Information Literacy Across the Curriculum Workshop part 2

I attended the second part of the "Information Literacy Across the Curriculum", workshop which is given jointly by the TLT group and ACRL this last Tuesday. Michelle Millet was the presenter for this installment of the series. I had attended a previous presentation she did in person, which was very informative. This presentation was also very helpful because it had a slightly different focus and I picked up several good ideas.

Michelle's institution has chosen Information Literacy as their "Quality Enhancement Plan" which is required for their reaccreditation. Her perspective is very interesting because this level of support and widespread integration is not always so easy to achieve and I personally think it is a wonderful example of how to do things, and I find her recommendations to be very enlightening and practical as well.

Some of the major ideas/points/interesting bits that I came away with:

• Her description of the marketing and publicity. She mentioned t-shirts and also a Youtube video
• She continued to stress assessment as a very important step
• It interested me very much to hear that they had an annotated bibliography assignment as part the First Year Experience program. It sounded like they had the students prepare it over the summer.
• She mentioned Graduate students which interested me as well, I believe she also mentioned workshops for those students.
• It sounded like they had quite alot of ways of reaching faculty--such as annual workshops, course stipends, travel grants, and a standing Information Literacy committee.

And of course her final recommendations, which were again to stress assessment, to find and learn from other programs, to host discussion, and to be persistent.

Welcome back!

It's the beginning of the semester!

Our new website is up, and so are our new workshop offerings. Some of the other new features/pages of our website include:

• Downloadable Library Walking tour (download to your iPod)
• Tutorials Page (includes link to Alkek youtube tutorials)
• Library Toolbar (install in your browser so you can search library resources like the catalog wherever you are)
• Research RSS Feeds

And don't forget, if you would like us to make a tutorial or a workshop, you can send in a suggestion.

Catching up at the Beginning of the Semester, and in with the new............

So the semester began officially last week, and we are welcoming the students back to campus. We have a new roster of workshops and Refworks sessions, as well as Library Orientations.

On another note, yours truly (Lorin Fisher) am now Information Literacy Coordinator, so expect to hear more about our program and Information Literacy in general.

Back from Spring Break! Upcoming Workshop!

And I hope everyone had a very good spring break this year. We're all back to our classes, as the high season for papers approaches.

It also appears to be high season for conferences. It should be quite exciting. I myself am going to Computers in Libraries 2007, and am planning to post while I'm gone. Yours truly also intends to post commentary on some of the Second life happenings for librarians. (What's Second Life?)

So why this sudden surge of interest? As usual, while reading another blog I came across this article: INFORMATION LITERACY IN THE AGE OF AMATEURS How Google and Web 2.0 affect librarians’ support of Information Literacy...........which is a new angle on everything. I am not going to rehash and enumerate every single item in this article--there's plenty of commentary on Web 2.0 and libraries (just go and google it and you'll see). But I will point out that the paper discusses extending IL instruction to include showing students how to access and evaluate information from Blogs, wikis, and other web 2.0 content. This ties into yet another cool ebook that talks about new literacies.

Where am I going with all this? Well..........all this good stuff (and more) is going to end up in some form or another in the upcoming workshop Using Blogs and RSS Feeds for Research April 5 at 10-11am, in room 101.

Alkek Library Podcast 03/06/07 Part 2

Library Workshops Podcast

Did you know Alkek Library offers drop-in workshops on topics like demographic and marketing resources for business research and on focused areas like sociology, education, and psychology?

The workshops are usually about an hour long and are held in room 101 of Alkek Library. No registration required.

Some of the upcoming sessions include:

ARTstor, March 20th, 2 – 3 PM
Using Google for Scholarly Research, March 22nd, 5 – 6 PM
Evaluating Internet Sources, April 2nd, 11 – 12
Using Blogs and RSS feeds for research, April 5th, 10 -11

More information and dates/times of Library Workshops

Alkek Library Podcast 03/06/07

RefWorks Training

In the thick of it

The pace of the semester is starting to pick up. In addition to the different classes we've all been doing, we've been working on other projects as well. We've got a wiki that's still in the developmental stages, but soon will be up and operational as a resource for students, faculty, and staff.

Also, don't forget about our workshops and Refworks trainings. Next week on Feb 21st we have both a Using MRI workshop from 10-11 am & a Refworks training from 5-6 pm in room 101. We have plenty more, so check back periodically for more offerings (check the page for class times and updates).

In other news, there are two new IL journals that have just come out--one is Journal of Information Literacy edited by Sheila Webber, and also Communications in Information Literacy.
Whew! and they are online too!