Photo by Rachel_thecat on Flickr

Way back in April 2009 we had a somewhat ground-breaking event here in Swansea Uni on Open Source library systems. A year is a long time in technology and I was keen to catch up with developments in open source since returning from my maternity leave. What better way than to have a chat with Mark Hughes, Head of Collections at Swansea University and Open Source guru. Mark is currently working on the JISC-funded “Exploring Open Source Viability Project” (OSSVIAB) as part of JISC’s ‘Enhancing Library Management Systems’ project – more on this below.

There are still two main players on the open source LMS field: Koha and Evergreen. If one wished to categorize them succinctly, Jonathan Field’s presentation from the 2009 event still holds partly true: Koha is particularly well suited to smaller-scale libraries whereas Evergreen can scale up well to big consortia. Evergreen is awaiting the official release of Serials and Acquisitions modules due this autumn whereas Koha has more complete functionality right now. We do have several UK libraries using Koha (see Ken Chad’s Wiki: http://helibtech.com/Open+Source) – including one in Wales: the National Botanic Gardens library.

Mark’s OSSVIAB project , which is due to report in November this year, hopes to take a serious look at the Evergreen system by establishing its viability as measured against the UK Core Specification (some information on the CILIP website for this plus http://ukcs.wikispaces.com/) and therefore also identifying areas for development. You can read about Mark’s recent information gathering whirlwind trip to USA and Canada on his blog. A key messages that emerged from this is what a big player open source LMSs – and the Third Party Companies that support them – are in the US. Their presence at the ALA (American Library Association) Conference was considerable. The Conifer consortia in Canada has the most impressive installation of Evergreen, with Evergreen expert Dan Scott based at Laurentian University.

I asked Mark about some of the factors that maybe inhibit the take-up of open source LMS in the UK – a perception that it is somehow small-scale, the domain of geeks, lacking in support compared with the big commercial systems. Mark emphasised this couldn’t be more wrong:

“If you take a look at the major Open Source projects of interest to Libraries nearly all have their roots in big publicly funded bodies like Pubic or Academic Libraries..and have gone on to attract communities across both institutions within those sectors, plus spin off 3rd party support companies (and, as we saw at ALA, that’s a big & expanding business).  If you take the groups together -  the information professionals working across the institutions and the 3rd party support companies across the globe, what you actually have is probably far greater support & resource going into these OSS projects than just about any proprietary alternative I know of… it’s just that it is more difficult to ‘see’ it because the business model is one of distributed expertise & shared development.”

Nevertheless we still haven’t seen any UK HE or FE institution adopt an open source LMS yet. Initial interest in FE has often been derailed by the cost of staff development time and lack of internal technical support, primarily because no project has had real backing (and therefore funding) from senior management. This is despite the fact that in many institutions there is already the precedent of Moodle’s runaway success in the VLE market, driven partly (mainly?) by the high cost of commercial systems. I asked Mark if there is much evidence yest for cost benefits of switching to open source for the LMS. A general consensus from those who have made the switch is that you do need to pump-prime the change financially in terms of having or freeing up or buying in staff time & expertise, but that the cost of the migration is usually less than a year’s support fees for their previous commercial system. If you pay for ongoing Third Party support for an open source system this is also currently pretty reasonable according to those that have made the switch. It is still too soon to tell how long term ongoing costs will work out for institutions running open source, though experience thus far in North America has been of fairly substantial savings. This can in any case be hard to quantify, particularly in terms of staff time.

The current spate of mergers between Welsh colleges perhaps makes it unlikely we will see anyone adopting an open source LMS in the near future as relationships and systems need time to bed in. However, experiences from Northern Ireland show mergers can be a stimulus for open source adoption, given the greater support capacity and increased commercial license fees for larger institutions. If long term cost analysis proves favourable, the current financial climate may also eventually encourage a move – perhaps by a UK consortia, as happened with the original Evergreen installation in Canada. So we still have sight of a potential wave of adoption approaching, but it hasn’t broken yet.

Photo by finchlake2000 on Flickr

I was lucky enough to attend yesterday’s South and Mid Wales Partnership Staff Conference 2010 (Twitter hashtag #swamp) which brought together all varieties of librarians from the region to the distinctly swampy-green Hotel Metropole in Llandrindod Wells. Days out like this are great for networking and staff development but the real value is the ideas and nuggets you can take back and incorporate into your own work. I came away with my head buzzing. A day’s reflection later and my thoughts had simmered down as follows…

Much of what we heard and discussed comes back to librarians feeling threatened, both by financial cuts and by a lack of understanding of the value we bring. Rather than being a negative, this generated a huge amount of positive and innovative ways of tackling this. The following is a high-speed, subjective round-up of the highlights for me:

Keep doing things better = often means do things differently.

1. 

   Image by Waka Jawaka on Flickr

   Balls! Recent years have seen the growing use of the “clicker” (or Voting System) to take rough-and-ready surveys and to increase participation in a teaching session. This was all swept aside yesterday by the triumphant return of the plastic balls in a bucket system: Powerpoint slides with a 30 second timer to give you the questions, colour-coded answers, grab a ball and put it in the corresponding bucket. Lots of movement, fast-paced, thought-provoking questions and lots of fun! Courtesy of the Swansea Public Libraries team.

