ARLG Members Day

This was quite a long time ago now - 15 May at Regent's College which we now have to call Regent's University. I was especially interested in the sessions about partnerships with academics and creating learning hubs. These are both things that get spoken about a lot where I work, sometimes that's a good thing and other times it worries me.

Partnerships with academics

The partnership is similar to our curriculum liaison only dealing with specialist collections. This session discussed the proactive approach at Goldsmiths, University of London to marketing and making the most of their specialist collections by targeting groups and showing them what can be done for them. It raises awareness of the resources, their content and the profile of the department. I think that this is a very important aspect of library work because it demonstrates a high level of professionalism from the library staff and helps consolidates the importance of the library services to their institution. For many years we have tried to forge close links with the curriculum staff at the College and have had varying degrees of success. This year I think we have made a significant breakthrough by attending directorate meetings that give us an overview of the wider department and what their plans are. Now that there is a foothold, we can build on this and maybe this is a way forward. We have a wide range of resources many that are underused, with more awareness and targeted promotion of them they may start to get used more.

Creating learning hubs

This is something that worried me or so I thought. The term learning hub has been used to decentralise the library I work in and that is something I don't want to see happen. It feels like a step backwards because we were orignally on 4 sites and have been brought together onto 1 purpose built site. This session however wasn't actually about this kind of learning hub, it was looking at a new way of delivering information literacy and integrating the library into teaching and learning. This proved a very timely session for me, as my College are currently piloting self supported study which they hope to roll out across the College next academic year. My Senior Librarian and myself realise that this potenially could have a huge impact on our services and are going to review our information literacy provision during the summer to take into account these changes.

Going to the ARLG Members Day was extrememly useful for me, it has given me lots to think about and has provided a starting point from which I can review and build on my library's services.

Successful Curriculum Integration and Support Webinar

This was the 2nd of 4 webinars that JISC are hosting. This session was about your library being an integral part of the curriculum. Thus demonstrating your value and worth to senior managers as well as being good practice.

The first talk was by Jane Spellman from Queen Elizabeth 6th Form College in Darlington, who I know quite well through local networking. Jane said that we need to be professional, know your institution, spot gaps and be proactive and shout about what you do. It's great to know that we are doing all the right things, so where do we go from here? I'll start where Jane and her team do a lot more than us:

1. Using the Exam Officer to find out exactly which courses are running and which exam board they are using, so that we can then go and search online for upto date specifications.
2. Passing along everything we do for a department to include in their self assessment report, at the moment we only send resource information (how much we've spent and on what)

I also especially liked that Jane included the poll feature in her presentation. This made it more interactive than the other webinar I had done.

The second presentation was by Ihar Ivanov and Lin Armstrong about their information literacy programme which puts the emphasis for learning on the students. The librarians and teachers act as faciliators for students who learn through self discovery, with assistance from their peers and the facilitators. The learning is documented via reflection and recorded using various Web 2.0 tools.

Mike Parker from Burton and South Derbyshire College did the final presentation. The main point of it was that they are very involved with curriculum delivery and are very close to the teaching staff. It sounds impressive until you actually analyse what they are doing in more depth. In addition to the information literacy librarians traditionally deliver, they are delivering functional skills for 11 hours per week. So they are actually doing the teachers' work but on the salary of a librarian / library assistants. This caused a bit of a stir from the webinar delegates who thought that the library skills were not being valued.

More information on the session and links to the speakers can be found on the JISC RSC wiki.