Dr Rónán O’Beirne’s Weblog

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

As noted in an earlier post, with Bradford College as the sponsor, I am on the governing body of the Appleton Academy. I also attend the design group meetings where for the past year or so we have been looking, along with representatives of the Bradford public library service at the feasibility of developing a joint-use facility. With the high number of stakeholders involved the process has been complex and at times difficult. The local public library in Wyke has been in need of repair for some time and the main impetus for the local authority has been to see a new library for the community. The Academy, unique for its all-through provision,  in turn sees benefits in having a prestigious community library provision within its building offering extended out of hours services. Bradford College sees the potential for lifelong learning provision within this community venue.

The potential for economies of scale through linkages, both physical and strategic , between the Academy’s learning resource centre and the public library will now be realised following a decision by the Bradford Council’s Executive on March 30th to go ahead with its part of the scheme.

Professionally the challenge for those of us involved is to design and deliver a superb facility fit for the local community.

I was very pleased to be invited onto the board of the Bradford Textile Archive and to be involved in its future. As a librarian it is deeply exciting to come into contact with primary source material and a professional challenge to ensure the integrity of the collection is not simply preserved but, rather more importantly, is exploited to the full for the local people and for those further afield who have a genuine interest in the collection. Moreover the technical difficulties of digitising materials that are essentially appreciated through 3D rather than 2D photography make for interesting times ahead.

No time has been wasted in getting a bid organised to a national agency for some funding to digitise the collection and that has already been submitted. Also on the international front we are developing a bid through a consortium of educational establishments including Universities from Serbia, Turkey, Bulgaria and Japan to digitise and disseminate the collection more widely.

A brief description of the Bradford Textile Archive is reproduced here from its publicity brouchure:

The wide assortment of material comprising the Bradford College Textile Archive is symbolic of Bradford’s rich heritage and current regeneration. The collection has steadily been accumulating since the Bradford Technical School opened its doors in 1882, to deliver textiles education and training to support local industry and owes much to the support and patronage of former students of the College and also to those in the local textiles industry who have over the years generously donated materials and artefacts. The collection continues to be used by local students and in turn, they contribute examples of their own work, thus continuing to build the collection with contemporary products. Community members are continuing to donate to the archive, the most recent being costume from a member of Bradford’s German community. The Bradford College Textile Archive consists of a diverse range of textiles and related materials from fine silk jacquards, rayon, velvets, mohair and woollens and worsteds dating from over the last 150 years. The collection includes twenty-six bound volumes of Textile Fabrics of India, demonstrating the strong ties between the Bradford Textile industry and the Indian sub continent; unique student work books dating from the mid to late Victorian period; a comprehensive range of text books, journals and other printed publications; approximately 10,000 samples drawn from manufacturers pattern books including Bilbille and other international forecasting references, a large number of fabric sample books including the collections of Hind Robinson and Denholme Velvets; and a collection of records, minute books, ledgers and cash books from various textile organisations. The collection has recently been re-housed in the college building affectionally known as The Old Building which was originally built in 1882 for the “purpose of imparting to youths, artisans and others, technical and scientific, artistic and general instruction” in textile manufacturing.

Two articles in the quarterly Art Libraries Journal Volume 35, No. 1, 2010, published by ARLIS caught my attention. It is actually a special issue titled Plus ca change? and carries (mostly revisions of) papers form the ARLIS UK & Ireland’s Cambridge conference 2009: Tradition and transformation.

The first piece to attract my attention was by  Karen Latimer – Librarian at Queens University Belfast Medical Library – Redefining the library: current trends in library design. This a very well written overview of recent library architecture in the context of changes to learning and teaching brought about by technology.

The second piece is by Melissa Terras – Senior Lecturer at the Dept. of Information Studies at UCL – Should we just send a copy? Digitisation, usefulness and users. This tells the story of digitisation using the popularity of the Mona Lisa image as a device for explaining the issues associated with the preservation or representation of cultural heritage; it also touches on issues of retrieval – but the central question “Should we just send a copy?” remains fundamental to many other aspects of our profession.

This is a nice piece of research (from USA) telling us how students are actually using Wikipedia.

Head, A. J., & Eisenberg, M. B. (2010). How today’s students use Wikipedia for course related research
First Monday, 15(3).

Is the Internet overloading our brain?

I have very much enjoyed the BBC World Service’s – Virtual Revolution series which was run throughout March, the blurb for the first episode outlines it well  “Since its birth almost twenty years ago, the World Wide Web has transformed our world : A quarter of the planet is now online and able as never before to communicate, publish, and garner information seemingly without limits. But will the Web’s empowerment of ordinary people endure? As part of the BBC’s internet season, the computer expert Doctor Aleks Krotoski starts her four part series by documenting the Web’s remarkable growth and asking if the old hierarchies it challenges are managing to stage a counter revolution.”