2. Embrace Web 2.0 = “web pages you can do things with”. Key tips from Swansea Public Libraries: “Do it anyway and apologise later!”, find libraries that are already doing it well and learn from them, crowd-source so constant updating does not fall on one person. Not sure about the relevance of Web 2.0? It’s our job! Mark Hughes pointed out this CILIP statement: “As a library and information professional you will develop the ability to design, create, identify, locate, retrieve and exploit information in all formats.”

Information Literacy has never been more needed!

• New Information Literacy Officer for Wales, Joy Head, re-iterated the timely comparison that giving Wales 21st Century broadband without supporting digital literacy training is like being given a Porsche without having a driving licence. She put it much better than that but you get the gist!
• A quote from Martin Bean, the Vice Chancellor of the OU: “In my mind now the digital divide is much more about those that actually understand how to use and apply technology in their lives and their work as a necessity, rather than simply getting access to the technology per se,” (another one from Mark Hughes’ presentation)
• Discussion amongst the sectors present showed so much of what librarians do meets these needs but we are not good at pointing it out. This moves swiftly on to….

Making External Partnerships is Essential

This came out of both the Information Literacy strategy and Christine Clarke’s “Libraries Changing Lives” document. It was also fresh in my mind from the trending “Escaping the Echo Chamber” Prezi presentation by WoodsieGirl and theWikiMan which has been stirring up librarians all over the place.

Christine Clarke had a great set of “lessons learned” on how to do this effectively which could be applied to so many scenarios:

1. Talk the language of your partner: tailoring material to suit the audience is essential to get attention.
2. Put the impact on people first, not the library perspective.
3. External information adds value: quote non-library sources to support your case.
4. Try and quantify what you do in appropriate ways (e.g. generic social outcomes).
5. Use numbers people can visualise.
6. Get a fresh pair of eyes to look something over.
7. Use “for you this means….” and always bear in mind the “So what?” test.

Unfortunately I only have one link to share from the day so far but hopefully more will follow! Mark Hughes’ presentation on Twitter can be found on Slideshare.

Some modern library management systems come with enrichment services that provide useful extra features for the catalogue/OPAC – book cover images, tables of contents, links to reviews etc. They can be also be part of a whole revamp with a new resource discovery front-end such as Aquabrowser or Vufind, or they could be part of an OPAC enrichment service such as the subscription services offered by Syndetic Solutions.

Even LibraryThing is in on the act. As well as being a hugely popular social networking site for book lovers, it now sells a ‘LibraryThing for Libraries‘ package which works with most LMS/OPACs. Details here, and lists of libraries using it (so you can play with their OPACs) here.

However if you have some technical knowledge and support it is often possible for institutions to add some of these features for free. I’ll just stick to book cover images for now, but that is only one of many enhancements. Going back to LibraryThing, if you only want a basic service then some book covers are available from them for free. Another free source of covers is Open Library. In the past some OPACs have used Amazon for book cover images but Amazon doesn’t seem to support that any more so I won’t cover that. However I will cover Google’s service.

Google Books API

Google is always impossible to ignore, and Google Books is no different. The Google Books API can be used to embed Google Books in your site (see their blog post here and support pages here), or to just give you cover images from their huge database. I got in touch with Google support to discuss the latter use and got the following tips. Basically there are two main ways to go about implementing book covers, and in each case you will need the support of your technical staff.

One option is to use their Embedded Viewer, in which you can change the viewer interactions so that only the jacket covers show. You can find the steps for this option by visiting their API developers’ guide here.

The second option you have is a bit more technically involved, but it does allow you to show the search results within your own application. To do so, you can use the Book Search Data API, which allows your server to obtain results from Book Search and show them within your application. You can also use feeds to show the jacket covers. Examples of these feeds can be found here.

Lastly, you can find more developer documentation for the Data API here and here. There is lots of help available in the API Forum.

Have you implemented any features yourself to pimp up your OPAC? Vote here.

Courtesy of Xuan Rosemanios on Flickr

There are several FE College mergers currently underway in Wales and several more on the cards. A good starting point for exploring some of the issues for the Learning Resources Service (LRS) is the outcome of the “Celtic Camel” visit by Mark Ludlam (Gorseinon College) and Priscilla Dawson (Swansea College). This was the subject of a previous blog post and their excellent reports (which are now available on the RSC Wales Moodle) describe their visit to Belfast Metropolitan College to hear about their LRC staff’s experiences of merger and also other examples of good practice. That visit was partly facilitated by our RSC Northern Ireland colleague Mike Moran. I was sad to learn on my return from maternity leave that Mike will be retiring in July so we will be losing his expertise and experience from the collective RSC world. Before he went, I thought I would have a quick chat with him about his experiences of the mergers that took place in Northern Ireland in recent years. The following is a brief summary of that conversation.

