Category: Conferences

Posted on behalf of Heather Inskip, MSc Student

Whilst I may have initially been mainly excited about the prospect of Greek sunshine after a rather lacklustre British summer, my trip to Thessaloniki for the 17^th European NKOS workshop proved to be exciting from an academic perspective as well.

It was held at Thessaloniki’s Grand Hotel Palace following the three-day Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) conference. It was one of a number of workshops offered there on that day, and was attended by about twenty delegates. Phillip Mayr from GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany, and Ernesto William de Luca from the Georg Eckert Institute, also in Germany, were two of the events organisers, and chaired the sessions.

The workshop content was relevant to my dissertation, which revolves around developing a thesaurus for information literacy and exploring the possibility of publishing it as linked open data, and through the various presentations, I was able to garner a better understanding of some of the aspects of linking controlled vocabularies. It was helpful to see real-world examples of both projects involving linked vocabularies, as well as tools developed for the purpose of linking knowledge organisation systems.

The day began with a presentation by Ernesto William de Luca on Knowledge Organisation for Digital Libraries, and he discussed user expectations in terms of knowledge organisation and information access in the face of an abundance of available information. He clearly stated disambiguation as the goal of faceted search, indicating that it combats the difficulties creating when terms have been assigned to articles or resources ambiguously.

Joachim Neubert from the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics in Germany made a presentation about Wikidata. He promoted the possibility of mapping Knowledge Organisation Systems to Wikidata, persuasively delineating the benefits of how extensible it is, and being able to easily update NKOS (networked knowledge organisation systems) centrally through Wikidata. He proposed the addition of SKOS mapping to Wikidata. It made me wonder whether it would possible and beneficial to try to upload the information literacy thesaurus I’m working on into Wikidata; possibly something I’ll attempt!

For me, one of the most interesting parts of the day was learning about VocBench. Initially it was introduced as part of a demo session, which featured a few different software programs designed for NKOS, and then Armando Stellato, from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, made a presentation about the development of the new VocBench 3.0—which is now the recommended tool for EU institutions for the management of controlled vocabularies. It was interesting to see the differences between it and TemaTres, the vocabulary management tool that I am currently using for the thesaurus that I’m developing.

Other presentations included one by Olga Lavrenova from The Russian State Library about publishing a classification KOS as a linked data vocabulary, which is very similar to what I am aiming to do, and one by Nicholas Collis from the University of Bedfordshire about the development of a crowd-sourced search tool designed to make querying linked data easier for the average user, so that linked data becomes valuable even to those who don’t know how to use SPARQL.

All around it was a positive experience, and one that I was able to take away helpful information from for working on my dissertation.

Links to the papers that were presented at the workshop can be found here: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1937/

This post is from James Blunt, a full-time student on the MSc:

On Wednesday 3rd May, I got up at 4.30am to fly to Glasgow to attend the above meeting. While it’s directly relevant to my dissertation, I think it is also something that anyone interested in Teaching and Learning in the HE sector should also be aware of as it’s a growing trend.

For those who are unaware, Learning Analytics is the practice of using data about the activities and interactions of students to improve the learning experience. The theme was “Where Next for Learning Analytics?”

We started the day hearing from Strathclyde about their experiences. They have gone full on with LA with an attitude of almost “let’s try everything and see what works”. This contrasts with Exeter, who hosted the last meeting, who have taken a much more cautious approach.

Following this we were updated on where Jisc are thinking of going next with their project and libraries and library data is seen as a major focus.

Next up, we had some interesting reports from people who had attended the international LAK17 conference in Vancouver. Next year is in Sydney, so I might have to find a reason to go!

After lunch we had presentations from some current vendors who gave their thoughts on next steps in Learning Analytics. The one that struck me most was the suggestion that it is not enough to record that someone attended a lecture, we need to know how engaged they are. To that end, software is being develop that will scan student’s faces to rate their interest in the lecture. Teaching staff take note!

Lessons that I will take away from the meeting include:

•  Learning Analytics is a very broad area and seems to be getting broader as people see what it can do.
•  Approaches vary greatly from institution to institution.
•  Senior management engagement is crucial when developing an institutional learning analytics system.
•  The subject seems to be getting more practitioner-based whereas in the past it has been quite academic.
•  Some of the possibilities are quite scary.

