Personalise, contextualise...and on to ‘boutique’

The LILAC conference is one of the excellent librarianship conferences around bringing many together to share best practice.

It was great to be able to attend all three days this year, and feel that as a result I could chart some of the themes that seemed to weave themselves in and out of many of the presentations much better than from just a one-day visit.

I was struck by the number of times that the LILAC conference presentations referred to the need to contextualise information literacy. The new SCONUL 7 pillars model suggests that different lenses are used to apply the framework – ie different user groups look and feel different. But it was almost as if this was all something new and revelatory. And yet, in one of the most traditional library structures known to UK librarians, this is exactly what we have been doing since....well, forever. I’m delighted to be able to say that the ‘lens’ that I can develop in my job is not just an ‘undergraduate’ lens but an ‘English Literature Studies undergraduate’ lens. This must surely be a distinct advantage for us in this staff-intensive, personalised service that we run?

A number of libraries in Cambridge have been working this way for a long time - Education, Business, Classics, Earth Sciences, Medical, Law to name but a few. One of the best things about Cambridge is that, as subject librarians, we can - and do - have an enormously variable approach to teaching ‘information literacy’. What we do from library to library won’t (and shouldn’t) look the same.The students will need our resources and services and the related skills to use them at different times and in different ways -depending on the subject, depending on the input from academics, depending on the style of teaching; depending on all sorts of things! Contextualising literacy training means spotting the needs and addressing them at the right time and in the right manner. To contextualise or personalise training so that we have buy in from our users is crucial. If it’s not relevant to them, I don’t think they care. We try to make them care by setting out to discover what buttons to push to get their attention. This involves knowledge; it involves knowing about them and the time frames that they work with; it means finding the context, tailoring the services, personalising content, embedding ourselves and our work in the heart of the specific part of the institution they – and we – are in.

One tangential thought I have had is the concern that I feel about how easy it is to patronise our students. The question is how to satisfactorily help (for argument’s sake) the 50% of the student body for whom some of the essentials of info lit might have eluded them in their secondary schooling, whilst maintaining the respect and appreciation of the other 50% who actually know and understand everything you are telling them and might resent being at a session in the middle of an extremely busy schedule. We don’t want to frighten off the first 50%, but neither do we want to alienate the second 50%.......Do we just assume that the second 50% have forgotten all they ever knew? . I definitely disagree with the suggestion that students forget all they ever knew in transferring from one part of the education system to another. Yes – the long summer holidays mean that primary school children often have to re-trace SOME steps at the beginning of a new term but I don’t think that there are very many who completely forget how to read and write! I digress! In an environment where you probably have one shot at doing something for all freshers I have in the past viewed the sessions (fortunately small and interactive) that we run as primarily about building relationships. I stand by this as being the most useful goal. The challenge is to have the icing on the cake where they all gain something more than this from the session – after all at the time they may not view building positive relationships with the library staff as the most important thing they could do with their time! It is possible that co-agency and community learning have a large part to play so that it’s not all about the content we include in a session but perhaps more about teaching methodology. In May we have a visit from colleagues from the University of Northampton and it will be useful to compare notes with them.

The term ‘information literacy’ was challenged at the conference. I’m not a strong advocate of it myself. We make all sorts of assumptions when we use it. We assume others who work with us know what it means. It’s on occasion used in a slightly odd one-up-man-ship type of activity between librarians. We use it to make academics think we know more than we do. We bandy it around as if ‘doing’ information literacy is the answer to all the problems our students have. Actually no! The very broad points that make up information literacy are bound up with other literacies and I was really pleased to be given a handout at one of the LILAC sessions demonstrating that ‘info lit’ is just one of many ‘literacies’ and that realistically it cannot just be librarians who are the answer to it all! Phew. In fact perhaps we should be promoting a ‘literacy’ curriculum – one that we have a role in? But even the word ‘literacy’ is fraught with interpretive issues. If you are invited to join a ‘literacy’ class, are we inferring that you (they) are ‘illiterate’? This was a point made at LILAC by Jesus Lau and it opened up all the problems in my mind that we frequently forget exist with library terminology! Ah well.....