Background

The 16 FE colleges in Northern Ireland merged into 6 “super colleges” in the summer of 2007 following government strategy. Almost all of the 16 colleges were the product of previous mergers and had already been through the processes involved. A few colleges have ended up reducing the number of campuses (mainly small outlying ones), but this was probably something that would have happened and was not a direct result of the mergers. In looking at the experiences of the colleges a clear distinction must be drawn between those that were largely urban (2) and those that were rural (4). The urban colleges, for obvious reasons, has less difficulties in meeting student and staff needs but the rural colleges had to serve widely dispersed campuses (in one case about 60 miles between the most distant) with poor road communications and very poor public transport infrastructure.

The Merger Process & the LRC

I asked Mike how far the merger processes had got, some 2 or more years down the line. He confirmed that for many colleges it was still very much an ongoing process, as were some of the earlier mergers prior to 2007. “Pre-planning definitely helped where possible but a lot of issues are still being worked through”. This is supported by Mark Ludlam’s comments from his Celtic Camel report: “An important lesson to learn here is that it is unrealistic to expect all problems to be resolved prior to a merger.  Some issues will transcend mergers and will have to be resolved at a later date.”

I asked Mike what key observations he had made about the merger process for Learning Resource Services. He emphasised the importance of planning in advance as far as timescales allowed, forming early working groups and establishing good relations, both formally and informally. For the LRCs, it was particularly useful to make connections with IT/network staff among all of the prospective partner colleges as so much of the merging of library systems would depend on their support.

Mike described how at Belfast Met they were able to do some zero-based planning for the college as a whole to create a vision of what it could be post-merger. A strong, professional library service was seen as essential and they were then able to work towards this ideal. In other colleges the library and information services had historically been regarded as a minor dimension of the support services and had not been well supported in terms of staffing and expenditure budgets. These legacies carried over into the new structures and most of the current colleges are under-resourced despite having higher demands placed upon them. Physical book stocks remain hard to use across all campuses and there are significant challenges in providing an even level of service to all users. Some ad hoc arrangements are in place to have books delivered between campuses but these are not reliable as they depend on when other deliveries and pick ups are taking place for other purposes.

Providing staff cover for sickness, annual leave etc remains problematical, for the rural colleges in particular, and sometimes service has had to be suspended when cover cannot be managed. Drivers from senior management for cost savings in staff have made this situation worse. Where staffing is concerned, the two issues are – defending overall staffing levels; while at the same time being open to introducing new roles and practices. Where there are significant team sizes in the merged institutions, some have gone for creating specialisms based on subjects (or HE vs FE) and changing the roles into being more proactive in supporting users with advice on how to use the electronic resources. Induction has also become more important and most are trialling the use of video and podcasting to deal with the ‘often repeated’ types of support enquiries.

LRC Systems and Technology

When mergers involve LRCs using different systems there are inevitably difficult choices to be made and migration work to be done. Mike had a definite recommendation here to make decisions against a set of objective criteria, rather than allowing partisan opinions to sway choices which will have a lasting impact. The politics of more powerful staff members opting for the system they happen to like best can be upsetting and corrosive to future working practices.

A good example of an attempt to reshape the services in a fit-for-purpose sense is the project currently underway in Northern Ireland to look at the possibility of a common Federated Search tool. There are resources on the web such as the “100 questions to ask federated search vendors” which can be used to evaluate systems objectively. A similar approach could be taken with LMS decisions (there are some resources on the RSC Wales Moodle area ).

Mike stressed that one particular issue for LRCs and the rationalisation of their systems was the dependence on the progress made by network teams. Often the rate of change for the network may not match that of the LRC needs and issues are still arising from that. Good relations with IT staff help but they too will often have factors which may be beyond their control or more pressing demands on their time, eg for reconfiguring the main networks. The earliest possible engagement of the wider LR/ICT teams will be beneficial. This can be ameliorated if a significant management champion can be found within the merging colleges – and the role of RSC staff can also be useful as they can be seen as free from internal politics and focused on getting the best outcomes.

In terms of the VLE, originally most of the 16 colleges in NI were using Blackboard or another bespoke system. They are now seeing a general move towards using Moodle. A positive contributing factor can be the greater support capability for maintaining open source software such as Moodle within a bigger IT support team.

The Challenges of a Merger

Whilst mergers can bring many benefits to strengthen the role of LRCs, there are inevitably challenges. Highlighting again the benefits of pre-planning, Mike described how some LRCs who could not do this inevitably ended up playing catch-up to get a newly merged service ready for the students’ return. Rather than having an aspirational “big picture” of a new merged service, they found themselves fire-fighting to keep things going.

Geographical distances can also make things more difficult in terms of merging systems and facilities. This can reflect issues with the curriculum – such as rationalising which subjects are taught at which campus – and there is a danger of duplication of effort in terms of resources. Links between the LRC, Curriculum and management are important here. Geographical location can also impact on network performance which makes it hard to maintain equitable quality standards for all students and for LRCs.

