Is it a book? Is it a plane? Is it a man? No, it’s the International Information Literacy Logo – get it here!

I have just got back from a two-day event investigating the potential for a cross-sectoral information literacy framework for Wales (announced in October). The event was funded by CyMAL, organised by WHELF (Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum) and the Regional Library Partnerships, and took place at Gregynog Hall. Attendees were drawn from the broad spectrum of public, FE, HE, and school library services, as well as other interested stakeholders such as DCELLS. A comment overheard many times was how great it was for everyone to come together under one banner to share experiences and find a way forwards. I believe that information literacy as a broad term underpins every single aspects of what libraries and learning resource centres do, and therefore a co-ordinated approach to promoting its value in Wales can only be a good thing.

I should point out that this was not a passive conference – all the delegates had to do something, which was to work together in sector group workshops to discuss the importance of information literacy to that sector, how an information literacy strategy could help, how sectors could collaborate, and how these aims could be achieved. It was a pleasant change to be a delegate at an event but to also be able to drive the agenda forward as an active participant.

Monday started with various talks which helped to set the context of where we are now in Wales, and what unites the various library sectors. I’m not going to attempt any fancy thematic separations, I just want to give a summary of  the talks for the benefit of those in FE who couldn’t attend. Comprehensive rather than selective: prepare for me to move into wordy-mode…

‘Information literacy – the Welsh context’
Huw Evans, Head of Advice & Support, CyMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries Wales

Huw reminded us of the core skills that you need to be information literate, and the fact that information literacy does make a difference in people’s lives, before demonstrating how information literacy maps to One Wales (the agenda for the WAG coalition of Labour and Plaid Cymru – not the One Wales WAG sustainable development policy). He emphasised the importance of partnerships, a message many of the speakers agreed on. Another message that we heard again and again was the importance of evidence to demonstrate impact the of information literacy; we still have a way to go before there is consistency in provision.

‘Information literacy in the curriculum’
Marjorie Page & Jennifer Davies, DCELLS

Marjorie and Jennifer are DCELLS subject specialists. They said that information literacy is not a common concept or phrase in schools, nor a discrete part of the curriculum, though schools are moving gradually towards a generic skills emphasis where it would be relevant. They argued that the 3-19 skills framework in Wales includes elements of information literacy, since a lot of the framework is about communication and use of ICT. It is non-mandatory but underpins it statutory National Curriculum subject orders. Marjorie gave advance notice of two potentially relevant new literacy-related guidance publications that will be launched in 2010 – about the teaching of reading and writing. Also we were told that there will be new Key Skills in operation from next September – called Essential Skills Wales, they will merge Key Skills and Adult Literacy Basic Skills.

‘Information literacy and school libraries’
Alison Bagshaw (LRC Manager, Llanishen High School) and Liz Smith (Librarian, Pembroke School)

Alison confirmed that information literacy in school libraries is patchy across Wales – partly because libraries and school librarians (let alone qualified staff) are not a statutory requirement. There is  a lack of understanding of information literacy amongst many teaching staff, and they are not aware of how information literacy can help them develop their students into independent learners. Some may not want to admit that they don’t have good research skills. We were then given some examples of information literacy implementation in schools, including posters and models that helped children to remember concepts such as the ‘who what when why where’ criteria for evaluating resources. The conclusion was that information literacy needs fully embedding in the curriculum, with librarians and teaching staff working in partnership.

‘Information literacy in FE’
Carolyn Howe, Learning Centre & Reprographics Manager, Coleg Glan Hafren

Carolyn gave an excellent overview of what’s going on in the FE sector – I took lots of notes! She also described the ’shape’ of the sector for those not familiar with it, including the core facts such as 24 colleges (which mergers may cut down to 16), and 250,000 learners in Welsh FE annually. In FE information literacy mostly targets full-time students, though it has an impact on part-timers too. There is no central Welsh FE strategy, though the FE quality toolkit ‘Services Supporting Learning in Wales: a Quality Toolkit for Evaluating Learning Resource Services in Further Education Colleges’ does include some information literacy. However not all colleges have resources to act on them. Nonetheless there is lots of activity going on, with awards won for developments in these areas. Carolyn then gave an overview of the many ways in which colleges teach information literacy, though she pointed out that it may not be referred to by that name, but as ‘research skills’ or ’study skills’. Getting tutors on board is vital, with the greatest successes coming when sessions are delivered with the tutors or embedded into the curriculum. Finally Carolyn reiterated the importance of measuring impact and evaluating our work.