This all inevitably bring me back to ‘boutique’ – the model, the themes, the book and so on....and even more inevitably to the fact that I really need to start working on my contribution.......

LILAC

Just back from the LILAC 2011 conference with some of the highlights:

Day 1: Lucy Keating and Taking up the RIN challenge: supporting researchers’ use of web 2.0

An inspirational speaker having produced a tool that I will be promoting to my users.

Katie Birkwood and Niamh Tumelty from Cambridge presented today - the success of their Teachmeets have already spread like wildfire around the country well before LILAC so I hope they bathed in the admiration of colleagues for adapting this idea to library world in the first place!

Day 2: Emma Thompson and From search to research; linking information literacy and critical research skills. I liked the use of the H2O playlist and was reminded of a few other tools that I need to also start to use like drop-box in order to pep up the information management strategy part of the Quickstart sessions we run.

Jason Eyre's Keeping up the Dialogue presentation was just plain excellent for engagement and entertainment.

More about Moira Bent and Ruth Stubbings' presentation on the revamped 7 Pillars in my next post, but the following debate about the usefulness of the model was timely and thought-provoking.

The finale for me for the day was Dina Koutsomichal's online polling session which was something that I immediately thought we could try at work - and might even suggest to the Computer Officer of the Faculty for student evaluation of lecture courses......

A great day.

Day 3: I made the mistake of assuming that I knew where I was going today - we changed location from the BL to LSE and for some reason best known to myself I had failed to print a map - just as well I had my Blackberry with me.........

Top of the list today were conversations with colleagues. Followed swiftly by the Pecha Kucha session with Wassail, Creative problem (or triage clinics), and Upgrade at City University which all provided food for thought.

Glad that I went to all three days this year.

Up, Close and Personal

Andy Priestner, co-organiser with me for the symposium on Personalised services in HE makes a very good comment when challenging us in his recent blog post to think about just how personalised is 'personalised'.

Having spent some time at work these last two weeks talking about how we can improve our customer service - and talking incessantly at home about it - my husband quietly presented me with an article called 'Shopping with a smile? I'm not buying it'. Strapline comment - 'What works for Mary Portas does not necessarily work in a Poundshop in Preston.'

Hmmm - up, close and personal doesn't always work. So how do we work out what is helpful and beneficial and what isn't? In a week where I have been receiving detailed evaluation emails on the impact of our skills programme in the Library, I am realising that, from the students perspectives, there is merit in personalising our teaching, but that some generic teaching is useful if part of a package where both styles feature. It's getting the balance right that's important. In an HE environment where students clearly feel that they have a lot of choice about what they go to, the package has to appeal to them!

What interests me in the whole personalisation thing is the subliminal messages that we give that seem to have the most impact. I just received an email from a student who was clearly impressed that a member of staff had painted a picture for the library in order to brighten a particularly dull spot. This level of commitment by the staff to improving the environment in a very quiet unobtrusive way demonstrates the sort of subliminal 'personalisation' that I am sure exists in many libraries around the world.

I'm not saying that a welcome smile and good eye contact for our users at the issue desk isn't important, but perhaps we underestimate that what we instinctively do already is providing a personlised service?

Conferenced out....

Too much information (is that possible?)

Cleared the desk on Tuesday and cleared the brain, but the libraries@cambridge conference filled it up again.

Echo chamber - thought the idea very relevant but was fascinated by all the echo chamber activity around me as I listened. Ned made that point really when pointing out the conference was full of librarians but to make matters worse - Cambridge librarians!

Thinking about the echo chamber I wonder about taking it a step further. Perhaps we should wake up to the fact that there are smaller echo chambers that are embedded within the wider institutional library environment or the big echo chamber of which all librarians are a part. Perhaps the 'wheels within wheels' picture says something of what I mean.

