J. Adam Edwards

The paper is a brief report on a survey of second year computer science students to see what if any impact library information literacy training had on the linked coursework. The results show evidence of higher marks, better use of research tools and better understanding of evaluation criteria by those attending the training unlike those who did not attend.

This statement explores the potential role of librarians in the development of information literacy and research integrity in higher education. We contextualise this in a critical reflection of our own professional careers and practice, within continually changing information, social and political landscapes. We illustrate our development through a critique of our core public work, Enhanced pedagogy for improved information literacy, and a number of other smaller but significant previous public works. We also examine some of the narratives which surround the ‘Google Generation’, academia and librarianship and demythologise the context in which we operate. To inform the future development of our professional role we investigate information literacy concepts and models, the obstacles to the wider adoption of information literacy in higher education curricula, the skills and attributes that the librarian of the future can bring to its achievement and how the public works are a continuo...

The article offers information on the observations made on the Society of College, National and University Libraries' visit to the University of Glasgow Library and Glasgow Caledonian University Saltire Centre in Scotland in December 2006. A number of discussions were held prior to the actual visit with a focus on the principles for design and functionality of the buildings. It was reported that Glasgow University Library is 12 stories tall built in 1968 and suffers from a number of problems including a leakage in exterior cladding. Saltire Centre in Glasgow Caledonian University wielded a non-traditional outlook with a lot of flexibility in space usage and prominent use of wood in interior design were among the key features of the building.

Game based learning is receiving increased attention, including from the New Media Corporation’s 2012 Horizon Report, who detail it as one of their important trends in Higher Education, with a time to adoption of two to three years. Games are ideally suited to the development of skills, often requiring players to problem solve, plan, and critically consider strategies to win the game, and as such are suited to the development of information literacy skills we try to help our library users develop. This workshop will explore how librarians at Middlesex and Huddersfield Universities have changed their pedagogical practice to incorporate games and activities, and the key success factors in their design and use. The majority of the workshop will be hands on exploration of the games and activities we have developed. We will then have a discussion of their use as tools for information literacy teaching and how participants might be able to use them in their own teaching. References Johnso...

ABSTRACT The article looks at the ways college librarians can inform the uninformed about the work of the library/information science profession. Particular attention is focussed on the national press as a channel for communication with the outside world.

UK Libraries Plus, a reciprocal borrowing program offered to distance learning students, part time students and students on teaching practice, is evaluated. Survey results assessing student satisfaction are presented, with emphasis on data representing education student ...

In 1999, The Coalition of Modern Universities in the United Kingdom met and launched a consortial agreement to allow access among member libraries for students of participating institutions. The author describes the set up of the UK Libraries Plus scheme along with the growth that ...

ABSTRACT Over the past two years the Liaison Librarian team supporting Computing and Design Engineering at Middlesex University have been changing their pedagogical practice to base their teaching on games and activities rather than ‘follow me’ demonstrations. This paper discusses the broader issues that prompted these changes to our information literacy training, the ideas and inspiration that underpin our new approach, the games and activities we have developed, the role of Summon as enabling technology, and the results of a survey undertaken to measure the impact of our teaching. It concludes with a brief look at future developments.

ABSTRACT Over the past two years the Liaison Librarian team supporting Computing and Design Engineering at Middlesex University have been changing their pedagogical practice to base their teaching on games and activities rather than ‘follow me’ demonstrations. This paper discusses the broader issues that prompted these changes to our information literacy training, the ideas and inspiration that underpin our new approach, the games and activities we have developed, the role of Summon as enabling technology, and the results of a survey undertaken to measure the impact of our teaching. It concludes with a brief look at future developments.

Adam Edwards and Vanessa Hill present their work changing their teaching methods over the past two years and will alllow delegates to try out some of the games and activities they have developed. The presentation will cover the issues they faced in changing their pedagogy and their collaboration with academic and academic writing colleagues to facilitate the changes made. They will then discuss the inspiration they gained from the work of others such as Markless and Boyle and how this influenced their choices of teaching methods. The solutions they have come up with which will include practical demonstration of these games and activities and finally the impact this has had on the students they have taught, presenting the results of a survey they undertook in 2012. They will then reflect on the lessons learned and their plans for the future.

