IFLA Media and Information Literacy Recommendations

IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, published a new set of guidelines this morning: IFLA Media and Information Literacy Recommendations had been drawn up in co-operation with UNESCO's Information for All Programme (IFAP) and were endorsed by the governing body last year.

So what is this all about?

According to the document, Information and Media Literacy has been recognised as a basic human right. Not only do these skills make a difference in an educational setting, but they are also part of lifelong learning for all. They enable marginalised groups to increase their own employability, help all citizens make informed choices and contribute to the well-being of an individual.

Interestingly, IFLA includes all type of information resources - not only print and digital, but also oral information, which is often being neglected in discussions about Information Literacy.

Exciting from a librarian's perspective is the emphasis on continuing professional development for information professionals. IFLA called on governments and organisations to:

• Support professional development for education, library, information, archive, and health and human services personnel in the principles and practices of Media and Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning

• Include Media and Information Literacy in the core and continuing education of information professionals, educators, economic and government policymakers and administrators, as well as in the practice of advisors to the business, industry and agriculture sectors

So information professionals are being recognised as both trainers and trainees when it comes to Media and Information Literacy. It will take time to filter down to a national and local level, of course, but this document should give those of us active in the profession a renewed mandate to lobby for resources on behalf of our colleagues and our patrons. Librarians need time and space to develop their own skills in order to support users. This involves getting funding to attend courses and also time to reflect on work practices. Students in Library Schools should have access to Media and Information Literacy modules as part of their degree.

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Too Big To Know - David Weinberger (Review)

The first time I came across David Weinberger was when I read his paper Tagging and Why it Matters* a few years ago, so before I even opened the book I figured the central premise of Too Big To Know would be closely linked to concepts like information overload, social filters and metadata. Whilst this is certainly true, Weinberger's analysis is thankfully not that simplistic and one-sided.

He begins his argument with the idea that information overload is not a new problem 'created' by the internet, echoing a similar point made by James Gleick in last year's excellent The Information. Ever since Gutenberg's printing press individuals have felt overwhelmed by the idea that there is more information out there than one can possibility assimilate in a lifetime (so there goes my dream of being a Renaissance man polymath...). The internet is simply the latest incarnation of a longstanding problem, but as Weinberger argues it is not so much a 'problem', but rather a fact. In print form, ideas were theoretically connected but often physically separate; in the online world knowledge is communicated, linked and shared within the context of a network (or multiple networks) - and it is the network which becomes most valuable. Expertise is no longer something which can be narrowly defined. Instead it is now collaborative and multidisciplinary, and the opportunity to connect knowledge and ideas in this way stems from the concept of the network.

As information becomes increasingly open, we see post-filtering (i.e. a publish then filter model) rather than pre-filtering (the traditional gatekeeping role played by publishers). This ensures that false negatives (good content which should be published but isn't) are minimised, even if large volumes of seemingly valueless content are also published. In the same way that Clay Johnson suggests responsibility lies with the individual user to consume a healthy 'information diet', Weinberger invokes Clay Shirky's "filter failure" - the idea that we need to develop better and more efficient means of filtering information. Logical stopping points like the authoritative print reference sources of old are harder to see online, but are there nonetheless. Indeed Weinberger's pragmatism brings an awareness that in most cases we utilise information like any other product - as a means to an end - in short, "knowledge is not a library but a playlist tuned to our present interests."

Weinberger also offers an interesting critique of The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and the premise that the internet is negatively influencing our information behaviour by encouraging scanning - ultimately making us lose sight of our higher order thinking skills. Conversely, printed books promote engagement with the longer thought and stimulate creativity and critical thinking. Weinberger respectfully questions this notion however, arguing instead that books are narrow sources of information limited by their form and design - the need for a beginning, middle and an end, all of which must generally avoid digression due to physical constraints. These attributes are not required with electronic publishing, and surely the opportunities presented by richer multi-layered arguments, collaboration and instant feedback are a good thing? Furthermore, accepting the new open ecology of information as a given automatically places a greater emphasis on the need for critical thinking and appraisal, including a responsibility on individuals to fully reflect on and assess the information they find. I would certainly like to think this is true and will be borne out over time, however whether it is over-optimistic remains to be seen. Myself and Mr Weinberger have our fingers crossed.


*Weinberger, D. (2005) Tagging and Why it Matters. Retrieved 27/03/2012 from http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/07-WhyTaggingMatters.pdf

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Optimising your website for discovery: On-page SEO

Web publishing and social marketing is now a routine aspect of many librarians’ jobs. Whilst librarians may be pretty adept at ensuring other people’s research and information is visible and easily accessible, I sometimes wonder if we occasionally forget about the electronic content we publish ourselves. My guess is that library blogs, websites and other online resources (subject portals etc.) often receive very little attention in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO). However, these techniques and tools can be a valuable way to increase the visibility of the content you publish to people who typically use search engines such as Google as their main access point. This post is part of a three part series, which firstly looks at some on-page techniques of SEO.