As with anything, much of the time the challenges and successes come down to people and personalities. Key players in colleges sometimes determine important decisions with variable results – see the earlier point about making decisions against objective criteria!

Benefits to the LRC

Mergers can serve to strengthen the position of the LRC – particularly if it means a successful realignment in management structure. A useful document here is “Strategic Options of College Libraries in a Period of Merger” which is an appendix to Mark Ludlam’s Celtic Camel report. A merging of smaller services with a larger one can result in the strengthening of all LRCs and associated benefits to the learners.

Another positive outcome of the mergers was the subsequent boost to the adoption of Federated Access Management (FAM, see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/federation.html for more information). Whereas smaller colleges may have lacked the physical or staff resources to implement Shibboleth themselves, the larger merged institutions in Northern Ireland had the support capacity to proceed with this. All 6 NI colleges now have FAM working almost fully (one college is waiting for its wider network infrastructures to catch up with needs but expects to complete the roll-out soon) – a key factor was bringing the relevant LR and IT Support staff together to work out the key issues and RSCni was able to facilitate this in all cases by setting up and chairing the meetings. The E-Books for FE Project was also a big incentive to get FAM working as it created the demand for FAM due to the JISC policy of providing all of its resources via the UK Access Management Federation.

E-Resources

Mike’s experiences in NI confirm much of Karl’s earlier blog post on e-resource issues for merging colleges. JISC Collections were very helpful indeed with sorting out resource subscriptions. There was an implicit general policy of allowing a year’s grace before reviewing the new JISC band and adjusting subscription costs to match the new institution’s profile or, where appropriate, letting an existing subscription run its course.

Conclusions

Talking with Mike gave me much to think about in how RSC Wales can best support institutions going through the merger process. We are already getting queries on topics such as e-resources and access management for which Karl and I do our best to source the relevant information. We can also draw upon our fellow RSCs to link up FE staff with other colleges throughout the UK who may have experienced similar situations – for example, migrating from and to the same system. RSC Wales can also facilitate bringing college staff together to discuss key issues (such as FAM) where required. In the years ahead we will no doubt have much experience here in Wales of mergers that we too can share.

Mike Moran

Thanks again to Mike Moran and wishing him a very happy retirement.

NB Mark Ludlam has been gathering an excellent collection of resources on college mergers which can be accessed from his blog post.

Instant messaging is a great means of communication. It gets around the delays of email and allows lots of debate, all in one place; and by being primarily text based it avoids issues that can occur with shared video and audio (lag, operating system settings, hardware requirements). The other good thing is that once you are logged into a system you can see a list of your contacts and know when they are available to chat, unlike with email.

The main problem with the system is that over the years different mutually-incompatible protocols have been released. So unlike email where there is just… email, with instant messaging there is IRC, AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo etc. Although you can use software such as Trillian, or a website such as Meebo to manage separate accounts, they still are separate systems.

So how can you gain most of the best features of instant messaging for collaboration, whilst avoiding the problem that contact A uses IRC, but
contact B uses AIM?

That is where sites like Chatzy and Twiddla come in. You can create a
chat room for free, then just send the URL to people along with a time when you want to have a discussion, and they can join without needing to create an account. They can even leave messages and ideas at any point, so it becomes a form of asynchronous communication too, like email, allowing conversations to take place over time.

We needed to discuss what the FE sector might do with CyMAL’s information literacy grant this year so asked interested librarians to join Sam and I for a discussion at 2pm on Friday 11th June, using the Chatzy tool. I supplied a URL (http://www.chatzy.com/935748212850). On the day librarians joined in. All they had to do was enter a screenname so it was clear who it was (e.g. Lynne NPTC, KarlD RSC etc) and pick a colour. I chose to trial Chatzy as an experiment for this because of the simple interface, the fact that you don’t need any special software or an account, and it shouldn’t be well-known enough to be blacklisted. We asked people to think about the issues in advance so that the discussion would be focussed. If people couldn’t make the Friday they were encouraged to go to the URL and enter thoughts that we would discuss and incorporate on the day.

In the end it worked really well for brainstorming. At one point we set a limit of 60 seconds to think of ideas, then when I typed ‘Go!’ we had a further 60 seconds to type out as many ideas as possible, with no thought as to how practical they were – just to give free reign to creativity. And that was how our final proposal started to form and take shape. So overall it worked brilliantly, one of the rare cases where collaboration leads to synergy and generates both enthusiasm and ideas.

The main problems were that Chatzy had to be unblocked at some colleges; there was no way to share attachments or files; and the chat contents need saving regularly. Chatzy seemed to lead to a lot more discussion than we get in some video conferences, maybe because it leads to everyone chatting at once: at some points there were ideas coming faster than I could read and think about or reply to! Or maybe because people feel less inhibited with text chat. Either way it was informal yet focussed and effective.

Sam thought that something that allowed us to share documents too may be better for future use, in which case we could try Twiddla next time. This works in a similar way for live chat but also lets you share documents and draw and collaborate in a whiteboard area. Another experiment for the future!

