Transforming information literacy through experimentation and play

Last week I attended ALIA access 2010 in Brisbane and gave a presentation in the information literacy stream. The presentation was based on the paper written by Jemima McDonald and me titled: Transforming information literacy through experimentation and play. The presentation illustrated some of the ways UTS Library is creating a more dynamic and engaging information literacy program in physical, digital and mobile spaces. Some of the things we're using are games, vodcasts, podcasts, screencasts, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, flickr, blogs, QR codes, interactive teamboards, fun days and hands on workshops! Toward the end of the presentation I emphasised that none of this would be possible without the hard work and enthusiasm of all the staff at UTS Library who are willing to experiment and play to make all these projects a reality. The presentation was created in prezi and includes animations created using xtranormal.

Information literacy is seriously fun! on Prezi

The idea behind all of this is that Web 2.0 has changed the way we engage with information. Information is now everywhere created by everyone and we need to transform our information literacy programs to better support the 21stC learning, teaching and research of our clients in their information worlds. Not only online but in physical and mobile spaces by understanding the concept of Library 2.0 which is about users, participation and interaction (Luo, 2009). If you're interested, I recommend reading the paper - it's not too long!

We've had a lot of great feedback about the presentation and genuine interest in what we're doing at UTS Library. I'd like to thank everyone who came to the presentation and shared their thoughts with me at the conference. I also have many people to thank for their help in making this presentation happen. Firstly, my co-author Jemima for all her hard work and support through this experience from initiating and leading many of the projects, to abstract submission, paper writing, presentation creation and presenting! Thanks to Sally for help with the abstract, making the projects happen and grilling me with potential questions, Belinda for super quick editing, Mal for reminding me I'm from UTS Library and that means no rules,  Ashley for being my spirit lifter and helper in all things, Fides for beaming at me from the back row and Alex for his leadership in all of this and trusting a newbie like me to represent the Library! Finally I'd like to thank all the staff who've made it all possible. This is becoming a bit of a love fest but I really want to express how much I appreciate the people I work with. They're a great bunch!

Getting creative by creating content

I thought I'd share with you a few of the free web tools I think are really cool for creating content. You can create promos, informative and instructional things in a fun and informal way. Then you can share them on your blog, facebook, twitter, YouTube etc. Our clients are expected to be expert content creators and we need to be too so we can support them. Here's a little animation I created a while back for a presentation I was doing for some students. I used xtranoral.com which is a text animation tool.


Today I discovered storybird which is really beautiful digital storytelling tool. You choose the theme and it chooses illustrations for you. No embed code though. Here's the one I made.
http://storybird.com/books/sophie-the-owl-outside-the-library/

Google Searchstories is a really quick and easy way to get a message across- see my blogpost on that more more info. I used photobooth to record the video on one of my recent posts. Mostly cause I liked the fish background! I've also used prezi.com as an alternative to powerpoint and screenr.com for screencasting

Some others I'm going to have a play with:
VoiceThread  is collaborative visual storytelling with audio
MakeBelieveComix is a really cool comic creation tool. A little bit complicated but loads of features. I tried to make one and had a #fail after much tinkering and felt too defeated to start again.
Animasher looks really fun, using your photos to create wacky animations
Vuvox is like a multi-media slideshow and Glogster is an interactive poster - definately has potential.

Happy creating, library folks.

My information literacy manifesto

It's not about the tools...

Following on from yesterday. My head is in an epistemological, ontological, pedagogical three way over information literacy right now. There, I've used all my big words, now I can get down to business (or try to make some sense anyway).

The traditional notion of the library and librarian are changing (when are they not).

Libraries are no longer the gate-keepers of information and knowledge they once were. With easy access to an explosion of information online, today's learner can find almost anything without the mediation of a library. Despite this change, libraries have evolved since the spread of web 2.0 into an important part of the new information seeking ecosystem. Rather than become redundant repositories of the old way, libraries have become vibrant social spaces.

Learners now have access to more information than ever in a multitude of media. However, with great freedom comes great responsibility and that's where librarians come in. The stereotype of the scary pearl and twinset wearing librarian is slowly dissapearing as learners begin to consider us a partner in their everyday life information seeking. We are on facebook, twitter, YouTube and other spaces they inhabit and when they can't find something in google we know how to help (among other things). We need to reexamine our role as mentor and focus our teaching on ways of thinking/seeing rather than technology to be mastered.

Web 2.0 and social media has led to a more social and collaborative approach to information seeking and this is where we should look to reinvent our framing of information literacy (IL). Traditionally IL has been described as a set of skills or competencies that we can teach individuals regardless of context. However, we must consider information seeking as a social process based on the context of learners. By this I mean the socio-cultural time and space within which learning occurs. Too often the tools are the focus of IL training when it should be on the symbiotic relationship between technology and changing social practices. By situating learning in context, we allow learners to construct and attach meaning to new skills rather than seeing them as apart from their everyday life information seeking.

