Thing 4 (again): Power Searching with Google

Google has run a short MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) a couple of times. It includes short videos and short self-tests, all about searching Google. If you want to improve your Google skills, it is worth a look. The web address is http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/ and this is the first, introductory, video.



There are lots of tips, but it is good to complement those materials with extra tips (and a more critical perspective) e.g. from Karen Blakeman:

Thing 10. Legal & ethical use

It is important for people to respect the law concerning intellectual property, particularly if you are librarians or information managers! There is international agreement about copyright and related laws, and the World Intellectual Property Organization http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en is the organisation that aims to develop an international system that is fair to both creators and users of intellectual property.

They define intellectual property as:
"creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce." (WIPO, 2012) They identify two types of intellectual property: Industial property (e.g. patents, trademarks) and copyright (e.g. literary and artistic works, which includes digital works). This also includes the rights that performers have in their performances (dance, theatre etc.)

Some principles are agreed internationally, and there is harmonisation, for example, within countries of the European Union (although even then there are some details of difference between EU countries). Sheffield University Library has a copyright guide http://www.shef.ac.uk/library/services/copyintro

The base line is that is generally illegal to copy things unless
- EITHER it specifically allowed by law (e.g. acknowledged quotations of up to a certain length are allowed for academic purposes or in reviews: "acknowledged" means there are quote marks and the source is clearly stated)
- OR the rights owner (author/creator) has said that it can be used. Creative Commons licenses http://creativecommons.org/ have made it much easier for an author of a digital work (article, video, photograph etc.) to say how their work can be used. There are a series of licences that you can use, ranging from "anyone can do anything with my work" to (for example) saying that people can use them privately, but must not publish them publically or use them commercially. This is one of the presentations on the CC site on Sharing Creative Works: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Sharing_Creative_Works

"Derivative" works are works that change the original in some way (e.g. if you cropped a picture, or photoshopped it). Some people do not want their work altered, and since it is their intellectual property, they have the right to say you mustn't.

This is a useful page which has annotated links to sources of legal free images: http://www.pandia.com/sew/4149-10-ways-to-find-free-images.html. If you can't find what you want there, then Phil Bradley has a list of search engines that search images and video: http://www.philb.com/mediaengines.htm (but some of them might consist mainly or entirely of images that you cannot legally reuse).

Flickr
When you search Flickr you can specify you want to be able leagally to reuse the image. Scroll down to the bottom of this advanced search page http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/?
and you will see that you can "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content". They explain it clearly here: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Google
In the advanced search option on Google Images you can specify the usage rights, e.g. only search for images that can be re-used.

Your task is to make sure that you are not copying text, videos or images illegally, on your blog and on your poster! (or indeed anywhere else)

References
- World Intellectual Property Organization. (2012) What is intellectual property? Retrieved 21 October 2012 from http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/
- Creative Commons logo copied with permission; see http://creativecommons.org/about/downloads

Thing 8: Communicating using posters

This week you will be starting to create posters which say something about the place of Information Literacy in your future careers. You will be using physical media (e.g. pen and paper) rather than electronic media. You also will not have very much time to produce them. However we have had some interesting posters for this exercise in the last few years.

There are pictures of all last year's posters on my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23396182@N00/sets/72157627880923331/
and this is a video from last year's event



Note: you are not being asked to produce a scientific paper, nor an online paper, so you do not have to read through the following advice before creating your poster! However, paper posters can still have an impact, and ones created electronically can be exhibited online and in print. It is useful to learn about techniques to communicate through posters.

Advice about producing posters:

Links to several useful resources with advice on producing academic posters: http://tash.group.shef.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=110&Itemid=685
University of Minnesota (2007) Creating an effective scientific poster presentation. http://www.tc.umn.edu/~schne006/tutorials/poster_design/index.htm
Glogster enables you to create online posters: http://www.glogster.com/

Some examples of "good" posters of different types:

Posters that won a best-poster competition for doctoral students in the midlands, 2011 (links are on the right of the page): http://www.vitae.ac.uk/policy-practice/336341/The-Midlands-Hub-Regional-Poster-Competition-2011.html and there is a Flickr pool of the 2012 event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/65599022@N07/sets/72157630954745024/
Winners of a similar competition for posters from doctoral students in Yorkshire 2009: http://www.vitae.ac.uk/policy-practice/71651/Yorkshire-and-North-East-Hub-Poster-Competition-Gallery-2009.html
Posters about the major oil spill disaster in the USA, 2010: http://tedxoilspill.com/2010/07/06/poster-competition-winners/
Library posters created by Phil Bradley, based on old British wartime posters: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philbradley/sets/72157625923493122/

Thing 7: Your Information Literacy in context

This is the activity:
1. Create your own map of changes, using the elements in the diagram "The information literate person in a changing information culture and society"
2. Share it with your team: are your maps similar or different? can you help each other identify ways of meeting IL needs?
3. Write a team blog post about a factor/ Information Literacy need that you are willing to share on the blog
4. Individually, note down a plan to address some of your Information Literacy development needs. Please finish this after the class, if you do not complete it in class. We will return to this in week 5.

Links to articles etc.