Thoughts on web publishing #1 (The basics)
On-page techniques for content marketing

On-page techniques essentially comprise ‘stuff you can do with your site’ to help search engines (and consequently people) find your information more easily. This ‘stuff’ might mean metadata you can include with your content, structuring your data more efficiently so it is easier for search engines to crawl, or creating valuable content which helps to drive traffic. As these are elements that you have control over, it is important to make sure you have the basics covered.

Include a relevant title tag and meta keywords in the head of all your pages

Make sure to include the title element in the head of your page. It should ideally contain the key phrase you want to target. The tab at the top of your browser window displays the title element from an end-user point of view. You will notice for blog posts (including this blog!) the page title usually incorporates the blog post title, that’s why it is important to think about which words and phrases you use when you title your blog posts. Meta keywords and description tags no longer tend to be a factor in many ranking algorithms, but the meta description tag can be used as the content snippet when your page appears in search engine results (SERPs) so it's worthwhile including it to encourage click-throughs to your site.

Focus on one key phrase per page (e.g. in the case of this post, on-page SEO) rather than lots of different keywords and topics on the one page (analytics, webmaster tools, linking etc.) which will dilute the strength of your key phrase or concept. The medical librarian in me likes to think of this in MeSH terms: decide on one term as a major concept for each page, rather than lots of different headings. Use this keyword in your title element and URL as well if possible.

Rich snippets

You have probably seen rich snippets hundreds of times, even if you don’t know it yet. Rich snippets are the lines of text and other information that appear under search results, and are designed to give users a sense of why each particular result may be relevant to their query. So having a rich snippet of your content allows your target users to quickly discern that your site is valuable to them. To help Google understand the content of your page and pick up on the elements to include as a rich snippet, you can add HTML to your content using microdata, microformats or RDF (see this excellent intro to RDF for librarians by Jenn Riley).

Google supports rich snippets for:
* Reviews;
* People;
* Products;
* Businesses & organisations;
* Recipes;
* Events;
* Music; and also recognises the mark-up for video content.

SEOMoz has a really useful infographic on rich snippets

You can also use Google’s rich snippets testing tool to check your site.

Site speed

Improving the speed of your website can also influence your ranking in SERPs as site speed is one of the signals which Google incorporates in its algorithms. You can use the Page Speed browser add-on to monitor and improve your site’s performance. Page Speed will compress images, minify Javascript and remove unused CSS to help make your pages faster. Leveraging browser caching can also help reduce loading times, for example it's better to combine all your CSS into an external file linked to from the head of your page which can be cached, instead of loading it in the body HTML of each individual page.

Fresh content

Well-structured, high-quality and regularly updated content is also important. Content fuels a lot of organic (i.e. non-paid for) search traffic, and strong content will also support the off-site and social marketing elements in your overall SEO strategy (see part two in this series for more on this aspect). Content is also what makes your site valuable and interesting to users, so producing unique content is essential for lots of reasons.

Generating a site map page

A site map will help search engine spiders to find and crawl all the important pages and content on your site. If they can’t find it, they can’t index it! You can use some handy third party applications to generate one (like http:/www.web-site-map.com/ or http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/, or a Wordpress plugin) and add it to your Google Webmaster Tools account.


That’s a quick summary of some on-page techniques for increasing your ranking in SERPs. In part two I’ll be taking a look at what really matters in content-marketing: off-site aspects of SEO.

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Accommodating Specific Learning Difficulties in Third Level Education

Guest post by Carol Clifford

Lorraine Gallagher, Information & Training Officer for AHEAD, dropped in recently and offered an insight into the condition of students with disabilities in Higher Education in Ireland. The Association of Higher Education Access & Disability was founded in 1988 by a UCD student who was blind. Today it is an NGO and provides information, lobbies for change and operates a learning network.

Below is a summary of the day’s training session, written by Carol Clifford who also organised this event.

Lorraine talked about dyslexia and the challenges it brings to students. She outlined strategies for lecturers, exams staff, learning support and the disabilities support service to help remove any barriers to learning.