I'm not entirely sure that we always realise that they are there but a bit of meerkat action soon detects possibilities!

For example take the 'Thing' that I had to give up using - my head just wanted to explode from all the information contained there! My brain can divide itself up into approximately 6 compartments at any one time, and the 'Thing' doubles that number in one screens-worth of information! You take my point?

But I digress......

I can see the point of breaking out of my own mini echo chamber into the big wide world, but I wonder if there are just as many issues and perhaps damage caused by the lack of movement between our little microcosms, our mini echo chambers. Do we have a responsibility to engage with others in different parts of the same library environment as well as with the big wide world ? Whose responsibility is it? Your echo chamber - or mine?

Story time

Recently read David J Brier and Vicky Kaye Lebbin (2004) 'Teaching information literacy using the short story', Reference Services Review, 32/4 pp 383-387.

I like the idea of stories helping us to retain information. I know that in this instance the article is referring to the imagined story or tale, but the point still fits well with one of my many theories of teaching - that a true 'story' or - yes if you want a more technical term - a case study - is better at making the point, and importantly allowing that point to have been retained to become effectively learnt, than I ever could with bullet points on a powerpoint (or just my voice droning on).

Personally I like a visual clue as well as the story. So well-illustrated children's story books were made for me.

Cue the start to an article that might make it beyond my computer:

Communities in the past were built on narrative, or stories. Children were taught about life, about skills, about who they were and how to behave through stories. Narrative engaged the mind, and fuelled the imagination. A story that one person tells one audience, and a different person to the same audience, might be presented differently but can still have the same impact and the same truths contained. Community Learning is all about using different people to tell the same story, to teach the same principles but from different viewpoints...........

More on space

Prompted by the discussion lunch today at MML (and a need to get a presentation on the go...) I went back to my survey results from a number of academics who have recently used our new IT training suite in the Library.


Key comment:

It seems important that the room, and what goes on in it, is part of the well-established learning environment that is the faculty library. By placing electronic resources alongside material texts, the former gain a kind of visibility and status. The proximity between electronic and print resources is not only very convenient for students and class leaders - it reflects a fact of 21c. research.

If I have academics promoting our space like this - then I'm happy.

Transformative? or merely informative?

An excellent topic for the journal discussion lunch tomorrow - Is the physical library redundant in the 21st Century?

From a related blog posting I enjoyed the following

"It is not the quantity of information available nor the ease at which it can be got that libraries should focus on, but rather the quality of the educational experience offered"

On a day when I debated the pitfalls of having too much to do and think about (and just how debilitating that was!) with a colleague in the queue at Marks and Spencers at lunchtime I wonder whether 'quality' is what we as librarians all too often fail at. We talk about, plan for, and in general aim to improve our stats - whether they are circulation or footfall or website/VLE/facebook/ebook hits. The SCONUL HE annual return encourages exactly this. But are we TRANSFORMING lives? Perhaps this sounds a bit over the top? Martin Lewis is keen to point out that numbers using the Sheffield Information Commons are increasing. I've been heard to say - oh great, footfall, book borrowing etc is up. But - I don't think that this is quite the point! The point is that the service we offer should be transformative, it should be all about impact. If the physical space of the library IS important then we should be seeing comments from students that say exactly that; we should be able to correlate degree results with use of the services - and so on. Perhaps....

I am in complete agreement with Mary Beard - on the need for time to slow down, to allow the thought processes to operate in another space with the resulting serendipitous spark of illumination on a particular matter. I shan't advocate that libraries work for me in the way they do for Mary, but I can vouch for the bike ride, the walk into town and back at lunchtime, the downtime effect of shelving a trolley load of books. Anything really that removes me from my desk and my normal place of work and gets me out into fresh air or just doing something that allows my brain to quietly jog along in the background. These are frequently my own eureka moments - and the only problem that I have is the inability to recall what they were when I get back to the desk! I'm still working on a solution......

Looking forward to the discussion.