In the post-truth era we are constantly bombarded with " news " which is fabricated, distorted, and massaged information, published with the intention to deceive and mislead others. Such " news " has come to be known as " fake news ". The influence of fake news can have profound socio-political and cultural effects when translated into action. The ability to distinguish between real facts, fabricated stories, rumours, propaganda, or opinions is of paramount importance. The rapid proliferation of information through social media is now the norm. In this paper we consider the challenge of preparing students, in developing skills for recognising mis-information, dis-information and mal-information. We argue that critical thinking for evaluating information should now be considered a basic literacy, equally important to literacy itself, as well as information and information technology literacies. In this paper we revisit Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive skills and represent what a learner can achieve at each level. We customise the traditional moral and ethical concepts suggested by the US Content Subcommittee of the ImpactCS Steering Committee to flag the ethical concerns over mis-information, dis-information and mal-information. We report on current levels of awareness and practices at the authors' five higher education institutions, and reveal varying levels of awareness of the significance of critical literacy and different practices in each location. The paper concludes with an outline of future work.

This paper describes the current pedagogical practice within the team of librarians at Middlesex University and some of the innovations we have introduced to our information literacy (IL) teaching in recent years. In particular it will look at the use of games and activities to encourage engagement and learning. The Middlesex context Middlesex University can trace its history back to 1878, but is probably more familiar to SCONUL members as a multi-campus polytechnic with sites across north London. A policy of campus closures to deliver economies in the UK combined with expansion overseas means the Middlesex University of 2016 is located on four very different campuses: Hendon in northwest London, Dubai, Mauritius and most recently Malta. Student numbers are now approximately 38,000 across the campuses, including distance learners. The team of subject liaison librarians are part of the university's Library and Student Support (LSS) service, which brings together several student support services such as academic writing, numeracy, wellbeing, IT, and progression and achievement, with a one-stop, front-of-house student helpdesk called UniHelp. Students at Middlesex come from a broad range of backgrounds, and, in the best former polytechnic tradition, Middlesex earns more in the UK from widening participation than it does from research. One consequence for IL teaching is that our students come to us with vastly different experiences, if any, of libraries. This recent email to one of our librarians is a good example: I wanted to check out some of the books that have been assigned to us to read for required reading and I wasn't sure if I had to make a specific appointment to borrow/read them/take notes from them in the library or if I could simply come in and take my notes? So, alongside students who are very well informed, we find ourselves supporting some students with very poor expectations of the library and limited perceptions of our offer. On the positive side, the ubiquitous nature of the internet means that our students are now exposed to vast oceans of information and need our help navigating them. The assumption that they are all digital natives is questionable (Boukacem-Zeghmouri 2014; Prensky 2001). Indeed, we are all too

This document is a description of the games and activities we have created and which can be found to download on Merlot as Jorum no longer exists.  The files on Merlot are the games and activities developed by Adam Edwards and Vanessa Hill to support teaching information literacy skills at Middlesex University. Some of the games will need laminating and cutting up for use in multiple sets. You can use these for your own teaching. We just ask that you tell us if you make new versions as we like to build on new ideas. 

The full content can be found here: https://contentbuilder.merlot.org/toolkit/users/Adam17/edwardshill

The article looks at the ways college librarians can inform the uninformed about the work of the library/information science profession. Particular attention is focussed on the national press as a channel for communication with the outside world.

This paper describes a short practical activity used at Middlesex University to teach students about the importance of keywords and thinking about alternative terminology before searching Summon. This activity is used at all levels and is a whole-class activity. It deliberately uses an image unconnected with Computer Science or Design Engineering, the areas in which we teach.

Over the past two years the Liaison Librarian team supporting Computing and Design Engineering at Middlesex University have been changing their pedagogical practice to base their teaching on games and activities rather than ‘follow me’ demonstrations. This paper discusses the broader issues that prompted these changes to our information literacy training, the ideas and inspiration that underpin our new approach, the games and activities we have developed, the role of Summon as enabling technology, and the results of a survey undertaken to measure the impact of our teaching. It concludes with a brief look at future developments.

