LILAC conference - 25th-27th March 2013

On 25^th-27^th March I attended the LILAC (Librarian Information Literacy Annual Conference) conference in Manchester. An enormous number of events were on offer and it was an exciting, informative and exhausting three days.

I’ve come back to work brimming with ideas that I can use to improve my information literacy sessions. The three events that made the most impression were Transfrom your training the sequel: return of the interactive IL trainers by Emily Shields, Rosie Jones and Karen Peters; the Teach Meet and Alan Carbery’s Arming the teacher librarian: using experiential learning and reflective practice to guide pedagogy.

As well as the listening; thinking; reflecting and participating that went on during the daytime there were also ample opportunities to socialise and network.

Gorton Monastery was the venue for the conference dinner – a stunning interior, if a tad chilly. The networking event was held at the John Rylands Library, a huge Gothic building, built with the proceeds of a textiles business and very archives/special collections in tone. I took a liking to the signs displayed next to their collections – I think they helped to set the tone and expectations about the building and purpose of the collections. Whilst networking I met some people I had previously worked with and put faces to names I’m always seeing on mailing lists.

 

 

Since being back at work I’ve compiled a short action plan to make sure I apply all the knowledge I gained at LILAC. Here are a couple of my information literacy ‘resolutions’.

The Tidy Librarian’s LILAC Action Plan

A) Improve my presentation images

·         Take some useful images with my own camera for use in my presentations.

·         Try the Public Domain Image site which I saw referenced on many slides.

B) Information literacy sessions

·         Try using PollEv for online voting.

·         Use the jigsaw method with Foundation Degree students.

·         Use the IL trainers' activity called ‘choose a picture that represents…your feelings about searching’ with the Research group.

·         Question my current lesson plans – are they inclusive of trans/digital literacy?

·         Suggest a researcher information literacy strategy at work and use this to market our offer to PhD students, the research centres and research active staff.

C) Personal Professional Development

·         Begin to build a teaching portfolio using a teaching journal as recommended in Alan's workshop.

D) Building my professional reputation in my organisation

·         Keep blogging and tweeting.

·         I need to get more items in Faculty newsletters; integrate to a greater extent with the research teams, muscle-in on staff development days. I shall attempt to promote information literacy (or whatever we want to call it) better at learning and teaching committees.

E) Building my professional reputation in the library world

·         I should and would like to present something at a future LILAC event. I have previously been reluctant to realise that what I do in my day-to-day work does have value and is of interest to other people in the library world. There were a couple of sessions at LILAC where I sat back and thought ‘I do that already’. However I think to present at a conference you need to ground that work in theory.

Visit to College of Occupational Therapists’ (COT) Library

I probably shouldn’t admit this but when I got the job of Librarian for Health and Social Care I didn’t know what occupational therapy was! So for those that don’t know, this is what the COT claim occupational therapy is all about,

 “Accident, illness and ageing can turn everyday activities into challenges which reduce independence and undermine our sense of identity. Occupational therapists work with people of all ages and backgrounds who are affected by accident, physical and mental illness, disability or ageing. They provide help and training in daily activities, such as bathing, dressing, eating, gardening, working and learning; offer advice on adapting your home or workplace to meet your needs; assess and recommend equipment, such as mobility aids and help children with disabilities to build their confidence, enabling them to take part in school activities.”

(BAOT/COT, 2012, www.cot.org.uk).

The College of Occupational Therapists sets the professional and educational standards for the occupational therapy profession and represents the profession at national and international levels. Similar sorts of organisations in the health world include the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nurses.

Students can sign up to be members of COT and they often mention to me that, as well as our own resources, they use the library space and resources provided at the COT library. I thought it was high time I went and investigated the library for myself to see what services they offered and how they work with higher education students. I wanted to see the resources and facilities on offer and have a good rummage through their stock to see what they provided.

I met with the Librarian who gave me a tour of the library and showed me the members-only area of the COT website. The library is small but perfectly formed and filled with policy documents, archive material, hard-to-find journals and key textbooks – it is truly a specialist collection. I was greatly relieved to see that we already have lots of the key textbooks that I saw on their shelves.  Their website is used by both academic staff and students at the University. Not only do they have access to key journals via their COT membership but from the members section of the website they can access hot topic guides which list key journal articles, web resources and grey literature on a diverse range of issues such as driving, working with military personnel who have been injured and obsessive compulsive disorder.

For the latter part of the visit I chatted to some of the other library staff to find out what support they offered students.  The staff do not carry out literature searches for the students (after all it’s the student’s assignment and it should be all their own work) but help them to develop a search strategy and point them in the direction of their university librarian.

The COT library staff are hoping to run a networking day for higher education librarians that support OT students. In a moment of madness I offered to present something on the day – this means I have a new challenge to get my teeth into.