Bookmark - Courtesy of SecretLondon123 on Flickr

I’m often finding I need to collect some good web resources on a topic to share. Whilst we have been using delicious to collect and share our bookmarks, sometimes that doesn’t quite seem to do them justice. Delicious has the following great “pros”:

• Quick and simple to bookmark, particularly with the integrated browser toolbars and buttons
• Tags are powerful and flexible
• RSS feed of tags allows you to embed your bookmarks in the VLE or anywhere else you need to display them
• Graphical display of tag cloud can be a good visual aid
• Others can subscribe to your RSS feed (or any combination of tags) to keep up with what you are bookmarking

It also has a few “cons”, mostly on the display side:

• Not much space to add your own comments to a link (1000 characters) and no formatting e.g. you cannot include another URL in a comment. (This is something I feel quite strongly about as a user/student – don’t just give me a list of resources, tell me why they are important!)
• It’s not pretty: very basic display with no images or graphics to make it look nicer.
• Limited control with RSS feed or delicious to order how your links are displayed e.g. you cannot choose how to prioritize them

So I have been investigating a few social bookmarking tools which add a bit more functionality. This may be of use to LRC staff or teachers who need to show their students a collection of web resources with some added guidance notes. Some of the resources below can also be embedded in a VLE or website quite easily. They provide a more controlled and graphical way to peruse a collection of web resources without having to repeatedly open new windows or tabs. Some of this could be accomplished by the Intute Informs tool. This resource is currently limited to UK HE and FE but is soon moving to a subscription model. Here I have limited my search to free, open tools. I only had a fairly quick chance to look through some of these but here are some I tried earlier:

1) Diigo has social bookmarking and more. You can bookmark a site, tag it, add it to a list, highlight areas of a webpage, add sticky notes to the web page, collaborate on it, share your collection, display it as a “webslide”. All rich, good functionality with a pleasing interface plus a powerful Firefox Toolbar (presumably other browsers too). I like the Webslides (Short example: http://slides.diigo.com/list/rscsam/Using-Maps-in-Education) but am struggling to get any notes to appear. The one at the beginning is dominated by adverts. You can only add public notes once you are a “trusted user” to avoid spam. Requires more homework for me! It is still in beta.

2) LiveBinders – a way to collect things in web “binders”. This not only includes bookmarking websites but you can also add other content such as documents/images. There is a good blog post on how it could be used in education, even as a free portfolio tool if privacy and reliability (it’s a 3^rd party tool after all) aren’t too much of an issue. I have to say I find the interface very clunky indeed and it displays like an old-school Powerpoint, but the basic functionality is good. You can see a short example here: http://livebinders.com/play/present?id=18332.  There is the option to embed the Binder in another website too.

3) JogtheWeb is another site in beta but it has a very good, clean interface. I had a few teething troubles getting my account going and also it didn’t seem to like my Netvibes page so I had to take that out, but otherwise it seems to work very well. Here’s a very short example: http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/BWbNivxOG8Xn/RSC-Wales-Learning-Resources.

4) Back to Delicious which now has a beta option to “Browse these Bookmarks”.

Screenshot from Delicious

This means you can stepthrough the websites one by one. However you do not get to see any added description or text and there is no control of the sequence other than the order in which they were added (most recent first) so it is really quite limited. You can save a link to a presentation but it is not obvious. You do have the option to save to your own delicious quite easily if browsing someone else’s bookmarks so this is more of an enhancement to using Delicious for resource discovery. A useful option but not so much a tool in its own right. Try it here with RSC Wales’ Media Literacy Resources: http://delicious.com/browsebar/user/rscwales/media_literacy#id=5802f3c4a627d1da9c9dc30035139efe-0

These are just a handful of sites that I have tried and there are plenty more out there. The fact that several of them are in beta means it is probably not a good idea to put all your resource eggs in one basket until they have become truly established players in the social bookmarking world. Even so, it is good to experiment with new methods of displaying useful resources which may entice more students to take notice.

Image by Karin Dalziel on Flickr, under CC Licence

This turned out to be no easy question to answer – there IS no set definition of media literacy, as Ofcom concluded when they were given the duty of promoting it in the 2003 Communications Act. They came up with their own (”the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts“). Wikipedia has its own definitions for Media Literacy (“a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyse, evaluate and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms”) and Digital Literacy (“the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and create information using digital technology”). The Information Literacy website also has a good overview of the topic – it also shows how many definitions there are of information literacy. Finally, Becta refer to “the term digital literacy, sometimes called web literacy, information literacy, internet literacy or media literacy” which made me realise I could be going round in circles! However, it is a good process to mull these terms over, come to your own conclusions and then argue the toss of it with anyone you can find who’s interested! There is also a strategic angle, given that media and digital literacy tend to feature more prominently on government agendas.