ABSTRACT The paper looks at published careers guides and how these portray the library/information science profession. The written information given to students is examined, with a particular focus on how science graduates find llibrary/information careers and job information and the impact this has on science graduate recruitment to the profession.

The paper describes the creation of online learning materials for information skills
and academic writing to support teaching in the Business School at Middlesex
University. It includes discussion of the origins of the project, the materials created
(illustrated) and how a number of problems were solved during the project.

UK Libraries Plus (UKLP), patterned after the successful London plus scheme, is a reciprocal borrowing and library access scheme covering 91 higher education libraries in England, Scotland, and Wales. In 1999, SCONUL (Society of College, National, and University Libraries) created a task force to look at services to distance learning students. UKLP was one of the initiatives that SCONUL chose to evaluate. A survey was proposed and a questionnaire (reproduced in the appendix) was developed. The questionnaire asked for basic information and comments about UKLP. It was sent to approximately 1300 registered users across the member libraries. A response rate of 39% was achieved, far beyond expectations. Results from the survey are discussed, with attention paid to three main concerns expressed by respondents (quota on number of books that could be borrowed, lack of computer access, and lack of Internet access). Many examples of comments are included, and the questionnaire is included in the appendix.

Central School of Speech and Drama is an HEFCE funded specialist theatre college in north London. The move to a new library in the summer of 1997 gave us the space and the network to upgrade from our old CAIRS system. The article describes how we chose Inheritance Systems Heritage IV and some of the useful facilities the system offers.

... Item Type: Article. Research Areas: Health and Social Sciences > Library & Information Services. ID Code: 4367. Deposited By: Mr Adam Edwards. Deposited On: 05 Mar 2010 12:50. Last Modified: 27 Apr 2010 06:06. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...

It seems perhaps incredible now that only eight years ago there was no national scheme for student access and borrowing at higher education libraries. Yet the need was clear. With ever-increasing numbers of part-time students, often studying at a distance from the university or college they had signed up to, libraries were constantly dealing with the complaint that students could not get easy access to the reading materials they were expected to use for the course. Placement students, often spending many weeks away from their home institution yet expected to do course-work, were also experiencing the same problems. In some regions, schemes such as London Plus (which had started in 1988) went some way to meeting this need, but you only needed to cross a regional boundary and customers had nothing. Worse, many libraries, even those with extensive provision for part-timers of their own, made sure the barriers were in place to prevent much-feared swamping by those oiks from the university next door. As the then Site Librarian at South Bank University I remember having to maintain a long list of who we let in and who we didn’t, depending on the access agreement with each particular institution. What a waste of time and energy it now seems! What was needed was someone to cut the Gordian knot and just do something. In 1999 our doughty champion was found in Philip Payne, then at Leeds Metropolitan University and now, very appropriately, Librarian at Birkbeck, University of London.

UK Libraries Plus, a reciprocal borrowing program offered to distance learning students, part time students and students on teaching practice, is evaluated. Survey results assessing student satisfaction are presented, with emphasis on data representing education student satisfaction. Included in the survey were questions on courses taken, modes of study, age, use and usefulness of services, and how students became learned of services. The study found that most education students were in their thirties, regarded the services as important or vital to their studies, and tended to use only one library in addition to the home institution library. Limitations of UK Libraries Plus were identified as a quota limiting the number of books students could borrow, and lack of access to computers and the Internet.

In 1999, The Coalition of Modern Universities in the United Kingdom met and launched a consortial agreement to allow access among member libraries for students of participating institutions. The author describes the set up of the UK Libraries Plus scheme along with the growth that the group has experienced in its first two years. Initially 60 libraries signed up for participation and that number in the first two years almost doubled to 107 institutions. Students and users of libraries can apply through their home library for access to up to three member libraries. There are documents governing the scheme and it is designed to mutually benefit everyone involved in the agreement. In evaluating the success of the group, many students deemed that accessing libraries close to their home or work was "vital to their studies." The group is designed to allow institutions in the UK to work together in supporting lifelong learning and enhances the quality of the learning experience.

A presentation on how we were inspired to change our pedagogical practice and how in turn our work and our DProf has provided inspiration for peer professionals.