Students with Disabilities in Higher Education
The numbers of students with disabilities participating in Higher Education are growing dramatically. However, it is unclear whether this is due to increasing numbers of students accessing education programmes, or that disabilities and learning difficulties are diagnosed more often than previously:

1994 = 461 Students with Disabilities
1999 = 1,367 Students with Disabilities
2003 = 2000 Students with Disabilities
2010/2011 = 6,932 Students with Disabilities

The Types of Disability in Higher Education Institutions
Specific learning difficulty = 60%
Physical or mobility related disability = 7%
Blind or visually impaired = 2%
Deaf or hard of hearing = 3%
Mental health difficulty = 9%
Asperger’s Syndrome = 2%
ADHD or ADD = 2%
Significant ongoing illness = 10%
Other = 3%

The factors responsible for an increase in the number of students with disabilities accessing Higher Education are thought to be:

• International and Government Policy
• Legislation
• Policy changes in colleges
• Improved physical and learning access
• Support infrastructures
• Positive impact of the ESF Fund
• People with disabilities- sense of profound injustice
• Demographic trends
• Word of mouth amongst students

AHEAD consider an accessible education environment to be one without barriers for people who want to use it. Potential barriers include the nature of the subject (abstract concepts for example), the nature of the teaching (all chalk and talk vs. interaction and group work), attitudes and expectations as well as the physical environment (lifts, disabled toilets etc.).

Professor Peter Pumfrey articulates the strategic challenge as follows:
‘We must re-examine the normal learning environments so that they do not exclude talented students who cannot learn the way we teach.  The challenge is to teach the way the student can learn.’

The legislation outlining HEIs obligations to students with disabilities is fairly vague. An educational establishment will discriminate against a student with disability if they do not do all that is reasonable to accommodate that student.  A needs assessment must be carried out. Then reasonable accommodation must be provided.

Students with Dyslexia
Dyslexia comes from the Greek meaning ‘difficulty with words’. It is an information-processing difficulty and a language difficulty in which tiny differences in brain organisation lead to problems in handling verbal codes or symbols. There is no doubt that dyslexia exists as the brain scans of people with dyslexia differ from brain scans of those without dyslexia. It is a permanent condition which needs continuous support.

A person with dyslexia struggles to translate written symbols into speech (reading), has difficulty in putting spoken words into written symbols (spelling). They have short term memory issues and may not be able to repeat back to you something that you have just told them. Musical notation and numeracy may also be affected.

Below is an example how a student with dyslexia reads:
Wreeding in this weigh menes yoo mussed lonsentrait on sownding out eech werd sow ot wood bb difecult too komprehende.

Dyslexia tends to run in families. A gene called DCDC2 “may disrupt the formal formation of brain circuits that are necessary for fluent reading, leading to dyslexia”. It affects about 3 times as many boys as girls and occurs at all levels of intellectual ability. Dyslexia is not the result of a lack of motivation, emotional disturbance, sensory impairment or meagre opportunities.

The type of dyslexia and the extent of the problem experienced by a student with dyslexia can vary greatly from person to person. The difficulties experienced may occur with reading, writing, spelling, writing numbers, short term memory, spoken language, personal organisation. The work of a student with dyslexia may have some of the following characteristics:

• Spelling errors (despite using a spellchecker)
• Sentences may be rambling and take a while to get to the point
• Word endings may be omitted
• Words like the, and, or may be omitted
• Repetition of words and ideas
• Lack a clear structure
• Using the incorrect tense
• Excessive or misplaced punctuation
• Simplified vocabulary (in order to avoid spelling mistakes)
• Unsophisticated language structures (to avoid grammar mistakes, this does not denote unsophisticated thinking)

Individuals with dyslexia may also exhibit some of the following strengths:

• Creativity
• Lateral thinking
• Problem solving skills
• Ability in art, design, architecture and computing

Teaching Strategies
No two students will present with the exact same learning difficulties. A needs assessment is necessary to gain an understanding of the student’s individual difficulties and learning style. Lecturers teaching students with dyslexia can help the student by:

• Clearly structuring classes. Introduce the lecture with an outline and key points. This allows the student to see the whole picture before seeing the different parts.
• Provide notes in advance.
• Spell new words on the board.
• Provide a list of technical terms
• Prioritise reading lists. Tell students which books are the key texts and which chapters of books are the most relevant.
• Use mind maps.
• Provide models of work e.g. assignments, reports, templates.
• Break projects down into manageable chunks.
• Separate carrier language from technical content, ideas and language, mark both separately.
• Provide constructive feedback.
• Encourage use of spell checkers, tape recorders.
• Minimise the number of key points a student has to remember, sequence the items clearly.
• Work with students on finding memory strategies or triggers that are effective for them (e.g. visual cues).
• Try teaching in chunks.
• Encourage students to consider using cue cards, for example when they are giving presentations. (PowerPoint was invented by someone with dyslexia.)
• Provide step-by-step instructions.
• Emphasize over-learning to help get learning into long-term memory.

