Baby Evie

Ok, so at this time, my research is on hold! Evie, was born on 27 May 2007. She is 4lbs 1oz and so is being kept in hospital with mother. More photos on my website www.cgwalker.org.uk

First Meeting with Supervisors

Today I had my first official meeting with my two supervisors. Key work areas to continue with are:

• Continue with reading for the literature review
• Expand the reading beyond the specific IL focus
• Look for relevant training opportunities
• Investigate potential ethical considerations of proposed research

Enough is enough!

Today I spent my reading Owusu-Ansah (2005). His article, “Debating definitions of information literacy: enough is enough!” is essentially a plea for a stop to the constant debates about definitions of information literacy. In his article he briefly charts the background to literacy as well as information literacy. The paper provides a good and relatively up-to-date coverage of the debate over definitions. Owusu-Ansah argues that there is enough consensus with the various definitions that a general understanding can be agreed upon. He argues that Doyle, Eisenberg, ALA definition etc have a common thread. He also states that Bruce has a commonality in to the attributes listed in her research.

This is a very good article and one which should be read by any person wishing to delve into the field.

Owusu-Ansah, E. K. (2005). "Debating definitions of information literacy: enough is enough!" Library Review 54(6): 366-374.

Information literacy: a practitioner's guide

Yesterday I said that I would complete the review of the Andretta, S. (2005). Information literacy: a practitioner's guide. To use a well know aphorism, “it does as it says on the tin.” The book provides an idiot proof introduction to the topic. That said, it is very much aimed at the librarian practitioner, who delivers training in a HE setting. The book proved to be illuminating, especially Andretta’s discussions and comparisons of the three information literacy frameworks, ACRL IL Standard, ANZIL IL standards and SCONUL Information skills. My homework is to now look at these frameworks in detail, myself.

Chapter 1 is a general introduction, chapter 2 provides the ubiquitous “setting the scene”, but still very useful as it is written in a very accessible way. Topics covered here include, models of IL, definitions and a very useful national perspective, form a US, Australian and UK view. I must admit, that the rest of the book proved to be less useful for me, as it deals with the delivering of IL training in a HE setting. Here, I have to be disciplined, and concentrate and focus on required reading. Notwithstanding, what I read would undoubtedly be extremely useful for training librarians.

Some reading

Today I set myself the aim of reading. I managed to cover two books (along with everything else).

The titles are:

1. Walton, G. and A. Pope (2006). Information literacy: recognising the need: Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom, 17 May 2006. Oxford, Chandos Publishing.

2. Andretta, S. (2005). Information literacy: a practitioner's guide. Oxford, Chandos.

Starting with the Walton title. This is the conference proceeding of Information Literacy: Recognising the Need, held in Staffordshire university in May 2006. Immediately I found this title interesting because, i) It is relatively new; ii) it is from a British perspective. Of the eight sections, Walton and Pope’s; Andretta’s, and Brauer’s were perhaps the most useful to me in terms of my research.

Walton and Pope starts off with a good overview of IL mentioning Zikowski in 1974, 2003 Prague Declaration linking into the SCONUL 7 pillars. This paper is very much still relating to IL in the HE context, and perhaps it is too much to expect anything else given the setting of the conference. Despite this it is a good, if not brief introduction to the subject.

Andretta’s paper asks the question is IL the new “pedagogy of the question” relating here to Paulo Freire’s theory which proposed a pedagogy that forces learners to think critically and adopt a critical attitude toward the world. Andretta proposes that there are parallels between IL as “a way of emancipating the learner through the development of life long learning” and Freire’s theory of critical pedagogy. Andretta goes on to discuss the contexts with the teaching in an institution and examines its challenges. This is a very thought provoking article which requires substantially more space than I can give here!

Lastly, Brauer asks “information overload and the re-invention of brutality”. This is an extremely thought provoking paper, seeking to distinguish the complexities of reality form data. He argues that we live in such an information rich society, where we can find pictures of great paintings on the on Google but does that help us appreciate them? To quote Brauer, “I came across four young people looking at a street map [in London] and they were wondering where to go. I suggested the National Gallery – One of then replies ‘I did Art Appreciation at West Texas U, so I guess I’ve already seen all that’”

From a practical IL perspective Brauer uses the example of the growth of evidence-based medicine (or evidence-based anything else for that matter) which has become the dominant ideology in Medicine in the past 20 years (I can vouch for this having been a clinical librarian for the past 8 years); here he quotes Clark (1998:1246)

The contextually bound nature of research findings, consequential in the acknowledgment of researcher and theoretical biases, warrants that knowledge deemed to be ‘truthful’ under-positivistic inquiry is not universally generalizable to all cases and all situations.

For Brauer, the point of the story is that all encompassing truth remains elusive as we live in amid paradox and uncertainly. This means that the simplistic and easy results provided by the internet and a search engine can not readily provide us with “practical or esoteric wisdom”. He argues that books, and not search engines, when selected wisely with data which is set into interpretive context can provide us with better understanding. “Internet searching and the reinvention of brutality, the: a future in which people can, for a remarkably low price, locate the facts about anything; but who will uncover the value of nothing: Big on quantity, for cretin, but, it would appear, regrettably low on quality.

Clark, A. M. (1998) The qualitative-quantitative debate: moving from positivism and confrontation to post-positivism and reconciliation, Journal of Advanced Nursing 27:1242:1249

Information needs of parents, part 2

21/5/07

Returning to the work by Marden and Nicholas, I though that I would list their findings:

Specific topics on which parents needed information
Subject	No of parents	% of parents
Health for the child	32	91
Child care	30	86
Child development	28	80
Schools	24	69
Child behaviour	18	51
Careers, education and training	18	51
Finance	15	43

Source: (Nicholas and Marden, 1998: p.39-40)

It is important to remember that my research is not specifically examining parent’s information needs per se; however, it will be important to be identifying the common questions or information requirements of parents in order to be able to draw comparisons between how parents go about obtaining, assessing and using the information.

The paper used her is:

Nicholas, D. and M. Marden (1998). "Parents and their information needs. A case study: parents of children under the age of five." Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 30(1): 35-47.

information needs of parents

In 1997 Marden and Nicholas noted that “in the rush to investigate the needs of people at work or study, the information needs of consumers or the general public have been wholly neglected by information researchers.” This statement is certainly still very true for the literature surrounding Information Literacy. Interestingly, Marden and Nicholas were researching the information needs of Parents, I have yet to get hold of their full report, however, this is a priority!