It’s easy to become quite academic trying to fix on a definition so I decided to play safe and highlight instead what kinds of things you can DO if you are “media literate”. This summary I focussed on was derived from the BBC Media Literacy website which suggests you can…

• USE computers, mobile phones, TV and radio to watch, listen, create and search in your daily life.
• UNDERSTAND modern media, including choosing the best sources of information and understanding your digital identity
• CREATE your own content and responses

Media Literacy covers quite a large number of skills and there are clear overlaps with Information Literacy. Many of the Media Literacy resources that are out there also have a strong information literacy component. There is a list on our RSC Wales Delicious account but here are some of the best ones:

• Get Safe Online is aimed at individuals and small busineses. It has advice on protecting your PC, protecting your online identity and also further resources for parents, teachers and young people.
• BBC Media Literacy uses BBC resources with lots of videos on how to get online, getting behind the media to see how things are made and tips on how to create your own radio/video etc.
• WiseKids has a great collection of links arranged by target audience (Young People, Parents, Educators, Businesses etc.)
• North West Learning Grid’s interactive Digital Literacy Quiz: learners can answer questions on topics around “What do you do on the internet?” (e.g. Shop, Do Homework, Get News) and there are Teachers Notes for lessons.
• Becta’s Digital Literacy for Schools website () has a short guide & planning tool for teachers and a whole load of useful resources for learners e.g. Understanding Web Addresses, Evaluating Digital Information (good collection of spoof websites).
• Internet Detective is an online tutorial on evaluating websites which is also also available in Welsh to download or view here on the RSC Wales Moodle.

If you are interested in Media Literacy, a good analysis of the UK’s current state of play is Report of the Digital Britain Media Literacy Working Group (concluding a lot of people are doing stuff, but nothing is very joined-up). If you want a very quick, high-level overview, then here is video which I used in the workshop last week:

Media Literacy in 2 min 30 seconds from Sam Oakley on Vimeo.

At the macro scale we help develop strategies, work with networks and encourage peer support, promote relevant resources and technologies and best practice, direct people to relevant services that can help (such as the various JISC services). We monitor new technologies and assess their usefulness for enhancing teaching and learning.

As well as the big stuff like that we also respond to queries (receievd by phone or email, or arising from visits to LRCs). I feel that this is an important part of the service – we are one of the places you can turn to with technology questions. We may not always give the direct answer ourselves, since in many cases the solution might be to put the person in question in touch with the person/college/service that has the answer. But our knowledge of the sector and our contacts locally and nationally (e.g. in RSCs across the UK) means we have a wealth of experience to call upon.

During some weeks about half my time is spent responding to queries that come my way via various means. I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the ones I have dealt with in the last month just to show the range of topics and technologies that are relevant to learning resources; also in some cases to share any useful things that were discussed. This is just a selection of those I dealt with, I have missed out some queries about particular resources and franchised courses. It also doesn’t include queries dealt with by Sam (if I included those too then this would be an epic post!) If this is useful then we might do a combined one in the future. So, in no particular order, here are some direct queries from a month in the life of an E-Learning Adviser (Learning Resources). What has been on the minds of librarians in Wales in the last 30 days? Read on to find out.

E-books for FE Project / E-book readers / Exemplary LRCs / Access management / Film-related queries / Hairdressing Training / Grants and funding for staff development / Voting systems / Second Life / RSS / And to finish…

E-books for FE Project

One college asked for more information on the 18 new e-books available as part of this project.

The new titles are:

Anatomy and Physiology for Therapists
Child Care And Early Education
Core Themes in Health and Social Care
Nail Artistry
Beauty Therapy Work Based Learning Level 1 Candidate Book
Beauty Therapy Work Based Learning Level 2 Candidate Book
Beauty Therapy Work Based Learning Level 3 Candidate Book
Equality in Early Childhood
The Official Guide to the City and Guilds Certificate in Salon Services
An Holistic Guide To Massage
‘An Introduction to Children with Special Needs 2nd Edition
The Art Of Dressing Long Hair
BTEC National Business Student Book 1
BTEC National Business Book 2 2nd Edn.
Carpentry & Joinery L1 Candidate Book
Play and Care for Children 4-16
BTEC First Construction Student Book
Microsoft Office Excel 2007: Introductory Concepts and Techniques

Details should have already gone out about accessing the new titles and adding OPAC records, so make sure you are subscribed to the E-BOOKS-FOR-FE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK mailing list to be kept updated. Anna Vernon is the project manager and can add you if you are not on the list already.

With the E-books for FE project there is also the E-select Framework, which enables the college to pay to add extra titles to the Ebrary platform if you wish to build the collection further.

Some colleges are in the process of setting up access to the E-books for FE project. For the colleges without OpenAthens or Shibboleth it is a bit more difficult and RSC Wales is helping out when it can.

E-book readers

This is a topic that turns up regularly, and we have only covered them in detail once in the blog (with an addition here). One librarian asked about whether e-book readers are being used and promoted much in colleges yet, or in universities. Perhaps it could be a way of saving paper in terms of all the PDFs students normally print out!

A lot of libraries in the UK are buying these devices, then often wondering what to do next. As such I wrote an article for the next issue of Sconul Focus which has a summary of my thoughts and further links – it should be freely available online in July and I will link to it then. In the meantime I’m happy to forward a pre-print if you contact me. The article isn’t wholly in praise of the devices. The RSC always adopts the viewpoint that we should use technology where it is appropriate, and to understand the appropriateness you first have to be aware of the potential uses and limitations. We never promote technology just for the sake of it.

