Dr Rónán O’Beirne’s Weblog

Education; Technology; Digital Transformation; Information & Knowledge Management; Librarianship; Digital Leadership

On Tuesday I visited the Saltire Centre – Glasgow Caledonian University – to see the much talked about library and learning resource centre facility. It has received much attention in the professional library press for its innovative design features. Despite there being wide knowledge of it in far-flung places – two students standing close to its entrance looked bewildered when I asked them for directions – they had never heard of it.

I was impressed by the scale of the building and its dimensions. The ground level was very busy and a real hub of activity with high noise levels and a lot of student activity. As one moves up the building a calmness descends. The upper floors are used for more serious study. It was refreshing to see many different groups collaborating and engaging; using technology and print-based resources.

The guiding and signage was not great and, as a space, it was not intuitive to use. In terms of moving thinking along, the innovative approach to a learning space coupled with the use of wood, glass and concrete presents a challenge to others to create an engaging learning environment. The recognition that the learning resource centre and the library should be at the core or hub of the accomodation is to be commended.

I spent two interesting days at the first M-Libraries conference at the Open University in Milton Keynes. The “M” stands for mobile so just like mobile learning – accessing learning from a mobile device – the concept here is accessing library support services using a mobile device.

A full report on the conference and abstracts from the presentations will be available soon. The conference website is located here.

At the beginning of October I travelled to Belgrade, Serbia to present a paper on LolliPop the IL programme to this conference:

THE INFORMATION LITERACY LANDSCAPE

5 – 7 October 2007

Belgrade, Serbia

Information literacy is a life-long learning process that incorporates the knowledge and skill required to find information, to evaluate information, and to use information effectively.

CONFERENCE THEMES

Critical thinking/evaluation of information

Bibliographic instruction vs. information literacy

Assessment of information literacy

Influence of technology on information literacy

Teaching of information literacy

Access to information: the “have” vs. the “have not”

Economic, legal, ethical, and social aspects of information literacy

Information literacy skills sets: retrieval, use, evaluation, and repackaging

Information beyond Google

Information literacy and lifelong learning

This was an exciting opportunity to learn about issues in Information Literacy in the Balkans, and to demonstrate the work we are doing on Information Literacy here at Bradford College. My host was Aleksandra Vranes Presidant of the Serbian Library Association, I have invited Aleksandra to visit Bradford in March 2008.  The conference website is located here.

Good to see that the NLN (National Learning Network) has re-launched it’s service.

“Funded by the LSC and available free to all authorised organisations in the post-16 sector, the NLN materials represent one of the most substantial and wide-ranging collections of e-learning materials in the UK.

The NLN Materials are small, flexible ‘bite-sized’ episodes of learning. They are not whole courses but are designed to support a wide range of subject and topic areas. The materials adopt a range of approaches involving some knowledge acquisition, a chance to practice and absorb, and some form of assessment to check that the learning has been understood and the learning outcome(s) achieved.