My attendance at the meeting was made possible thanks to a grant from Swindon libraries.

A full report of the meeting and further details of the JISC “Effective Learning Analytics” project can be found at:
https://analytics.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2017/05/05/notes-and-presentations-from-the-10th-jisc-learning-analytics-network-event-at-strathclyde-university/

Conference report by Lara Taffer, MSc student

In November, I was able to attend theUKSG November 2015conference and forum in London.  The opening remarks given by Jeremy Upton acknowledged his coming to the conference with many questions, and expectations to leave with many others.  I couldn’t agree with him more.  The conference was incredibly informative as well as thought-provoking, touching on the future of the book, digital publishing, e-books, open access, and collaborative publishing efforts and many other topics that are inextricably linked to the library and information professions.

The first presentation given by Professor Geoffrey Crossick was an inspiring talk that set the tone for the event. His report findings and remarks about the history, culture, and continued importance of monographs and the implications of open access long-form publications in our ever-changing world were echoed throughout the day. Print books and long-form monographs are not going anywhere, as they are part of the bedrock of the institutions of academia and research.  Librarians and bibliophiles rejoice! (You can read his report here.)

However, as the day progressed, the message was clear that we, as members of the knowledge community – students, academics, librarians, publishers, or otherwise – must accept and appreciate how e-books and other digital formats are becoming more prevalent in our work, studies, and everyday lives.  While the formats of long-form publications may change, they remain an integral part of how to embody a work of research, present arguments, and communicate knowledge and information, despite the claims of “digital disruption.”  Instead of attempting to combat this disruption, many of the speakers agreed that we need to assess our problems with digital formats differently.

This point was perhaps best exhibited during the student panel.  The students agreed that print books were important in their studies, but they acknowledged that the e-book plays a large role as well.  As a fellow student, I found myself forming my own answers to the moderator’s questions and reflecting upon my own experiences with e-books.  The student panel also highlighted some of their expectations and suggestions for improvement for e-books, stressed the need to have “ownership” of the digital item as one would have with a print book, suggested increasing multimedia and interactive content, and brought up the possibilities ofadding in responsive design and improving the overall quality of graphics in e-books.

One more presentation that I found interesting, especially as a student of library science and information management, was the talk given by Donald J. Waters of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that in part highlighted how different university libraries were pairing with university presses to come up with innovative partnerships to facilitate open access digital publishing initiatives at their respective institutions.  Open access was indeed one of the most salient themes of the day.  In fact, on both days, the founder ofOAPEN andDOAJ were present, and I am glad to have found out about these organizations!

The forum on the following day was a kind of “Roman style” forum, with exhibit booths set up, and people mingling around the room.  I was able to speak with different people of the publishing and information management industry, including representatives from JSTOR, Oxford University Press, Cambridge Core, andUbiquity Press, as well as many others.  Talks were scheduled throughout the day, so you could come and go from the forum as you pleased.  The talks centered around user experience, design, and simplicity for websites, e-books, and all things digital.  One of the most interesting presentations of the day was given by the creator ofSeeSearch.  I can’t fully describe how cool her software was, so you should just check out thedemos here!

It would be impossible to cram all the information and insights I gained from attending the conference, so here are a few more links!

Open Library of the Humanities

Knowledge Unlatched &Presentation on the project’s next phase!

FutureLib @ Cambridge University &Using Ethnography for a better user experience

JISC & HEI’s as Publishers

Open Educational Resources in Developing Countries
In Malta
Meeting the needs of researchers

Is the monograph in crisis?

ModernLanguagesOpen.org &Collaborative Writing “Sprints”

image ©Jonas Smith

Six hundred library and information workers in Liverpool:  seven keynote papers, four strands of relevant and engaging breakout sessions, supplier and organisation exhibition, social events and opportunities to network, and queues for food and coffee. Each delegate will have experienced this in their own way and come away with new friends and memories, tips and hints, something of real value for their professional development, solid ideas that can be implemented in their place of work. And also inspiration.

I certainly picked up some useful ideas to explore further, and resources to look at which will inform my teaching. Thank you Steve Dale, Elisabeth Goodman, Clive Holtham, Naomi Korn. ….. But what I want to talk about here are the people and the presentations that inspired, moved and excited me, whether personally or professionally.  These were in particular the keynote talks from David Lankes, Shami Chakrabarti and Erwin James, and the presentation by Andy Ryan about the City Read project.