It is true that e-book readers can display pdf journal articles too, they are not just limited to books, but I think that unless a student owns their own device (so they have guaranteed access) they are still likely to print articles even if the library makes devices available. This is perhaps inevitable with a lot of technology loan stock, since people will always go for the quickest option if they feel time-pressured.

There are a few links in our Delicious account which could be useful. Do let Sam and I know if you try any services with these devices, we love to hear what colleges think! It helps to inform our opinions and subsequent advice to others.

Exemplary LRCs

One college was very interested in visiting exemplary LRCs and libraries from any sector outside of Wales (since they have seen many of the new buildings and are aware of most of the good practice here). They were interested in good use of technology and exciting learning space design.

This is a good example of where being in contact with my lovely colleagues in the Regional Support Centres elsewhere pays off! Contacts in a few UK areas sent me suggestions of possible places to visit in their regions. Obviously this is limited to a small selection of the many fantastic colleges in each area. Some recommendations were:

• The Fylde College in Blackpool.
• Liverpool Community College’s new building which won’t be ready until 2011.
• There will be a new LRC in Crewe at South Cheshire College next academic year.
• Warwickshire College has a variety of centres across the six sites.
• Birmingham Metropolitan College’s Sutton Coldfield Centre has a newly refurbished LRC which is very colourful, flexible and innovative.
• Aston University library is having a major refurbishment at the moment.
• Warwick University’s Learning Grid (student-run) is an interesting learner-centred space.
• There are several recently completed new builds in the Midlands area: Joseph Chamberlain College, Walsall College, Newcastle Under Lyme College.
• South Bristol Skills Academy – opening for learners in September this year but there may be tours in the Summer – will be very open plan and potentially fun.
• Gloucestershire College – Technology Exemplar College.
• South Devon College – Technology Exemplar College. South Devon College was also one of the colleges featured in the JISC InfoKit Technology Enhanced Learning Environments.

Access management

I had been asked about third party support for setting up Shibboleth. There is a JISC Guide to Third Party Providers for FAM which is the best starting point. Soon almost half of the FE colleges in Wales will be using Shibboleth if all the ongoing projects come to fruition.

I also had a query about institutions merging where the libraries were using a particular access management system and how they might manage it.

Film-related queries

One college had been approached by the Motion Picture Licensing Company which apparently claimed that as a library they should take out a subscription. I have spoken to a few librarians who have been contacted by various copyright licensing and performing rights organisations, sometimes with quite intimidating hard-sell letters that imply that without taking out a licence they are breaking the law. In many cases this is extremely misleading and taking out a licence is unnecessary. If you are unsure of where you stand then it is worth contacting JISC Legal for free advice. Never pay for licences automatically as a result of these letters. There is only a limited pot of money, and it is far better going towards learning resources to support the students and staff than paying for licences that you may not need.

Film is a medium that raises many legal questions for libraries. One college asked about recording from the TV. They hade an ERA (Educational Recording Agency) licence but wanted to check that they were making full use of it, and whether they could record and store TV programmes to stream later on. The ERA have a useful FAQ which covers what can and can’t be recorded, what can be done with the recordings, labelling etc. Obviously to get the most out of the licence your staff need to know about programmes ahead of broadcast so that they can be recorded. There are many online services with television listings – one that is used in educational institutions is TRILT (Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching). There is a basic search for free which only goes back a few weeks, but does let you search for programmes on selected topics in the future, just by typing in keywords. If it is heavily used then it is possible to get access to the full version by joining the BUFVC, though that costs c. £474 p.a. The main advantages are access to lots of materials which support media courses; custom auto-alert emails for forthcoming programmes up to 10 days in advance; and the ability to get DVD copies of programmes which have already been broadcast but which weren’t recorded by the college. Details here.

As to recording and playing back TV, an ERA licence allows a college to do this:

“How can I store recordings? Recordings can be made directly onto video or audio tapes, DVDs and CDs. Digital recordings may also be stored on a licensed establishment’s server. Appropriate security systems must be in place to ensure that only authorised students and teachers can access the recordings. Access is limited to within educational establishments unless an ERA Plus Licence is secured to cover agreed off site access (see section on ERA Plus).”

So there is also the ability to take out an ERA Plus licence for further streaming options if you want to provide off-campus access.

While talking about online TV and education, this is a bit of a tangent, but Teachers TV is a really good resource for teaching staff – useful  for anyone that is interested in education.

Hairdressing Training

Following a revamp of Hairdressing Training one college pointed out that free access to Hairdressing Training is due to expire in July 2010 and asked what will happen after that date. Unfortunately it is impossible to say for sure at present – JISC Collections are still in negotiations about it, and are awaiting confirmation of funding.

Basically there are two elements to Hairdressing Training. There is one part that has been bought in perpetuity and so will always be free. Those are the bits that can be accessed on the site without logging in. Even after July they will still be available.