Multi-sensory approaches in teaching can make the classes more accessible to students with dyslexia. Visual images (colours and mind maps), sound, (music), performance (role play), games and activities and computers all play into this.

Exam supports for students with dyslexia can include:

• Extra time
• A user friendly exam paper – carrier language is clear in the exam questions
• Use of a reader and / or scribe
• A spelling & grammar waiver
• A private room
• Oral testing
• Reduce copying tasks

Assistive Technology for individuals with dyslexia

• Voice recognition software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking allows students to dictate their work while the software converts it to a written text.
• Read aloud software such as Read and Write Gold reads on screen texts to the student.
• The Life Scribe recording pen records a lecture and links the speech to the notes written with the pen. Point the pen at your note and the pen will replay what was spoken at this time.
• Free Mind is mind mapping software.

Learning Support

• Reading techniques
• Literacy supports
• Study skills
• essay writing
• examination  preparation
• Note-taking
• Memory techniques, roman room, mind-mapping
• Essay writing
• Time management
• Examination provision

The aim in accommodating disability is to teach the student to become an independent learner. We don’t take away the challenge we support them through the challenges. Dyslexia shouldn’t hold people back as many high achievers with dyslexia demonstrate. Examples inlcude Leonardo da Vinci, John F. Kennedy, Walt Disney, Richard Branson, Tommy Hilfiger, Mohammad Ali...

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Digital content: Are we lost without spatial navigation?

The Problem With the Web and E-Books Is That There’s No Space for Them, according to Mark Changizi. Changizi argues that prior to the emergence of the internet and ebooks, our information storage and retrieval mechanisms were primarily spatial in nature and could be physically navigated. That is, to locate a specific piece of information, for example population statistics, you would use your own existing knowledge and visual cues to remember where the relevant information was and to locate it: the census reports located on the bottom shelf in your office, with familiar paragraph structures and blocks of text to act as cues for navigating to the right information quickly. Essentially Changzi believes this type of spatial navigation process harnesses our brains' natural capabilities, but crucially depends on "fixed spatial placement within the book and on the page" - something which, in his view, web and ebook content generally lacks. Similar spatial cues don't exist when you try to find information online for example. Many people don't remember URLs, often they may even be subject to frequent change, and they aren't arranged in a spatial way like shelves in a library. Instead you typically use a search engine to find what you want.

Is finding digital content really that counter-intuitive?
I am not so sure about this. To me it seems pretty inefficient to always navigate information spatially in this way compared to the full text searching capabilities offered by digital content. Is "spatial navigability" really so essential? And does online and electronic content fundamentally change the information search process at such a basic level? I am no cognitive scientist but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that people's information behaviour is changing, and this is not necessarily a 'bad' thing. Kuhlthau's Information Search Process model is also a useful reference point here. Kulthau's research shows that the ISP Model (a constructive sense-making model of the stages involved in the information seeking process) applies as much in the digital environment as it does in the printed world (Kuhlthau, Heinström and Todd, 2008).

Digital publishing can offer added value compared to fixed spatial placement
Navigating information spatially in print may have made sense when this was the only option. Take an atlas for example: the idea of representing the world on a series of static, fixed, 9" X 12" printed pages bound together may have been a useful way of locating places when this was the best we had. However does it make sense to continue doing so, just because your brain might be used to the visual and spatial cues included in a printed atlas, when we have Google maps - an undoubtedly far more suitable way of storing and navigating geographic information? It is hard to imagine that the answer is yes.


Kuhlthau, C.C., Heinström, J. and Todd, R.J. 2008. "The 'information search process' revisited: is the model still useful?" Information Research, 13(4) paper 355. [Online] Available: http://informationr.net/ir/13-4/paper355.html

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What does teaching look like?

I love this Pinterest page "What does learning look like?" as I think it encapsulates how authentic and meaningful learning takes place, and the important role that context plays in acquiring skills and contructing new knowledge. The most valuable learning often takes place informally or when people don't realise they are 'learning' as such - just like most of the examples on Pinterest. Recently I have been wondering what a "What does teaching look like?" Pinterest page might illustrate. To me*, teaching looks like:

instructional scaffolding
a process which is meaningful to each individual learner
context and relevance
integrated and embedded delivery
content and information which is logically sequenced to support connections and linkages
learning needs, objectives, outcomes and assessments which are constructively aligned
authenticity
structure and clarity
interaction and engagement
problem-solving
facilitation
group learning so participants can learn from each other
instructional design which is evaluated and revised based on feedback and assessment outcomes
recognition of differences in learning styles
reflective practice

and

learning.



*Disclaimer: I sleep with a copy of John Biggs' Teaching for Quality Learning at University under my pillow

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