I’m very happy that the project report on ‘Tackling misinformation and disinformation for Scottish school librarians’ is now published on the CILIPS website. It feels like it’s been a long time coming, but very worthwhile. In this work, I researched the ‘how, why and what could/should be’ of Scottish school librarians’ work to help pupils become better able to handle mis- and disinformation.

The report now has a digital object identifier, 10.17869/enu.2025.4736738. Hence it is now also available via the Napier repository at https://napier-repository.worktribe.com/output/4736738, and on my official list of publications.

The headline findings and recommendations from this work are below. While the findings may be somewhat depressing, I think this research can be the basis of making things better, and that’s what I’m all about, in both my academic and non-academic lives. Meanwhile I am very grateful to CILIPS for funding this work, and to the school librarians who took part. Many thanks also to my Napier colleagues who commented on drafts of the report.

Readers might also be interested in my presentation to the CILIPS conference in June this year. Video of this presentation, along with my slides and script, along with the conference programme, videos of other presentations and my live reportage on the conference are available in this post.

I will also make a brief presentation on the work at the next Scottish Media and Information Literacy Community of Practice (MILCoP) meeting (online, 2pm to 4pm on Thursday 23 October). You can register for that meeting on Eventbrite. (Attendance, and membership of MILCoP are entirely free.)

Main findings

• There is no primary legislation in Scotland around school libraries and librarians. Instead, they come under the purviews of Education Scotland for state schools and the Scottish Council of Independent Schools.
• The majority of participants help students face mis- and disinformation issues both directly, i.e. helping with specific instances or problems, and indirectly, i.e. giving classes or talks, but not directly dealing with specific instances.
• However, explicit requests for such help are rare. The requests that do occur are mostly made by students.
• There are clear institutional barriers to school librarians delivering relevant lessons, despite mis- and disinformation issues being prevalent, especially in socio-political contexts.
• A clear majority of participants would like more time to spend on this work. Several have lessons and resources ready. However, more support from teachers, school leadership and the curriculum is needed to give them opportunities to do so.
• There are strong calls from school librarians for relevant training opportunities, time and budget. These would enable school librarians to make the most of the resources that are already available.
• School librarians also call for more collaboration with teachers, which is currently patchy at best. Working with school librarians during teacher training could help create a foundation for such collaboration.
• There are several routes for advocacy to help tackle the issues that have been identified.
• In general, school librarians’ skills and experience as information professionals are not being used well

Recommendations for practice

• There needs to be wider recognition that students face mis- and disinformation issues, and of institutional barriers to school librarians’ work to help with these issues. Hence there needs to be advocacy towards powerful stakeholders to build foundations for change. The starting point should be that school librarians are information professionals who should have time and budget to undertake training and delivery of skills around mis- and disinformation. Advocacy may need to be iterative, using positive impacts in one locus to call for reiteration elsewhere.
• Part of the changes would be further engagement and collaboration between librarians and teachers, and between both of these and students between broad general education (S1 to S3) and Advanced Higher.
• Training opportunities to make the best use of existing resources are needed. This may include time away from the desk for existing librarians, upskilling library assistants, more coverage of schools in librarianship qualifications, and engagement between trainee teachers and school librarians.
• Changes to the curriculum may be needed so that there is room for teaching around mis- and disinformation. Specific recommendations are beyond the scope of this work but school librarians should be invited to take part in relevant parts of curriculum reviews.
• Some schools need bigger, better library spaces.

Recommendations for further research

• Research should be extended to represent all areas of Scotland. The views and experience of the majority of school librarians should be obtained, not just those of school librarians most ready to take part
• Research should be extended to include other stakeholders such as teachers, parents, students, local authorities, Education Scotland and Ofcom.
• Case studies of specific mis- and disinformation issues, and of successful collaborations between librarians and teachers, and of impactful training may help.
• Work should be undertaken to ascertain existing school library provision – in particular which schools need better library spaces and how these can be implemented.
• Comparisons with other geographies outwith the UK may also help provide ways forward. To take advantage of recent work, it would be appropriate to research the work of school librarians in Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Türkiye, the USA and Zimbabwe.