Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Thing 3: Abstracting

In week 2, 2nd October, you will have a workshop on abstracting. An abstract is
"A concise and accurate representation of the contents of a document."
There are different kinds of abstract and you will learn about them in your workshop.
Being able to summarise articles is an important academic skill, and you will have to write abstracts of your own work for assignments in the iSchool.

Preparation is as follows: read this article before week 2, October 2nd
Erdelez, S. (1999) "Information encountering: it's more than just bumping into information." Bulletin of the American Association for Information Science, 25(3), 25-29. Retrieved 12 September 2012 from http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-99/erdelez.html

Make notes on the following points, if you can find the answers in the article:
- What is the aim of the article?
- What is the aim of Erdelez's research, and/or her research questions?
- Why did she think this was worth investigating?
- What methods did she use in her research? (data collection and data analysis)?
- When and where did she do the research?
- Who were the research population? (the participants in her research)
- What were the main findings from her research?
- What does Erdelez think is new or important about her research findings?
- What does she think are the implications of her research?
- What are her conclusions?

Bring a copy of the article and your notes to the workshop session with you, on 2nd October. Do not forget them! You will be using those notes to write an abstract of the document and will need to refer to the full article.

This is Dr Erdelez' home page: http://education.missouri.edu/faculty/SISLT/Erdelez_Sanda.php

If you have any questions about exercise, put them as comments in this post.
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Sharing Things 1 & 2

Do this after you have created your blog, and posted about the 7 Pillars.
Present your blog to your partner team.
  1. Show the features of your blog and explain your choices
  2. After you have presented your blogs to each other, each take a few minutes to look at your partner team’s blog and then present feedback to the partner team about their blog:
    a. What is the aspect of the blog that you like most?  and b. Give one suggestion that you think would improve their blog.
  3. After this you may want to make changes to your blog (though you do not have to)
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Thing 2: Information Literacy

The SCONUL 7 Pillars model of Information Literacy gives you a framework for understanding areas of information handling that are important for academic study. The 7 Pillars model was first published in 1999, and it was revised in 2011. We will be using therevised version.


The SCONUL 7 Pillars model was developed by a group of British university librarians: SCONUL is the Society of College, National and University Libraries.


The document describing the pillars can be found here: http://www.sconul.ac.uk/groups/information_literacy/publications/coremodel.pdf



Post about the 7 Pillars and your team
The purposes of this exercise are to get you familiar with the 7 Pillars, and to start thinking about your own information literacy, and also to get to know each other further as a team.
  • Think individually 1) what is your strongest pillar? 2) What is your weakest pillar? 3) Can you think of a time when you were particularly information literate?
  • As a team, share your strongest/weakest pillars.
  • Write a team blog post on your blog. Discuss what you think are the team’s strongest Pillars and why (you don't have to mention your weakest pillars!), and give at least one example of being information literate.
  • Add labels to your blog post and publish it
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Thing 1: Blogging: What to do today

1. One member of each team should set up a blog using their Sheffield University identity (logging into MUSE, clicking Google Apps, then selecting More, then clicking on Blogger, then creating a blog).

2. Firstly, invite in all the other member of the team, using their Sheffield University email address. This is on tab Settings, Basic, Permissions.
If there is someone who doesn’t have a Sheffield University email address, then use another Google-identity email for now. When they respond, upgrade them to admin status so they can change features of the blog.

3. Secondly, email Sheila (s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk) or just tell Sheila, what the web address and name of your blog is, so she can link to it from this main blog.

4. Customise your team blog’s appearance (Template and Layout)
  • Change the template first (Template tab)
  • Change the background picture
  • Try different typefaces and colours for the blog title, text etc.
  • In Layout arrange and add widgets
    • - - You must add a links gadget and include a link to this main 23 Things blog, http://inf6350-2012.blogspot.co.uk/ and to the link of your partner team
    - - If you have time add some more widgets e.g. a feed from another blog, a poll, features that allow people to subscribe to or follow your blog.
  • If you have yet more time, add a page (by selecting Pages, New Page) saying a bit more about your team

5. Post to your blog.
  • For your first group post, introduce yourselves
  • For your second group post, find another blog you like, and write a couple of sentences about it, with a link

6. Label your posts, so that later on you can find all the posts on the same topic or the same “Thing”. You describe the subject of the post with words and phrases. Click on Labels (right of screen)  and click done when you have finished.
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Sunday, September 23, 2012

Thing 1: Blogging: what and why

Weblogs, or blogs, have some key characteristics:
  • Blogs have posts which may contain text, links, pictures or embedded media. This (what you are reading) is a blog post.
  • The posts are published one at a time, over a period of time.
  • The blog entries are arranged in reverse chronological oder (most recent first)
  • Blogs are often written by one person, but there are also collaborative blogs
If you are unfamiliar with blogs, you may want to watch this video: http://www.commoncraft.com/video/blogs

There are various kinds of blog, for example:

Here are some articles, and one book, that explain why and how blogging is useful for business and in libraries:
Blogging can also be a subject for your research. A number of Masters students in the Sheffield University iSchool have written Masters dissertations which include investigations of blogging e.g.

Please do add comments if you have examples of useful blogs, or want to say why you blog.
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Inf6350 Information Resources and Information Literacy

This blog is part of the Inf6350: Information Resources and Information Literacy module; Inf6350 for short. On the module outline we say that the module aims to enable students to:
- understand from both theoretical and practical perspectives the notions of information literacy and information behaviour;
- understand the nature and function of different types and forms of information resources;
- develop their own information literacy and understanding of its application to their future lives; and
- develop specialised skills in searching for, evaluating and packaging information by carrying out an indepth search and synthesising and presenting the results.

The full module outline is in MOLE2
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