helped students chart a plan for tapping the wealth of  research resources available through the library and formulating a thesis for their papers.
8) By the end of their first year in college, many freshmen appeared to have begun using the  same kind of information resources that college sophomores, juniors, and seniors were  already using, according to the results of our national survey conducted as part of this  study.

November 29, 2013

(announcement  by Dr Forest Woody Horton Jr.)
Book - Evaluation of Information Literacy Programmes in Higher Education: Strategies and Tools Miguel Ángel Marzal García-Quismondo
Abstract
On the basis of transformations occurring in the educational model as a consequence of the shift from "producing" to "generating" knowledge, the impact of the digital divide threat, and the rise in "corporate social responsibility" and information literacy, this article analyses European Union policy actions aimed at fostering social inclusion. In the light of the digital divide, social inclusion is seen as a process that places primacy on information competencies. In the context of this competency phenomenon, evaluation has become an extremely important topic, both socially and educationally. Consequently, the article also analyses the concept, approach, design, types and tools of evaluation that can be effectively applied to information literacy programmes. Finally, a proposal is made for the incorporation of evaluation and its tools into an information literacy programme.
Keywords
information literacy; information literacy evaluation; information literacy indicators; information literacy training programmes

March 26, 2013

ACRL White Paper on “Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment”
ACRL announces the publication of a new white paper, “Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment” written by a working group of leaders from many areas of the association.
This white paper explores and articulates three intersections between scholarly communication and information literacy:
• economics of the distribution of scholarship (including access to scholarship, the changing nature of scholarly publishing, and the education of students to be knowledgeable content consumers and content creators);
• digital literacies (including teaching new technologies and rights issues, and the emergence of multiple types of non-textual content); and
• our changing roles (including the imperative to contribute to the building of new infrastructures for scholarship, and deep involvement with creative approaches to teaching).
“These intersections indicate areas of strategic realignment for academic librarians so that our libraries can be resilient in the face of tremendous change in the scholarly information environment,” said Barbara DeFelice, past chair of the ACRL Scholarly Communication Committee and director of the digital resources and scholarly communication programs at the Dartmouth College Library.
After elaborating on each intersection, the paper provides strategies for librarians from different backgrounds to initiate collaborations within their own campus environments between information literacy and scholarly communication. Erin Ellis, head of libraries instructional services at the University of Kansas and chair of ACRL’s Student Learning and Information Literacy Committee, noted that, “developing new collaborations between information literacy and scholarly communication programs is an important strategic response to the changing academic environment.”
After articulating these intersections and exploring core responses, the paper recommends four objectives, with actions for each, which could be taken by ACRL, other academic library organizations, individual libraries and library leaders. The overarching recommendations are:
• integrate pedagogy and scholarly communication into educational programs for librarians to achieve the ideal of information fluency;
• develop new model information literacy curricula, incorporating evolutions in pedagogy and scholarly communication issues;
• explore options for organizational change; and
• promote advocacy.
“We feel that these objectives will support libraries in becoming more resilient in the face of the changing digital information environment,” said Kevin Smith, chair of ACRL’s Research and Scholarly Environment Committee and director of copyright and scholarly communication at Duke University.
This white paper is issued as both a downloadable PDF and an interactive online format.
 

March 2013

Final statement information and knowledge for all: an expanded vision and a renewed commitment from World Summit on the Information Society meetings that took place in Paris Feb. 25-27 2013.  

February 15, 2013  (EnIL participation)

UNESCO publication “Overview of Information Literacy Resource Worldwide”
A collection of Information Literacy (IL) Resources from around the world is now available on UNESCO’s website in e-Pub and PDF formats. The publication titled “Overview of Information Literacy Resource Worldwide” is divided into 42 language lists and includes selected resources – from websites, books, journals and other kinds of publications – that were provided by contributors from different countries and institutions and compiled by Dr Forest Woody Horton Jr.

January 2013

IL resource "metatool" developed by IFLA's Information Literacy Section.
It is a very large and useful database of all kinds of IL resources.
Click on: http://www.infolitglobal.info/directory/en/