The title of R David Lankes’  keynote which opened the conference was ‘An action plan for world domination through librarianship.’ His talk was as direct, lively, and witty as the title suggests. There were two main messages it seemed to me.  First that librarians and information workers should have more courage and confidence in who we are and what we do – the self-image of the profession is notoriously poor – and that we should put a greater value on what we do. He asked that librarians and information workers should stop seeing Google as a competitor, because Google is not in the business of providing information – they are in the business of Advertising! For Lankes, the main demonstration of our undervaluing our work is the low expectation we have of our users to respect and value the service we provide. Library services are not free.

“When we call library users customers we absolve them of the responsibility of being co-owners of libraries”

Lankes was talking from the perspective of a an American public librarian, but it’s worth thinking about whether this is also applicable to British public libraries which are funded from our Council Taxes, and also our academic libraries which are funded through taxes and students’ fees. The attitude in higher education is often – ‘the students are paying for their education as a purchase’, whereas we should rather encourage the culture that students and their families are investing in the process of their education, and that the services and provisions of the library and information service are an integral part of that service. This implies a shared responsibility and therefore demands effort and thoughtfulness rather than just a ‘purchase and consume’ culture. The resources, in whatever format, are collected, curated, made accessible, ‘in order to help people learn.’

Shami Chakrabarti’s keynote which opened the second day of the conference was a masterclass in public speaking. Calm, understated, thoughtful, riveting. Of course she was discussing some of the most important concepts and challenges of our time : our civil liberties, and how they are being insidiously undermined in the current political and economic climate.  Shami described human rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations 1948) as ‘a framework in the world to help people rub along together’. It is an ethical as well as a legal framework. She discussed the current proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act (1998) in the UK, and the implications of this for our civil liberties.https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/what-are-human-rights

This is not the place to discuss this further, but Ms Chakrabarti reminded us how precious our human rights are, and  the place that libraries, as collectors, and curators of information have to play in protecting them. Although her perspective on libraries seemed to be limited to the provision of printed material in a physical library, this was powerful and thought provoking. I was moved to ask a question – one that we ask students on this programme to consider.

‘Is access to information a human right?’ Basing her answer in that the clauses of the UN Declaration, she argued that as information is key to education, and equality of opportunity, access to it is indeed a human right. This might not be surprising, and may be seen as obvious to many, but it was good to have the question answered by a lawyer who is immersed in justice and campaigns for equality.

I’ll be honest:  along with wanting to hear Shami Chakrabarti, the opportunity to hear Erwin James speak was one of my main motivations for attending this conference. Fifteen years ago, Erwin James, then serving a life sentence in prison, wrote a regular column in The Guardian. Each week I turned straight to these short pieces which captured moments of prison life, prisoner existence, and their author’s progress towards parole and release in a simple direct prose that sought no sympathy, but told it as it was.

At conference Erwin James spoke in the same straightforward style about the power of reading and education, and the impact of one particular book on him and his determination to live a life ‘with courage and integrity’. It wasn’t just the book of course. There was guidance and support from skilled professionals, and incredible determination, hard work and perseverance from James himself to translate the inspiration found in one book, the story of another man’s life and incarceration (Alfred Dreyfus) into his own life.

What inspired me here was this man’s humility, his honesty and dignity; the efforts he continues to make to work and in and be part of a world that before his prison term had been other and alien to him. This of course is the world that most of us as information professionals take for granted – where language, reading, communication, are as natural as breathing and the substance of day to day life and work.

After his talk, which elicited a respectful and emotional response from this room of information workers, there was a Q&A session with Erwin. With difficulty, I refrained from attending this to attend sessions about content curation, and strategies for implementing copyright cultures in your own organisation. With absolutely no disrespect to Steve Dale and the excellent Naomi Korn, I think I made the wrong decision.

The breakout session that inspired me most was also about the potential power of the book in ordinary lives. It was that presented by Andy Ryan about the City Read project ; an annual celebration held across all London boroughs which aims to ‘bring reading to life for the whole capital’ .  Andy talked with energy and passion about the project, about the risks taken, and the activities and events they created. ‘They’ are Stellar Libraries cic, (community interest company), set up to design and deliver ‘innovative, daring campaigns that promote and celebrate libraries, reading and literature.’

