Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

For almost 20 years, instruction librarians have relied on variations of two models, the CRAAP Test and SIFT, to teach students how to evaluate printed and web-based materials. Dramatic changes to the information ecosystem, however, present new challenges amid a flood of misinformation where algorithms lie beneath the surface of popular and library platforms collecting clicks and shaping content. When applied to increasingly connected networks, these existing evaluation heuristics have limited value. Drawing on our combined experience at community colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, and with Project Information Literacy (PIL), a national research institute studying college students’ information practices for the past decade, this paper presents a new evaluative approach for teaching students to see information as the agent, rather than themselves. Opportunities and strategies are identified for evaluating the veracity of sources, first as students, leveraging the expertise they bring with them into the classroom, and then as lifelong learners in search of information they can trust and rely on.

Hollywood made horror movies specifically for librarians, a typical opening scene might be this: A despondent freshman slumps in his dorm room, struggling to complete his first major research project. The camera pans out to a wide shot, showing the library building next door. Students don’t know how to make proper use of its vast research options. 

This came out 6 months ago, but Esther Grassian just highlighted it - there is a useful introduction to Online Educational Resources (OERs) (with lots of links etc.) in the December 2018 issue of Library Instruction Round Table News: Tech Talk: Online Educational Resources by Billie Peterson-Lugo (on pages 5, 9-14)..

While I am delighted to be here, I have to admit that I thought long and hard about whether to accept the invitation to speak today. I am aware that we’ve heard a lot of voices like mine, that voices like mine can drown out other people's voices, and that really it is time for me, for us at CILIP to stop speaking and start listening.

But we also have to be accountable, to our members, to the profession, to society at large. We have to explain ourselves – not to dictate terms but to set out a commitment to change and to learn, and to listen.

Because all of us that hold leadership positions in this sector have to confront the fact that we are where we are because of a system of unseen privilege – a system which lifts some of us up while holding others down. The basis of that privilege is rightly being challenged. We are being challenged, rightly, to reflect on that privilege critically and to think about the impact it has on other people’s right to shape our profession.

As a profession, we aspire to universality – but we have to be critical about what ‘universal’ really means. I don’t want to be complicit in a system that promotes some voices at the expense of others.

When I first saw the Alliance for Excellent Education’s Future Ready Librarians Framework, I was excited to note the inclusion of “Collaborative Leadership” and “Builds Instructional Partnerships” as descriptors of an excellent school librarian. These are two areas of the job that I enjoy the most, so their inclusion only seemed natural to me. I do recognize, however, that some librarians’ strength may lie in other areas of the Framework, like “Budgets and Resources” or “Community Partnerships,” and that coming alongside teachers in an instructional partner role might feel a little intimidating.

Dive Brief:
As books gave way to digital sources of information instantly accessible from anywhere, school libraries and librarians were put under pressure to reinvent themselves, according to eSchool News.
School librarians are still supporting reading, writing and research skills, but with a co-focus on digital literacy as well. 
The digital workshop is one 21st century learning opportunity that school librarians are implementing. Students learn coding and valuable social skills, including teamwork. 

Growing up, I liked to imagine what it would be like to work in a library. What little I knew about them was what I’d gleaned from movies and TV because my conservative parents never took us to any and only let me read books they purchased from the Bible Book Store. I didn’t know any librarians in real life—outside of the elderly woman who ran our tiny school media center—but I understood librarians were smart and savvy. Cool and collected. They were everything my rowdy, boundary-busting, literature-hating family was not. I envisioned a sweet future for myself sitting behind an elaborately carved wooden desk, surrounded by towering stacks of leather-bound books. I’d read for hours in total silence, vanilla and almond perfuming the air. Pages wafting in a gentle breeze. Nobody around to bother me. With librarianship, I’d finally have solitude.

For the sake of our students, we must embrace the changing role of the school librarian. 2017 was a year filled with makerspaces, student engagement, personalized learning, and more. Here, two seasoned librarians shed light on their biggest lessons learned in 2017 and look forward to the up-and-coming trends for the new year.

The US Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) posts recordings of its free webinars. Recent recordings include: - ACR

Librarians do an amazing job at school. They are entrusted with various educational tasks. These include, according to Queen University library, help students with information-related activities, assist students in developing information literacy skills that allows them to navigate and search the web effectively, collaborate with teachers in creating challenging project-based activities, run different literacy clubs, build library collections and many more.

Libraries and funding agencies are finally flexing their muscles against journal paywalls. Authors should follow suit.

A PERSON COULD BE FORGIVEN for believing 20 years ago that the internet would soon revolutionize academic publishing. With the emergence of the world wide web, it suddenly became possible for academic publishers to disseminate scholarly work at the click of a button — at a fraction of the cost of printing and mailing hard-copy journals. Recognizing the opportunity, many scholars and librarians began to advocate a new, open access model of academic publishing, in which research articles are made freely available online to anyone who wants them, not just affiliates of colleges or universities. The result would be a true online “public library of science” — which, as it so happens, also became the name of one of the first publishers to embrace the model.

As a new librarian in the early 2000s, I believed passionately in the cause of open access and worked hard to bring it about. But almost two decades later, the movement has made only slight gains at the margins, and the traditional subscription-based model remains firmly entrenched in academia. For the university libraries who bear most of the subscription costs, it is as though the internet revolution never happened: Since 1986, research library expenditures have grown at more than four times the rate of inflation, with journal prices showing the greatest price jumps of all.

It is still unusual for librarians to go on to run universities or other major institutions.

Yet there are examples. In the UK, David Baker served as principal of what is now Plymouth Marjon University from 2003 to 2009. Alison Allden recently retired from a role as chief executive of the Higher Education Statistics Agency. So what are the key lessons for librarians who want to influence the strategic directions of their institutions and even move into senior management themselves?