In this first episode one of the interesting ironies of the piece about Napster was the rock band Metallica’s vociferous insistence that the copyright of musicians should be upheld. This irony was not lost on Sean Cannon, singer with the 40 year old Irish folk group the Dubliners who I saw playing at the Lowry  in Salford last Sunday.  Sean introduced one of their signature tunes in a typical way: “Here’s a song we found on YouTube – by a band called Metallica – its called “Whiskey In The Jar”. This got a huge laugh from the audience – the irony of course was that it was the Dubliners who 30 years ago recorded the original version of  “Whiskey in the Jar” which they gave to a band called Thin Lizzy from whom Metallica had ‘borrowed’ the tune – copyright eh, it such a personal thing !

On Thursday I travelled to the Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (engCETL) at Loughborough University to speak at the Higher Education Academy’s Scholarly Activity Workshop. This was the second of three events, the first was in Stockport and the third will be in Bristol, run by Angus Carpenter, Research Centre Manager at City College Norwich and Becky Turner, Educational Researcher at the University of Plymouth.

The aim of the series of workshops is to ‘develop and enhance the practice and management of scholarly activity and research within Further Education Colleges’. Barbara Edwards from the QAA opened the proceedings looking at the challenges of building a research ethos.

My presentation looked at the development of the research agenda across Bradford college giving examples from our TQEF cohort of projects, explaining our use of our home-grown virtual research environment, outlining our use of research support staff such as academic liaison librarians, and of course talking about the BAR conference. It was well received with a lot of people asking questions both in the session but also later on throughout the day.

My presentation was followed by a very well constructed assessment of scholarly activity and its benefits by Jim Logan from Blackpool and the Fylde College. After lunch Angus was joined by Neil Witt, Head of Technology Enhanced Learning again at University of Plymouth, and they looked at aspects of project management and most interestingly how to attract funding from a range of different agencies. Next up was Becky, helped by Phil Lester of the Higher Education Academy, who looked at the support that is provided by Regional Support Centres, and also Phil outlined the HEA’s professional recognition scheme of associates, fellows and senior fellows. The issue of linking with the Institute for Learning, raised by an audience question, was discussed. The day concluded with a short plenary session that rounded off the event on a positive note.

Yesterday I travelled to the second Future of Academic Libraries meeting and workshop event at Aston University where we further developed some scenarios for how the library might look in the year 2050. Picking up from where we left off at the first event in London in February the key drivers were again useful in shaping the discussion. An excellent graphic had been produced by Cartwright/SAMI that showed the results of our ‘backcasting’ exercise which essentially was a process of identifying the key ‘moments’ of the last 50 years. Yesterday’s event was opened by Professor Brian Collins FREng, FIET, FBCS, FIOP, RCDS whose keynote was interesting and thought provoking particularly his view of some of the future technologies such as the semantic web, cloud computing and, rather scarily, the emergence of synthetic staff. This was followed by a series of workshops that ranked the global drivers and questions then plotted these on axes of certainty to uncertainty and high-impact to low-impact. After a pleasant lunch during which I chatted to Marian Miller from Glasgow Caledonian University about her Saltire Centre, we again formed work-groups and developed scenarios in outline to be taken forward to the next stage. The day was concluded with a presentation by Gill Ringland which outlined the use of scenario building through some case studies. Next up will be a series of smaller workshops over the summer. For more information on the project click here

In response to the large numbers of staff now actively using Moodle, the VLE team and Beth and Deborah have set up a space that provides three services for staff: – Support services for  all development issues; Showcase facilities to show-off what you have done and to see the work of others; and a Lounge facility to share and develop good practice.
Of course the feedback from our recent successful  IQER (Integrated Quality Enhancement Review) about our use of Moodle was very positive, however there is always more that can be done. This new space should be an excellent resource for staff beginning with e-learning generally and also for those with more experience who may be looking to extend their skills and knowledge. Go there now!

The great effort that staff have put into developing the RFID solution here at Bradford College’s Libraries and Learning Resources, has been recognised by the QAA and showcased in a case study hosted on the Excellence Gateway. The innovation was recognised by JISC as being a significant achievement in the sector. Well done to all involved; from the germ of the idea through to the tender process then through to implementation and installation, it has been a very well received initiative and has led the way in FE library innovations.  Thanks also to Intellident our supplier, for their continued support. I know staff are itching to use the wands to manage stock.

To visit the Excellence Gateway and to read the Bradford College case study please follow this link.

Bradford College is the sponsor of the Appleton Academy and I sit as governor on the Curriculum & Standards committee. At a recent meeting some students ‘rehearsed’ their presentation for the final of the STEM challenge in which they were competing. We were all impressed with the very interesting presentation from the students and we wished them well with their trip to the finals in Manchester; what a wonderful surprise then to hear that they had won!!!

The winner of the first STEM Challenge was announced at the National Big Bang Fair in Manchester today (Thursday 11th March 2010).

Appleton Academy from Wyke, West Yorkshire submitted the winning design for an eco-friendly National Handball Centre.

Appleton’s team of six triumphed against tough competition from the other team of fours from, Whitecross Hereford High School, They win a trip to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, plus a tour of the London 2012 construction site.
The STEMNET website can be found here