The City Read project built on similar endeavours to engage communities in reading in other public library authorities including Brighton and Bristol. What was particularly captivating about City Read was the risk taking associated with the immersion approach – engaging actors to represent characters and interact with the public, having volunteers dressed in period costume handing out books in the street; and offering opportunities to handle real archives from the first world war. (These events relate to the 2014 City Read). Andy Ryan’s approach to marketing and promotion is forthright and bold. In his talk, David Lankes several times identified traits that do not reflect well on librarians, and urged us to ‘stop it, stop it, stop it!’  Conversely, Andy’s approach is definitely ‘Go for it, go for it go for it.’

So is there a common theme in these presentations that inspired me. I think there is – they all showed courage and self-belief in large amounts. Courage to stand by what we believe is right; belief that we can achieve and make the world a better place – on whatever scale., whether personally or professionally. There is also a determination to stop being what the world thinks we are (or should be), and become something better, stronger, clearer, louder, braver.

Why is this relevant to LIS? Because reading, books, (in whatever format), finding and utilising information, and developing knowledge, is instrumental in, and even an integral part of developing these strengths and beliefs. Which is why the role of librarian/information manager in collecting, organising, making available and promoting – by whatever name it is known, and in whatever context they work is as critical now as it has always been.

Links for further information on these speakers
http://erwinjames.co.uk
https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/

Cityread London

Link to presentations by speakers in the conference breakout sessions
http://cilipconference2015.org.uk/session-speakers-2/

Judith Stewart
July 2015

Posted on behalf of IM student Julie Albury

Introduction

I attended the Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference (LILAC) between 8th and 10th April 2015 at Newcastle University.  This was the first conference I have had the opportunity to attend and I am very grateful to UWE for allowing me to go.  It was a fantastic experience and working in FE, one I’m unlikely to have again!

The three day conference focused on the following themes:  creative approaches to IL; IL for under 18s; IL and employability; delivering IL through new technologies; research based IL and outreach and collaboration.  The focus on the under 18s was of particular interest to me.  I work with 16 to 19 year olds and their IL skills will be the focus of my MSc dissertation.  Having this early opportunity to hear how other institutions are working with this transition group, from school to university, was really useful and gave me some very good information and contacts.

One of the greatest benefits of the LILAC conference is the contacts you make.  People who deliver the presentations are genuinely interested in their topics and want to share their knowledge and experiences.

The Conference

The conference was huge!  There were approximately six hours each day of various talks to attend.  There was so much going on, it was difficult to see everything and for each session, there was a choice of 5 different presentations to choose from.  Follow this link to the conference programme which includes a detailed abstract of each presentation:http://www.lilacconference.com/WP/programme.

A good selection of the presentations can also be found on the IL Group’s Slidshare page:http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/presentations.  All the presentations posted in May are from LILAC15 and there are also lots of other IL presentations you might be interested in.

I made copious notes whilst I was at LILAC15.  These are too detailed to transcribe here, so I thought I’d try and share some of the things I found of particular interest and that you might also find interesting, particularly if you have an IL role or hope to acquire one.

1)         Threshold Concepts

There were two keynotes speeches that discussed threshold concepts: one by Ray Land, one of the original architecture of the principle from Durham University.  His presentation: There May be Trouble Ahead, can be found here:http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/ray-land.  This presentation was really interesting and identified how young people feel when faced with troublesome knowledge. Barbara Fister talked more about troublesome knowledge in her keynote speech on The Liminal Library.  I won’t go into detail about these talks as you have already seen my presentation (just to remind you the PowerPoint is available on Blackboard).
Presentation:http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/barbara-fister, transcript:http://barbarafister.com/LiminalLibrary.pdf.

2)         The under 18s

The sessions on the under 18s was of particular interest to me and I went to a number of presentations.  Most dealt with IL skills for EPQ students and all identified this as the first opportunity for students to undertake their own piece of independent research. There were very few practitioners present who had any experience of delivering IL to the under 18s and the presenters basically offer a day visit to the university library, with a practical skills session, with no feedback nor follow-up.  However, these were

interesting sessions and highlighted the importance that universities place on IL skills in schools and the lack there of.