Presented at:  Inspiring staff: M25 2017 Annual Conference, 03 May 2017, Royal Society of Chemistry, London.

Librarians are practice based professionals and so practitioner research, grounded as it is in work based learning may provide an appealing route to higher study and self-development. Practitioner research enables us to explore our professionalism through reflection, using the creative-interpretive model championed by Lester (2015) and others. Reflection enables us to validate our past practice, explore the cumulative effect of professional and organisational change and to gain insight from this for future action, working, as we do, in uncertain contexts, as libraries keep changing and developing. In doing so, we become creative "artistic" professionals, learning from others and not afraid of cross fertilization from collaborative relationship s with professionals from other spheres. (Schön, 1990, Vieira, 2014)

Following a recent joint Doctorate in Professional Studies (DProf) by Public Works, Demythologising librarianship: future librarians in a changing literacy landscape, Adam Edwards and Vanessa Hill (2016), both librarians at Middlesex University, will reflect on their experience of undertaking this practitioner research, the outcomes from it and the impact on their professional work as information literacy practitioners. Their doctoral research was based on changes to their pedagogy, previously presented at LILAC 2012 and 2013 (Smith and Edwards 2012, Edwards, Hill and Walsh, 2013) which was inspired by CPD undertaken at CILIP in 2010 and LILAC 2011. Adam and Vanessa believe that delegates attending LILAC may be inspired to undertake work based research at either Masters or Doctoral level. Indeed given that sharing of innovative thinking and practice at professional conferences is an excellent means to demonstrate public works, it may be that many delegates are already well on the way towards a DProf of their own.

References

Edwards, J.A. and Hill, V. (2016) Demythologising librarianship: future librarians in a changing literacy landscape. DProf. Middlesex University. Edwards, J. A., Hill, V. and Walsh, A. (2013). Games and gamification for information literacy. Presented at LILAC 2013. University of Manchester, UK. 25th-27th March 2013. Available at http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/11230/ [Accessed 4th May 2015]
Lester, S. (2015) On professions and being professional. Taunton, Stan Lester Developments. Available at http://devmts.org.uk/profnal.pdf [Accessed 3rd October 2016]
Schön, D. A. (1990). Educating the reflective practitioner. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
Smith, S. and Edwards, J.A. (2012). Embedding information literacy skills as employability attributes. Presented at: LILAC 2012. Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK. 11th-13th April 2012. Available at http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/11231/ [Accessed 4th May 2015]
Vieira, R. (2014) Life stories, cultural metissage, and personal identities, SAGE Open, 4 (1). Pp.5-6

Adam Edwards and Vanessa Hill will present on their work changing their teaching methods over the past two years and will alllow delegates to try out some of the games and activities they have developed. The presentation will cover the issues they faced in changing their pedagogy and their collaboration with academic and academic writing colleagues to facilitate the changes made. They will then discuss the inspiration they gained from the work of others such as Markless and Boyle and how this influenced their choices of teaching methods. The solutions they have come up with which will include practical demonstration of these games and activities and finally the impact this has had on the students they have taught, presenting the results of a survey they undertook in 2012. They will then reflect on the lessons learned and their plans for the future.

This statement explores the potential role of librarians in the development of information literacy and research integrity in higher education. We contextualise this in a critical reflection of our own professional careers and practice, within continually changing information, social and political landscapes. We illustrate our development through a critique of our core public work, Enhanced pedagogy for improved information literacy, and a number of other smaller but significant previous public works. We also examine some of the narratives which surround the ‘Google Generation’, academia and librarianship and demythologise the context in which we operate.

To inform the future development of our professional role we investigate information literacy concepts and models, the obstacles to the wider adoption of information literacy in higher education curricula, the skills and attributes that the librarian of the future can bring to its achievement and how the public works are a continuous response to change. Our insight and understanding are further informed by the opinions of academic colleagues following a series of in-depth interviews. We consider their views and the implications these have for our own learning and the development of our professional identity, within both higher education and our own university.

Throughout this statement we show how our previous and core public works have influenced and informed our thinking, our practice and the recommendations that we make.