‘Information literacy in HE’
Cathie Jackson, Senior Consultant in Information Literacy, Cardiff University

Cathie gave a summary of how information literacy is taught in HE – from lectures to 300 students, to small group teaching, to guidance at helpdesks. The priority is to embed it into a module, so students understand its importance. There are training needs for the staff too, and some institutions have invested heavily in staff development, encouraging staff to do PGCEs or become Fellows of the Higher Education Academy. Some HEIs in Wales have information literacy strategies but generally they are library-focused. They do not have the central strategic place that information literacy does at Sheffield University. Cathie suggested that maybe libraries have to let go of information literacy a bit so that it becomes adopted by the university as a whole. Cathie then gave a summary of a number of relevant JISC reports about learning literacies, including words of warning from Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World:

“Information literacies, including searching, retrieving, critically evaluating information from a range of appropriate sources and also attributing it – represent a significant and growing deficit area”

Cathie ended by saying that we want progression in student information literacy skills throughout their education; we need to join the ends up, so that there is a continuum that goes on to lead to successful lifelong learners.

‘A National Information Literacy Framework for Scotland: How did we get here?’
John Crawford, Library Research Officer, Glasgow Caledonian University

John is well known for his work in establishing a framework in Scotland, and I had attended a talk by John and Christine Irving at a previous LILAC. There are many valuable lessons to be learnt from the Scottish experience, and John began with a history of where the framework came from, back in 2003. He warned that it takes a long time – years – to fully develop and embed a framework. In Scotland the framework doesn’t have statutory authority, but parts of it are being recognised. It is currently being restructured and is now web-based, backed up by examplars of good practice.

Key lessons:

• Working with partners is a key success factor. Information literacy is not just for librarians – we need to also include business and employers, adult and community learning etc. otherwise we are not joined up and not working together. We need to extend to people who are not in the library sector but who have an interest in information literacy.
• Training should be given to all trainee teachers so that they understand information literacy; then we won’t have situations where children are just sent to search for something on web without having concepts such as key terms, appropriate sources, and resource evaluation taught to them.
• The Government talk about e-skills and digital literacy, but don’t yet recognise information literacy as an essential skill for the modern employee.
• We need to develop a community of practice, networking with our partners. Librarians are good at talking to each other about information literacy, not so good at talking to other people – yet that is what we need to do. Hang it on to other groups’ objectives; get convincing examplars of good practice; focus on what the end customer needs and what they can gain from information literacy.

‘International perspective – national frameworks’
Sheila Webber, Senior Lecturer, University of Sheffield

Sheila started by describing the genesis of the international logo for information literacy (see the top of this post), which was picked from 190 submitted designs. Expect to see this elsewhere, especially when a Welsh version is created.

Sheila’s talk was a chance to get the wider, international picture. She pointed out that national information literacy strategies are still a pioneering idea, and the major successes have been in small countries like Finland and Scotland. She went on to give tips on advocacy and awareness-raising, including examples of declarations and initiatives.

When pointing out that information literacy isn’t just relevant to education Sheila made many points that agreed with those made by John Crawford. For example:

• Governance / citizenship: rarely is information literacy stated outright in government publications, usually they refer to it in a roundabout way or call it digital literacy. It was noted that some governments are against information literacy, since censorship-heavy regimes may not want citizens to know things. An illustration of how empowering information literacy can potentially be.
• Information literacy is relevant to sectors such as health (evidence-based health and medical work make this a rich area) and business (which can be difficult to target, partly because business’s definitions of information literacy vary and may be more collaborative).

Sheila ended with a summary of the factors that can lead to successful initiatives, and left us with the positive message that information literacy can also be important just to enhance your life generally – it can make us happy, motivate, and empower us to engage with politicians and the media.