The University of Newcastle’s sixth form outreach programme is so oversubscribed that they have just launched an online resource, fronted by Percy the Penguin.  Below is Percy and a link to their online course.  Take a look and see what you think.  Working with 16 to 19 year olds, I

feel they will think this character and the style of the online course is too juvenile and although the University team behind this have worked very hard and engaged professional artists to assist in its creation, they didn’t ask any 16 year olds for feedback before they went live.  The material available is interesting and available to ‘borrow’, however the team behind Percy the Penguin were not familiar with Creative Commons licensing and Newcastle University Library are going to address this so materials can be re-used.

Percy the Penguin:
Presentation:http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/online-il-with-percy-the-penguin-sara-bird-gillian-johnston

Natasha Skeen, at the University of Worcester, shared her work with sixth formers and she offers a one day session with students and offers what I thought was a brilliant assessment tool, a poster.  The University of Worcester shares the Hive public library and the sixth form students can easily visit the University library. Natasha has made the online journals available to the sixth formers who are encouraged to come back to the library to complete their EPQ research.  Natasha’s PowerPoint:http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/skeen-01-aprilfinal.

Sarah Pavey from SP4IL (independent consultant) ran a session called What Does Independent Learning Feel Like? http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/what-does-independent-learning-feel-like-sarah-pavey.This was a fun, interactive session and if you look at the slides, you will see that it included lots of ‘fake’ pictures and optical illusions to illustrate that you cannot believe everything you find on the internet.  My favourite activity was looking at a couple of Wallace and Gromit ‘spot the difference’ pictures, similar to the ones below.  We were asked to look at the two pictures and raiseour hands when we saw 3 differences.  This continued until we saw 7 differences.  The point Sarah was making is that when we do research, we need patience.  We may very quickly find the first 3 points, but it takes a considerably longer time to find all 7 and requires greater effort.  All the delegates enjoyed this practical session.  Those I spoke to, said they thought Sarah gave us some fun and useful tools to use with students to demonstrate how research can feel.  These activities supported a visual learning style and were easily transferrable between different context.  We all had a lovely time and this session proved to us, that no matter what your age, visual examples and activities are fun and made a lasting learning impact.  Don’t fear doing something different!

3)         Inductions

There were many sessions highlighting the importance of library inductions. Different institutions were experimenting with different approaches, many reducing the number of face-to-face sessions and increasing the use of online resources.  One University stood out for me and that was Manchester University Business School, Feeding the 500: Introducing Information Literacy to First Year Business and Management Undergraduate Students.  When the marvellous Anna Goatman joined the teaching staff, she approached the library to ask for IL teaching for her students.  The University had had a library reshuffle leaving only one Subject Librarian to ‘induct’ 550 students.

Anna and her colleague, John Hynes came up with a plan.  They set the students an essay to research in order to access their IL skills.  The essay question was “Men Make Better Managers than Woman.  Discuss”.  All 550 students completed the essay and the exercise highlighted

their strengths and weaknesses and staff could identify areas for improvement.  John Pal, Subject Librarian, told us about the IL sessions he ran to huge numbers of students in one sitting:  the jokes he told; the bouncing around he did and how daunting it all felt.  This initiative was driven by Anna, the Holy Grail to all librarians, a member of teaching staff who’s interested in IL!  Here is the PowerPoint.  It appears much less interesting than the people themselves who were an inspiration. Feeding the 500: http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/feeding-the-500-introducing-information-literacy-to-first-year-business-management-undergraduate-students-john-pal-anna-goatman-john-hynes

4)         Present a Paper

Anyone can submit a paper to be considered for the conference.  It was interesting to see the wide variety of presentation styles and PowerPoint slideshows used.  Some were fantastic, some weren’t.  It gave me a lot of reassurance as a student, that in the work environment, things aren’t always perfect.  Some had been collecting the data they were presenting at the conference, only the week before.  Some presentations were too long, some were too short.  Some had so much information on them, we were overwhelmed. Lots of them were not as good as our recent assessment. So having said that, why not consider presenting a paper yourself?  Perhaps your dissertation research?  Here’s a link to a brief presentation on what you need to consider.  Have a think and why not have a go:http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/aston-da-costa

Conclusion

LILAC15 was a great opportunity and left a lasting impression on me.  It provided useful contacts and an opportunity to meet experts from the around the world. If you ever have an opportunity to attend LILAC or any of the CILIP conferences, grab it with both hands, you won’t regret it!