I was delighted to take part in this event run by Young Scot (YS) and the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP). Here, I say a little about the event but more about my thoughts and contributions. I look forward so much to the research this event was based on being published.
Continue readingDuring my recent research into how school librarians can help students with mis- and disinformation issues, I learnt that four local authorities (Argyll & Bute, Glasgow, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire) either had, or soon would have, no secondary school librarians. Also, Fife is continuing to cut its school library services. In this case, I’m pleased to learn that the UNISON Union and CILIPS are campaigning against these cuts, and for improvements to school library services.
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On Thursday 9 October, I attended this panel event at the Scottish Parliament. It took place in banned books week. This post is based on my brief notes of what was said. I apologise if I have misrepresented anyone.
The event was hosted by Michelle Thomson MSP, introduced by Sean McNamara (CILIPS director) and chaired by David McMenemy (CILIPS President). The panellists were Cleo Jones (former CILIPS president and former Edinburgh libraries development manager), Shelagh Toonen (CILIPS vice-president), Alastair Brian (The Ferret) and Professor Steven Buchanan.
Continue readingI am delighted that CILIPS has awarded me funding to undertake this new project in the first half of 2025. Matching my growing interest in librarianship[1], and growing from my interests in information, digital and media literacy[2], the project will tackle the following research questions:
I look forward to presenting the findings at CILIPS annual conference in summer 2025, and then contributing to advocacy for school libraries. Later, I will write an academic article, but the practitioner-facing activities are first and foremost.
[1] I am second supervisor of a PhD by published works looking into the impacts of the post-2012 changes to English school curricular. The thesis will centre on the apparent decline of teaching information and and digital literacy skills, and the concomitant sidelining of school libraries.
[2] Latest IL publications: Information Literacy and Society, Information Literacy Impact Framework. See my publications for more. I am also secretary of the Scottish Media and Information Literacy Community of Practice.
This is a slightly tongue-in-cheek report on the LILAC 2024 conference, held in Leeds Becket University from Monday 25th to Wednesday 27th March 2024.
With apologies to Chuck Palahniuk, and thanks to two anonymous posters
You do talk about LILAC.I presented about the Information Literacy and Society report at LILAC 2024. (The acronym stands for Librarian’s Information Literacy Annual Conference.)
Here are my speaking notes, slides and the padlets with audience responses to discussion questions, as images and PDFs.
How do you define ‘impact’ in your work or practice? | How do you define ‘impact’ in your work or practice? | How can we increase the impact of IL? |
I clearly have a lot of thinking to do. Watch this space!
Peter Cruickshank (very much lead author) and I are delighted that our paper An information literacy lens on community representation for participatory budgeting in Brazil is now published. Check it out on the Journal of Information Literacy’s website or Edinburgh Napier University’s repository[1]. Also check out Peter’s post on the Social Informatics research group blog.
Continue readingPeter Cruickshank, Marina Milosheva and I have just delivered the final report on the impacts of information literacy (IL) research on society. It’s available on the Media and Information Literacy Alliance (MILA) website. That post contains the executive summary, and a link to the full report. The report will also soon be available on my Napier web-page, and is already available in my publication list on this blog.
Continue readingTwo of my fab PhD colleagues, Marina Milosheva and Drew Feeney, will shortly head off to Krakow, to present their work at the 2023 European Conference on Information Literacy.
Continue readingI usually write these pieces every 6 months, although I appear to have not done so at the end of 2022. They have tended to be my contributions to Social Informatics Research Group all-centre gatherings, because I tend to be incapable of speech by the time it’s my turn to report[1].This is mostly because I hate public speaking.
Click this link to see all the pieces in this series.
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Bruce's IT-ish world 