Calling Australia!

Members of the Information Resources team recently hosted an online course for librarians based in Australia.   Led by Anthea Sutton, the FOLIO programme has been delivering web-based CPD courses to library and information professionals for over a decade.

Recently, FOLIOz (see what we did there?) has been partnering with ALIA, the Australian Library and Information Association to offer bespoke training catering for the needs identified by its members.

For the latest course, on Evidence-Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP for short), Anthea was joined by a small team including Andrew Booth, Helen Buckley Woods and Mark Clowes to design and deliver the course content (which included video lectures, readings and assessed course work); as well as facilitating the group discussion boards and hosting two live webinars (a particular challenge given the time difference between ourselves in the UK and our participants "down under").   We were also delighted to welcome Professor Alison Brettle (from Salford University) to deliver a guest lecture on the future of EBLIP.

The course attracted participants from a range of sectors, including education and public libraries as well as from health - all keen to apply an evidence-based approach to solving problems and achieving best practice in the settings of their different services.

As one delegate commented: "This course is right on point as far as the skills I need to develop so our unit can reach its goals."


If you are interested in discussing how FOLIO could help with the training needs of your library/information team, please get in touch with us at folio@sheffield.ac.uk

New Scoping Review on LIS Practitioners and Research

                                          Image source: Chris Guy, used under this Creative Commons Licence
                                                        https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Last year Andrew Booth and I were the happy recipients of the LIRG Research Scan Award; I blogged about this here. I am pleased to report that the research has been published as an article in the Library and Information Research Journal.

Our review focused on the recent literature concerning LIS practitioners and their relationship with research. We characterised practitioners’ relationship with research in three ways: as consumers of research, conducting their own research and working in collaboration with academics. In order to create a richer picture of this relationship we included more informal types of evidence, identified through sources such as newsletters, discussion lists and conference websites.

The review addressed the key questions from the award brief:

•      What kind of research is relevant to LIS practitioners?

•      What do practitioners understand by “research” and how do they use it?

•      What are the barriers and facilitators to using research in practice?

We were also able to address the additional questions:

•      What kind of research do practitioners undertake?

•      What is the status of practitioner / academic collaboration in research?

The research scan provided only a snapshot of current activity on the research / practice nexus, but implications at a practitioner, organisational and strategic level are presented.

The full paper is available here

http://www.lirgjournal.org.uk/lir/ojs/index.php/lir/article/view/598

New article on EBLIP and active learning

                                           Photo Mark Brannan  http://www.flickr.com/photos/heycoach/1197947341/sizes/l/                                                                                            

A couple of years ago I had the good fortune to be able to run a Continuing Education Course at the EAHIL conference in Turkey.  My idea was to explore how we use educational theory and other evidence in preparing to teach. I was also interested in exploring the hypothesis that if this preparation, this engagement with evidence was undertaken using active learning methods, it would be more effective and address some of the barriers to evidence based teaching.

To this end, on a hot day in July, the participants and I entered into an action packed course. We looked at a variety of evidence from text books to empirical research and the course utilised a number of active learning techniques. Feedback was positive, ideas and discussion were stimulated. After the event I wrote a paper to further explore the relationship between active learning and EBLIP. It has just been published in the EBLIP journal - see the full paper here: https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/18654