Category Archives: research

Don’t close the book on Fife’s school librarians

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During 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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Bridging Skills for Working Lives: Exploring Career-Ready Skills Through the Card Game of Bridge

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A call from a former Napier colleague, Marina Milosheva

Calling all students, parents and teachers!

Did you know that playing card games can help you with your career?

Join us on Monday 13th October in Glasgow for a fun, free event as part of the Festival of Social Science: 

Bridging Skills for Working Lives: Exploring Career-Ready Skills Through the Card Game of Bridge

What you’ll do:

• Hear career stories from financial advisers, IT specialists, and science teachers

• Learn to play the card game bridge

• Meet new people and get inspired!

Event details:

📅 Monday 13th October, 3:30–6 pm (first day of half-term week)

📍 Clyde Bridge Centre, Centura Court, 4 Nasmyth Rd, Hillington, Glasgow G52 4PR 

🎫 FREE, including pizza, snacks and travel bursaries

Register today: https://festivalofsocialscience.com/events/bridging-skills-for-working-lives/

‘Tackling misinformation and disinformation for Scottish school librarians’ project report published

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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.)

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Published: ‘Community Councils online’ report

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This report (download link) reports the results of a survey, carried out in early 2022, of the public internet presences of potentially over 1300 Scottish community councils. It gives an update a decade after similar surveys in 2012 and 2014 (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012, 2014). This report focuses on the timeliness and content of community council websites, and the timeliness of community councils’ Facebook and X/Twitter presences.

Searchable maps visualising the findings are available online.

In summary, there has been little positive change since the 2014, except that the number of CCs with public Facebook presences has increased noticeably.

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New project for 2025: ‘Tackling misinformation and disinformation for Scottish school librarians’

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I 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:

  • How involved are school librarians in enabling pupils’ handling of mis/disinformation?
  • What would they like to do to help pupils better prepare to handle mis/disinformation?
  • What training/support do they have and wish for?
  • How can they collaborate with teachers?
  • How can this be used to advocate for school librarians/libraries?

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.

Everything’s coming up LILACs 

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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.

The seven rules of LILAC

With apologies to Chuck Palahniuk, and thanks to two anonymous posters

  1. You do talk about LILAC.
  2. You do talk about LILAC!
  3. But when the session-chair says stop, you stop.
  4. As many presenters as you want. And any colour you like, so long as it’s LILAC.
  5. At least two parallel sessions at a time – and you’ll want to go to all of them. Put thyself through a 3-D photocopier.
  6. Present with activities (Padlets, Menti, Slido, post-its, sharpies: all that good stuff)
  7. Revere Queen Jane and her court.
  8. If this is your first time at LILAC (even if it’s not), party until it’s pumpkin-time. LILACers don’t get hangovers.

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LILAC materials

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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?
PDF		How do you define ‘impact’ in your work or practice?
PDF		How can we increase the impact of IL?

PDF

I clearly have a lot of thinking to do. Watch this space!

A happy ending!

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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.

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‘Information Literacy and Society’ final project report published

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Peter 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.

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