Then there are the parts that are only available after registration and logging in. JISC Collections is still in negotiations about that area, and hope to get a definite response soon – if the funding is available they will extend the access again. Either way they hope to make an announcement in the near future.

Grants and funding for staff development

We received a query from a librarian who wanted to go to our Learning in a Digital Wales event, but there was no budget left in the college’s staff development fund to cover the costs, so we were asked if there were any grants or bursaries that might help with the cost.

CyMAL could potentially help here – they fund bursaries for staff conferences. The information required is available here: scroll down to click on the ‘workforce development support’ document which outlines what they will pay for (usually conference fees only). Then you would need to put in an application to CyMAL. Alyson Tyler said the turnaround is 1-3 weeks. The Information for Applicants document is on the same page, along with the application form.

CILIP Wales and CoFHE may fund conference costs too.

Voting systems

One college had been in touch about the Turning Point voting system and its use in LRCs. This may be something to look into again, or to discuss in an LR Managers’ meeting. What are people’s experiences? Do the benefits outweigh the set-up and training time?

Second Life

I had some questions from a college about Second Life and other virtual worlds, and how students might collaborate online in a virtual world.

RSC Wales have a collaborative area in Second Life which we use for meetings, and it is a good place to start – let us know if you ever want us to show you around!

Our Delicious account has various links which might be of interest for general information. The virtual world snapshots of activity in HE and FE are also worth reading. The latest one says:

“As with all the previous snapshots, Second Life remains the virtual world ‘of choice’ for UK academics who responded to the survey. However, also as with previous snapshots, other virtual worlds are in use, such as OLIVE at Coventry University for emergency planning, and OpenSim at Leeds for handling large numbers of art and design students.”

RSS

I also started looking into a query today about RSS and using it to promote library news, linked to the OPAC.

And to finish…

I can’t resist adding a new technology I came across last week, raised as part of a discussion about noise in libraries. The SoundEar is a ‘visual noise indicator’ with a built in microphone that displays a green light to indicate that it is monitoring. As the pre-defined noise limit is approached more of the ear lights up, and when the noise limit is exceeded the device signals this by lighting up the red ear and the word ‘Warning!’. It is designed to be placed on the wall of an area which you want to keep at a reasonable level of noise (e.g. a workstation room). Apparently it can be useful as a way of getting students to self-regulate their noise levels by giving visual feedback. So now technology can even help to keep libraries and computer rooms as places suitable for learning!

Below are some cards I have been playing with, based on my Twitter friends.

I am disappointed that I was only given a grammar score of 95. Sam beats me with her perfect 100. Sharon Crossan (funkylibrarian, Mid-Wales Regional Development Officer) also beat me. Grrr. I must have missed out a verb somewhere in my tweets.

I do 0.28 tweets per day, this time just beating Sharon. Whereas Christine Davies does around 1 a day; Helen Hodges does one and a half.

I follow 44 people. Almost everyone beats me there. But I like to think that I am selective. Only Lis Parcell is more selective than me.

My average word length in a tweet is 4.8 characters. Paul Jeorrett of Glyndwr University manages 5.02, which is impressive.

I have 79 followers, which seems to be an average score. RSCWales has 168, which is expected; Vashti from Bangor University is extremely popular with 219 (recognition of her Web 2.0 knowledge – she will be speaking at Gregynog 2010 about Web 2.0).

Yes, it is all silly and pointless, but it is Friday afternoon… And is a good example of how Web 2.0 services allow their data to be remixed in new and original ways. The JISC MOSAIC competition looked at what could be done to reuse library data. One example is Aberystwyth University’s entry, which – among many other things – returns library lending data for any course along with the value of those loans (i.e. if the library hadn’t existed and students had been forced to buy the books or do without access). It also draws in links to related articles from the Guardian and New York Times websites. Have a play with it here.

What else could be done with library data? Could we combine a list of the subjects a student studies with the classmarks of new additions to library stock to create personal recommendations when they log into the VLE? Or scan the subject keywords of books borrowed by students, mix it with headings from an online news resource, and list the results when the students click on a ‘News’ link in the library portal? Not particularly great examples, but the age of mashup is becoming a reality.

Digimap Ordnance Survey Collection is the Rolls Royce of online maps with the most comprehensive set of Ordnance Survey data allowing maps of all scales and detail to be displayed and explored. The maps can be accessed via their web interface recently updated with functionality which is also being extended to their other products such as Historic Digimap. It is also possible to download the map data to use with your own GIS or CAD software for serious mapping & manipulation. Whilst Digimap has relevance for many subjects at HE level – to map research data for example – it also has its share of FE users.  Here we can see (just about – sorry for the bad photo) Swansea College staff displaying their map produced for a college walking project:

Details of the Digimap subscription rates can be found on the JISC Collections website although details post-July 2010 have yet to be released. Many thanks to Viv from Edina for a great day’s training and also to Swansea College for their excellent hospitality. I know Karl will forgive me for displaying their non-vegan but extremely exotic creme brulee:

In case you are wondering, it tasted like candyfloss.