‘Information Literacy and Society’ final project report published

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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Career information podcast

Harking back to my latest ‘what has Bruce been up to?’ post, the Career Information podcast project is now finished. Everyone is welcome to visit the website and listen to the episodes:

  1. Introduction
  2. Career information skills
  3. Automated career advice and information
  4. Technology, equality and careers

My contributions to this project include creating the website, adding episodes to our RSS.com account and commenting on draft episodes. All the content is from my project-colleagues Professor Pete Robertson, Susan Meldrum, Maria Cecil, Marina Milosheva, Elysha Ramage and Marianne Wilson. The sound-editing work was by Maria Foti Rossitto. Professor Peter Cruickshank contributed to the project development and thoughts on where to go next. (Read more about their contributions on our ‘project team’ page.)

We believe we have very worthwhile episodes covering topics that are very important to any career-seeker and those who advise them, while introducing academic research in an accessible way. We look forward to making the most of this series, and perhaps producing a further series. We are grateful to Edinburgh Napier University’s public engagement team for funding this work.

Please send us your feedback via our contact page!

What has Bruce been up to in the first half of 2023?

I 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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What is Bruce up to in the first half of 2022?

I’ve just updated my list of projects (on my CV page) to include 5 projects that are now current or imminent. They are

  • Platform to Platform, investigating changes in reactions to a historical diary as it moves from a textual platform to an audio platform (podcasts)
  • Heritage organisations and podcasts: scoping study, investigating the research landscape on the role of podcasts in the work of heritage organisations
  • Information Literacy Impact Framework, reviewing relevant literature to create a framework of information literacy impact. (The link is to a post about several new projects in my research group.)
  • Animation and games legacy collection of Scotland, addressing gaps in the documentation of the Scottish animation, visual effects and games sectors
  • Community Councils online 2022, surveying community councils’ online presences.

I’m also doing some marking in April, and contributing to outputs from some previous projects. This includes waiting to see what changes the reviewers want me to make to a paper submitted to ISIC 2022. I can’t tell you how much I want to go to Berlin!

And a big shout out to my colleagues on these projects and outputs: David Brazier, Alison Brettle, Peter Cruickshank, Pritam Chita, Wegene Demeke, Paul Gooding, Hazel Hall, Ingi Helgason, Iain McGregor, Marina Milosheva, Jon Mortimer, Gemma Webster, Marianne Wilson, 2 MSc students on the MSc/CPP programme.

From despair to where? Some lessons from lockdown

This was originally written as a ‘reserve’ presentation for RIVAL event 3‘s ‘sharing our skills’ section. Fortunately enough people who are good at presenting volunteered, so Hazel Hall suggested I turn it into a blog-post. 

So here it is. The first part is a whistle-stop tour through my current ‘life under lockdown’; the second part is some lessons from recent online conferences I’ve attended, and from many community council online meetings. It’s meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but with some genuine lessons and realisations.

I should admit that the title of this post is a deliberate misnomer. I’ve despaired over many things, but turning RIVAL events virtual is not one of them. (It has been a lot of work though.) 

Click any image to see it full-size in a new tab or window.

Thanks to Marina Milosheva for advice on an early draft. Continue reading