Web 2.0 has created a blurring of work/play in everyday life as new technologies enable collaboration and sharing like never before. Social learning and collaborative construction of meaning in context is the crux of a 21stC model of information literacy. With my postmodernist hat on, 'there is no truth, all meaning is socially constructed'. This theory brings to mind the creative commons movement and how critical it was in developing the 'share and reuse' revolution that has led to a more open web. This open, sharing and collaborative online environment allowed a new way of finding, reusing, sharing and creating information which is available via multiple pathways in a multitude of media and user-created content. Learners are now active content-creators and we must take up the challenge ourselves and collaborate in creating shared meanings. All this creativity has led to a push for more fun and games in the library which should of course be integral to any 21stC model of information literacy.

To sum up, I've been thinking about how information literacy came to be and where it's at now. Since developing out of a print paradigm (sorry another big word) IL has failed to naturally adapt, as it should have in response to constantly evolving technologies within a wide range of socio-cultural contexts. I believe we have an opportunity to revitalise IL by taking a more social approach to the way we consider learning, and situating it in socio-cultural context, rather than as a set of competencies or skills/tools that need to be mastered.

Hope that wasn't too out there...
I'm now reading it back and wondering what the hell I'm going on about...

Some of my inspirational reading:
2010 Horizon report
Tuominen et. al. 2005. Information literacy as a sociocultural practice
Kapitzke, Cushla (2003) Information literacy : a review and poststructural critique. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 26(1). pp. 53-66.

p.s. we got a new mac today and photos in this post are 'librarians being silly while playing with Photobooth'.

Physical and virtual library services: social media influences

Web 2.0 has had a significant influence on the way library services are delivered. Clients now face an abundance of library help through SMS, IM, email, phone, face-to-face, classes, workshops, online tutorials and more. The challenge for libraries has always been; how do we reach our clients and provide them with high quality services? Many libraries have recently sought to address this issue by creating social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Ning and LibraryThing with the goal of reaching clients in their online communities. By entering these spaces, libraries are allowing open communication with their clients and breaking down the tradition notion of the library as place. Thanks to mobile devices and social media, the library is transforming from a physical place to a ubiquitous space. For this to happen, libraries need to consider how they reach their clients in both physical and virtual space.

Creating a ubiquitous library service model must fit in with the theory of physical and virtual convergence and the social and personal framework that has been discussed in previous blog posts. Therefore to be ubiquitous, service must be integrated across physical and virtual, make use of social media influences and allow personalisation. Some examples include:

• 24/7 access to online and physical library services
• Wider range of physical and online spaces for clients to interact, share, engage, collaborate
• Being able to 'fave' your favourite librarian for personalised service
• Wider range of online and physical reference help spaces
  
• More interactive and engaging information literacy
• Maximising potential of mobile devices, QR codes and RFID
• Jumping on 'the cloud' - allowing shared spaces for collaboration and information mashups
• OPAC's becomes AIRPAC's then SOPAC's and move towards augmented reality with tagging of physical space and resources

These changes would allow clients to interact and engage with the physical library in a similar way to the online library. In particular, library services need to be customisable across physical and virtual spaces to better meet the needs of clients. For example, libraries could learn from the Apple Genius bar and provide more open plan reference help areas with casual seating, room for groups, laptops, and extended consultations. Following this approach could be a more visible and open plan area providing casual information literacy classes. Librarians also need to be integrated in the physical and virtual by using web 2.0 and social media tools to access clients anywhere, anytime. The librarian or the client could be in the library, cafe, on the bus, at home or in a lecture while at the same time participating in a reference help session using IM, email, SMS, Twitter, or Facebook.

A possible scenario
As libraries go mobile and social, clients will be able to search for resources on their way to the library via their phone, let their friends know they'll be in the e.g. engineering learning commons, look up recommended resources for their subjects as voted by clients, read comments, then create a list and send a request to the library for collection from the automatic storage and retrieval system (ASRS). While at the library, they could scan the latest library tips QR code to watch a video on their phone of what's new, participate in an online information literacy session or meet their 'fave' librarian in the cafe for a reference question. Finally, this could all be happening at anytime of the day or night.

This scenario may seem far off for some but I believe we are already close to being there. The exponential growth of technology and mobile device use will see expectations change in such a short time that clients will demand the types of services described in this scenario. The ubiquitous library is coming and it is up to us to anticipate the ways we can provide the types of integrated services our clients will need and expect in such a continuous and ever-changing physical and virtual environment.