where do we stand - information literacy european report

Where do we stand? Information Literacy: European report

Sheila WebberUniversity of Sheffield Department of Information StudiesAugust 2008UNESCO Training the Trainers workshop, Quebec City

A varying picture: despite harmonisation

• Different educational systems and approaches• Differing approaches to national healthcare• Different Government priorities• Different histories• Different languages• (and so forth)• (and what is “Europe”?)

Sheila Webber, May 2008


• Informationskompetenz• la maîtrise de l’information• Informaatiolukutaito• Informationskompetens• Las competencias en información• La alfabetización informacional• (etc.)

Different languages and different translations leading to different meanings

Development: to summarise!

• More groups• More publications• More events• More discussion• More visible frameworks and statements• More initiatives and lobbying ….


But still …• Promising initiatives that stumble (e.g. key

politicians move on; funding changes)


Note that the following slides cannot be comprehensive: in some cases there are many other examples from different countries! For more information see the country reports on http://www.infolitglobal.info and http://cf.hum.uva.nl/akb/efil/I have included examples from a variety of European countries, but I realise there may some bias towards the UK (although there has been a lot going on there!)



Health

• Considerable development in UK’s National Health Service (see also www.library.nhs.uk/forlibrarians):– NHS Education for Scotland Knowledge Services Group’s

draft Information Literacy Framework http://www.infoliteracy.scot.nhs.uk/media/1012229/theframework.pdf

– Infoskills (http://infoskillsuk.pbwiki.com) and Facilitating Information Literacy Education (FILE)(http://www.ilit.org/file/indexfile.htm) modules

– National Service Framework of Quality Improvement for NHS funded library services in England: IL is the only subsection in Access, one of 3 "key business objectives" for library services http://www.library.nhs.uk/aboutnlh/review Sheila Webber, May 2008

• Need for evidence based health and medical work makes this softer target for IL

• Other potential initiatives e.g. in Czech Republic Projects eHealth and goals accepted by Ministry of Health



Business/ economic

• There are activities, but more difficult to track:– Diversity– Leadership not necessarily from “library” professionals– Confidentiality e.g. in pharmaceutical industry– Conferences & literature give fragmented evidence of

training, programmes, initiatives• A couple of examples:

– Workshops targeted at business community in Slovenia– Cooperation between students and business information

providers in Bulgaria, to learn Business information literacy

– IL programme at Unilever in UK Sheila Webber, May 2008


Governance/ citizenship

National strategies• A number of countries (& the EU) have policies or

programmes on ICT and/or media literacy (but not explicitly information literacy)

• Example: Finland: – Government Policy Programme for the Information

Society (2007-2011): IT, media literacy and skills for information society.

– Libraries are acknowledged as assets and actors for lifelong learning, civic skills, & info society services

• Survey of national policies in Central & Eastern Europe (Pejova, 2006)


National frameworks & statements

• National Information Literacy Framework (Scotland) http://www.caledonian.ac.uk/ils/framework.html

• Toledo declaration on Information Literacy "Bibliotecas por el aprendizaje permanente" (Spain) http://travesia.mcu.es/S_ALFIN/ficheros/Declaracion_Toledo.pdf


PULLS & TUNE projects

• PULLS: Public Libraries in the Learning Society– 2005-6; Libraries from the UK, Finland, Denmark,

Germany and Spain developed and tested a model for supporting lifelong learning and developing information competencies amongst EU citizens

– http://www.pulls.dk• TUNE: Training of Library Users in New Europe

– 2004-2005; Public libraries in Spain Sweden Denmark & Slovenia

– http://www.tune.eu.com/Sheila Webber, May 2008


Education

• Large amount of work in many countries, especially in Higher Education

• Development may be linked to – external forces for change (e.g. Bologna Process)– educational policy (e.g. as regards teaching quality,

massification) & predominant pedagogic approach of teachers/ lecturers

– nature/ existence of national curriculum– nature of teacher education– status/funding of libraries & of education generally


Developments include• Information Literacy more often appearing in

institutional strategies and/or graduate attributes (see Corrall, 2007 re: the UK)

• More genuine collaboration in curriculum development

• More interest in undertaking research (workplace & as research students) & developing pedagogy

• More teachers/ lecturers co-authoring or presenting individual papers on IL

• See literature and conference proceedingsSheila Webber, May 2008

National laws/ strategies• Revised education law making information

management education compulsory for particular age ranges (Spain)

• Paragraph in the Swedish Higher Education act that legislates that all students have to graduate with information skills

• The Finnish Ministry of Education Development Plan for Education and Research 2003–2008 stresses need of university and polytechnic graduates for good information literacy


Frameworks, models, standards: examples

• SCONUL 7 Pillars of Information Literacy (UK Higher & Further Education) http://www.sconul.ac.uk/groups/information_literacy/headline_skills.html

• Standards of the Information Literate Student & Information Education Strategy at Universities (ALCU, Czech Republic)


• Recommendation for universities for including IL competency in the new degree structures (Finland) http://www.helsinki.fi/infolukutaito/english/index.htm.