- Association of College and Research Libraries. (2012) Information literacy in the disciplines. http://wikis.ala.org/acrl/index.php/Information_literacy_in_the_disciplines
- Cheuk, B. (2008) Delivering business value through information literacy in the workplace. Libri, 58(3), 137-143. Retrieved 19 September 2012 from hCheuk, B. (2008) Delivering business value through information literacy in the workplace. Libri, 58(3), 137-143. http://www.librijournal.org/pdf/2008-3pp137-143.pdf
- Hoyer, J. (2011) Information is social: information literacy in context, Reference Services Review, 39(1), 10 - 23. Abstract
- Lloyd, A. (2005) Information literacy: different contexts, different concepts, different truths? Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 37 (2), 82-88. Abstract.
- Lloyd, A. (2009) Informing practice: information experiences of ambulance officers in training and on-road practice, Journal of Documentation, 65 (3), 396-419. Abstract
- Lloyd, A (2004) Working (in)formation: conceptualizing information literacy in the workplace. In Proceedings of 3rd International Life Long Learning Conference, 13-16 June, Rockhampton, Central Queensland University Press, pp. 218-224. http://acquire.cqu.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/cqu:1415



Please add any links below or (probably better) feature them in posts on your team blog.

Things 4 and 6 "Google" and "Database" secrets (Plan and gather)

You already had a session from Alastair in week 2 (on Google etc. searching) and you will have a further session from him this week (Groups 1 and 2) or next week (Groups 3 and 4)

What you need to do
Once you have had the 2nd session from the Alastair (i.e. this week for groups 1 and 2, next week for groups 3 and 4), make an individual post on your team blog, listing one new thing you learnt about Google or database searching.

A few of you have had a lot of experience in libraries before joining the course: so if you were already a search engine/ database wizard when you came to Sheffield, just say what your best searching tip is!

Thing 2: Information Literacy: additional material

Continuing and Professional Education and the University Libraries at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have teamed up to produce this video which outlines the concepts and practices of the Information Literacy Standards as defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Thing 5: The New Information Universe: Preparation

In week 3, 9th October, you will have a class session on “The Information Universe” with Pam McKinney. This class will focus on Information Resources. Understanding the different types of information resources and their relationships will help you to use information in your assessed coursework.

The preparation for week 3’s information universe session is as follows:

1. Think about a time when you needed to find information – for yourself or for others (for example, for a course assignment or a library enquiry). Make notes on the kinds of information that you used in that particular search.

2. Review your notes and identify the different types of reference resources or sources of information found. (By types of resources, we mean categories of material – such as “blog”, “directory”, “report” or “textbook” – not specific titles.)

This is not a competition, so you can discuss it among yourselves if you wish, but you must produce your own list of types of information resources. You can use your own words to describe the types of resource; there is not one particular list of types we want you to use.

3. Please post your list as an individual entry on your team blog, by the end of Monday, 8th October. As you are doing this outside class time, you may prefer for each person to post separately. However, each person should be posting to the team blog.

We shall be looking at examples from different blogs in the class.

Ask Sheila Webber for help, if you have problems with your blog. If you have questions about the task, put them below, as comments.
Also Sheila will be in the Regent Court Lab RC205 4.15-5pm on Monday 8th October to help anyone who has trouble in making their blog post! What she cannot do, if it hasn't already happened, is invite you into your team's blog, so ask her about that before Monday.

Here are a couple of examples from last year's exercise. Your blog post does not have to be as long as these, but it gives you an idea of what we have in mind:
- From Hanan: http://w-teaminf6350.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/new-information-universe-preparation.html who was in last year's Team W
- From Jen Fox http://i23things.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/thing-4-preparation-jen-fox.html who was in last year's Team I

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.

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)

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

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.

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:

• Personal diaries
• Information or knowledge blogs (e.g. http://www.intranetfocus.com/blog, http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/)
• Corporate blogs (e.g. http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/)
• Opinion or issue-based blogs
• Educational blogs (e.g. the ones for this class)

Here are some articles, and one book, that explain why and how blogging is useful for business and in libraries:

• Crosby, C. (2010) Effective blogging for libraries. London, England: Facet.
  
• Li, C. and Stromberg, C. (2007) The ROI of blogging. Retrieved 20 September 2012 from http://www.ieecho.com/pdfs/ROI-of-Blogging.pdf (A Forrester report on the Return on Investment of corporate blogging)
  
• Page, M. (2010, April 19). Why blog? [Web log post]. Retrieved 20 September 2012 from http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-platforms/business-blogging/why-blog/ (Short article from a corporate trainer)
  
• Potter, N. (2010) Everything you've ever wanted to know about library blogs and blogging! Retrieved 20 September 2012 from http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=783 (Includes “thewikiman’s” seminar materials)
  
• Yardi, S. Golder, S. and Brzozowski, M. (2009). Blogging at work and the corporate attention economy. CHI '09 Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems ACM. Retrieved 20 September from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1519016

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.

• Wang, J. (2011) Use of blogging, social networking sites and microblogging for knowledge sharing, focusing on Information Management students in group work. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 20 September 2012 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2010-11/External/JWang_100220696.pdf
  
• Bullingham, L. (2010) What would Goffman think about furries?: Persona adoption and identity masking in blogs and second life. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 20 September 2012 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2009-10/External/LBullingham_Bullingham_090125096.pdf
  
• Evans, I (2008) An evaluation of the user experiences of web 2.0 tools and technologies amongst NHS staff. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 20 September 2012 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2007-08/External/Evans_Ingrid_MScHI.pdf
  
• Rigby, A. (2007) Looking for freedom: An exploration of the Iranian blogosphere. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 20 September 2012 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2006-07/External/Rigby_Alexis_MALib.pdf

Please do add comments if you have examples of useful blogs, or want to say why you blog.

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