No rest for the literate

That was quite a lot to take in for one day – but it wasn’t over yet! At 8.30pm we got back together in sector groups to begin our workshop discussions. I was the facilitator for the FE group, which included Ian Cockrill (Swansea College), Carolyn Howe (Coleg Glan Hafren), Jean Sullivan (Coleg Sir Gar), Julie Jones (Coleg Powys), Marjorie Page (DCELLS) and our fast-writing note-taker Mandy Powell (CILIP Cymru). During the discussions that evening and the next morning we examined core information literacy questions and how they related to the FE sector. As a very brief summary:

• “Why is information literacy important for the FE sector?”
  It not only enables our learners to succeed in the course they are undertaking, but it also prepares them for whatever comes after – be it employment, training, university, or anything else!
• “What would you want an information strategy to achieve for FE?”
  For many years library staff have been doing bottom-up training; what is needed now is for there to also be a top-down approach from policy makers and senior management and for the two to meet in the middle.  Ideally a strategy would lead to closer collaboration between library and teaching staff: building up relationships; training teaching staff in information literacy; partner teaching. A policy would ideally help policy makers and senior management to have an awareness of and interest in the LRC, and to recognise the expertise it contains.
• “How could information literacy skills transfer between sectors?”
  There are many examples of a smooth transition from FE to HE (e.g. access courses priming students successfully). A similar transition needs to be in place for schools to FE/HE, which may required directed and sustained funding to school library services for resources and trained staff in order to develop a cradle-to-grave progression (rather than the current ‘adolescent-to-grave’ progression in many cases).
• “What actions are needed to achieve these outcomes?”
  A Wales strategy itself could help in working with policy makers, managers, inspectors etc. We need collaboration between the different sectors.
• “Who are your decision/policy makers and fund holders? How can you best influence them?”
  Funders such as WAG (CyMAL / DCELLS).
  Inspectors and assessors e.g. Estyn, Exexcel, WJEC.
  SMT and curriculum managers.
  Influencers such as Colegau Cymru / JISC – for case studies and best practice.
  To influence them: dogged advocacy; showing best practice; lobby ministers.

It was great facilitating such an eager group with so many ideas – I didn’t need to crack the whip at all, just listen and learn from all the great points and examples!

This morning we had the last few sessions in the thorough programme.

“Information literacy in public libraries – the lifelong learning agenda”
Gareth Evans, Business Development Manager, Caerphilly

The tour of the landscape in Wales continued with the view from public libraries. Gareth gave the background of partnership projects based around the learner’s needs such as Gateways to Learning (56 libraries took part, including public, FE, HE, and prisons). Gareth linked these to the Public Library Standards and Libraries for Life Strategy 2008-11, asking how can we measure our success at delivering information literacy?

Some of the success factors in projects and schemes included having a learner-centred approach, and accreditation (via OCN). However there were some challenges in staff engagement, such as the potential lack of confidence of library assistants when they have to formalise their knowledge in teaching, and issues around whether they are paid adequately to do it. However this only applied to about a proportion of the staff.

Gareth concluded by reminding us that no sector can do it on their own, information literacy has to be developed with partners and tied to the curriculum. Information literacy is a vital umbrella for many other literacies such as health literacy, core skills, citizenship and employability skills, and digital and media literacy.

Where do we go from here? Putting it all together

The sector groups then fed back on their discussions so that we could pull elements from them together for an all-Wales approach. Janet Peters (Cardiff University) and Cathie Jackson did an excellent job of the unenviably difficult task of constructing  an action plan for taking things forward. It was based on the conclusions of each group plus group discussion as the plan was developed. It included timescales and assigned tasks to progress an information literacy strategy for Wales.

So where now? Presentations and documents will be made available later, probably via the Library Toolkit (I will incorporate the link here once I have them). A draft statement will be drawn up, and a steering group will be sought that incorporates representatives of all the relevant stakeholders and sectors. We will use the FE-LRC-WALES list to seek an FE representative once that is in place, and the steering group will probably first meet in February.

This may have been the start of a new era for raising the profile of information literacy in Wales as a unified collaboaration. Keep your eyes peeled for a Gregynog Proclamation!

[See also: the WHELF blog; Sheila Webber's Information Literacy Weblog; and the Scottish Information Literacy Blog.]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 9:16 pm and is filed under CyMAL, WHELF, information literacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.