• Noel, E. (Ed) (2007) Maîtrise de l’information des étudiants avancés (master et doctorat)Elémentspour une formation. FORMIST. http://formist.enssib.fr/documents/Maitrise_de_l'inform-n-6593-ran--typ-.html


Example activities

• Survey on information education at Czech universities - 2000, 2003, 2006

• Information Literacy award from SCONUL (UK), 2008, recognising strategic development of IL based on outline in the UNESCO primer ([email protected])


Example resources(chosen as ones developed for community as a whole rather

than specific libraries)

• Information Literacy (resource developed for by Learning & Teaching Scotland, sections targeted for pupils aged 9-11, 12-14, 15-18 ) http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/informationliteracy/index.asp

• Intute tutorials suite: http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/


Research examples• Web Searching, Information Literacy and Learning (Web-

SeaL; Academy of Finland 2006-2009) https://www11.uta.fi/blog/webseal/

• Centre for Information Literacy Research (Sheffield University, UK) http://www.shef.ac.uk/is/cilr/

• Konstanz University IL project (Germany): http://www.ub.uni-konstanz.de/bibliothek/projekte/informationskompetenz.html

• Robert Gordon University: Information literacies (Scotland) http://www.rgu.ac.uk/abs/research/page.cfm?pge=5843



General

Associations: examples• European Forum for Information Literacy• EnIL http://www.ceris.cnr.it/Basili/EnIL/index.html• NORDINFOlit, a Nordic Information Literacy Forum

http://www.nordinfolit.org• Working group Information Education and Information

Literacy (Czech Republic) http://www.akvs.cz/en/groups.html

• CILIP Information Literacy Group (UK)• ENSIL: European Network for School Libraries and

Information Literacy http://vvbad.typepad.com/ensil/• Library Association of Ireland WGIL


Events: examples in 2008• Creating Knowledge (Nordic) 5th in 2008

http://congress.utu.fi/creatingknowledge2008/• EnIL summer school (Italy)

http://www.ceris.cnr.it/Basili/EnIL/index.html• Rencontres FORMIST (France) 8th in 2008• Las VI Jornadas CRAI (Spain)

http://www.craipamplona2008.org/index.php?section=27• LILAC conference (UK) 4th in 2008

http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/2008/Conference_programme.html

• Information literacy assessment conference (Dublin)• Annual IVIG conference (Czech Republic) Sheila Webber, May 2008

Publications and resources: examples• Nordic Journal of Information Literacy in Higher Education

https://noril.uib.no/noril_en.html• Journal of information literacy http://jil.lboro.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/JIL• LOOWI (Netherlands) http://www.LOOWI.org/• ALFIN blog (http://www.alfinred.org/blog) and ALFIN Red

(http://www.alfinred.org/) (Spain)• Information Literacy Website

(http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/) & IL weblog(http://information-literacy.blogspot.com) (UK)

• FORMIST website (France) http://formist.enssib.fr/• Informationcompetenz (Germany):

http://www.informationskompetenz.de/ Sheila Webber, May 2008

LIS curriculum for IL• Virkus, S., Boekhorst, A. K., Gomez-Hernandez J.A., Skov,

A. and Webber, S. (2005) “Information literacy and learning.” In: Kajberg, L. and Lørring, L. (Eds) European Curriculum: Reflections on Library and Information Science Education. pp65-83. Copenhagen: The Royal School of Library and Information Science.http://biblis.db.dk/uhtbin/hyperion.exe/db.leikaj05

• Webber, S. (2008) "Educating Web 2.0 LIS students for information literacy." In: Godwin, P. and Parker, J. (eds) Information Literacy meets Library 2.0. London: Facet. pp39-50.


Educating library and information profession

• Modules within LIS undergrad or Masters programmes (e.g. on IL and pedagogy in HacettepeUniversity, Turkey; in programmes in University College Dublin, Ireland)

• Programmes (MA Information Literacy, Sheffield University UK)

• Resources e.g.– Bibteach (Denmark) http://www.bibteach.dk/– 2 British examples follow



http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/educationandtraining/

infolit/hilt/index.html

Pop-I & Lollipop - http://www.lobelollipop.com/login/index.phpBoden, D. and Stubbings, R (2008) Do librarians like to learn

online? http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla74/papers/163-Boden_Stubbings-en.pdf



Issues

• Many librarians concerned with “proving impact”• Focus on developing better pedagogic skills and

knowledge• Forming meaningful strategic alliances outside LIS

still seems challenging• Latter particular problem as regards workplace/

economic development?• Involvement in national initiatives of commercial

sector who are not concerned with outcomes• IL for … citizens or workers? (i.e. perhaps IL education for

citizenship and personal development neglected)Sheila Webber, May 2008

• Need to lobby at the European level; & national strategies also usually lacking, hindering a holistic approach

• Victim of hype/ political-play with concepts like “millennials”, “information society”, “e” … & of political play/shifts generally

• Confusion with IT, media & digital literacy• Librarians themselves working out relationship of

Web 2.0 and Information Literacy• Librarians’ shyness and defensiveness about using

the IL phraseSheila Webber, May 2008


Sheila Webber [email protected]://information-literacy.blogspot.com/http://www.pageflakes.com/informationliteracy/


References• Corrall, S.M. (2007). "Benchmarking strategic engagement

with information literacy in higher education: towards a working model" Information Research, 12 (4) paper 328. http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/paper328.html

• Pejova, Z. et al (2006) Achieving an information society and knowledge-based economy through information literacy. International Center for Promotion of Enterprises. http://www.aso.zsi.at/sl/publikation/2185.html

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