Can you play the saxophone? I don't know, I've never tried.

A few months ago the report Information behaviour of the researcher of the future looked at the information skills of young people - the so called Google generation. A recent report looks at these skills in an older generation. Mind the Skills Gap: Information-handling Training for Researchers was commissioned by the Research Information Network (RIN). It points out that the last decade has brought fundamental change in how researchers discover and gain access to information resources relevant to their research. Many researchers have become highly-skilled in exploiting the opportunities that new technologies and services provide but others lack the understanding and skills to make full use of the new technologies; and a widespread view – at least among library and information specialists – is that even those researchers who regard themselves as competent often show alarming deficits in their skills. Training of academic staff is therefore very important and many HE libraries are offering this, but the report points out that this is hampered by a lack of co-ordination and strategic management of information training provision, both at UK and at institutional levels. Most HEIs in practice adopt a piecemeal approach to information skills and competencies. The role that institutions expect libraries and their staff to play in research training is particularly unclear, as are the strategies and expectations about libraries’ roles in the support of research more generally. Most HEI central training teams seem to share the view that developing information skills for researchers is a matter largely of training in information seeking. A small but noteworthy group of HEIs are moving towards a more integrated approach covering not only information seeking, but other areas such as management of research information, critical appraisal of research findings, and even report writing. In terms of delivery, they involve joint planning (by central training teams, independent trainers, faculty staff, other specialists such as ICT and library staff); joint design and preparation of e-learning materials; and joint assessment of outcomes.

This raises challenges for library staff. The role of subject and liaison librarians has changed significantly in recent years, and some lack the confidence to provide intensive support to researchers. Libraries need to ensure that they have the capability and capacity to offer high quality training for researchers, including knowledge and understanding of the research process. Such moves would in many cases require “a step-change in provision and skills enhancement for library staff”, and perhaps redeployment of library staff into research settings rather than the library building. It is interesting to note that some librarians, had to point out that that “enhancing of staff skills runs counter to the recent tendency towards de-skilling of staff”.

The failure of HEIs to recognise the importance of information skills and the contribution of librarians to this is mirrored by the comments I reported in my last post about Doncaster Public Libraries “What is the point in buying new books? Tescos sell them cheaply and everything you need to know is on the Internet.” There is a level of ignorance so profound that you don't know you are ignorant. Until you learn something about the skills needed to play a saxophone then you don't know that you can't do it. Researchers may not know enough about information skills to know what they lack. Senior managers of Universities or Local Authorities may not know enough about libraries and information to realise how much there is to understand. And whose fault is this? Librarians need to sell the benefits of information and information skills and we have ourselves to blame if we fail to do this.

Local librarians in the news

The recent Education Guardian supplement Libraries Unleashed contained a couple of references to local LIS celebrities! In the item Information alert Wendy Wallace introduces Sheila Webber as follows:

"In real life, Sheila Webber is a senior lecturer in information studies at Sheffield University. In Second Life, she is Sheila Yoshikawa, blue-haired babe and cultivator of a Japanese garden - Webber's avatar in the online virtual world populated by millions. 'I see her as a digital extension of me. I do some teaching, some professional networking and some shopping. I have a huge wardrobe and I'm much thinner.'"

Wendy interviews Sheila about Dr Ian Rowlands report on the 'Google generation'. The report, Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, found users "power-browsing" or skimming material, using "horizontal" (shallow) research. Most spent only a few minutes looking at academic journal articles and few returned to them. "It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense," said the report authors. Dr Rowlands is one of the key-note speakers at the SINTO Members' Day on June 12th.

"Students of all ages need to learn to make independent assessments of the quality of material by looking at the authors' experience, funders, use of sources, and where published. 'They have to be taught these skills explicitly,' says Sheila Webber. 'Some academics recognise its importance but don't see it as their job to teach it. University librarians do see it as their responsibility - but there aren't enough of them to do it. Academics must join in.'"

Elsewhere in the supplement Martin Lewis, director of library services at the University of Sheffield is interviewed about how technology has changed his role. "Users can carry out more routine transactions themselves while we provide more time offering learning support to students. As teachers of information literacy, we can give students critical appraisal skills so they can use the internet."

Battle lines

Does Bob McKee, Chief Executive of CILIP read the SINTO blog? I am prompted to ask because in recent postings on his own blog Bob picks up on two books that I mentioned here ages ago. Pies and prejudice; in search of the North by Stuart Maconie and Bob Usherwood's Equity and Excellence in the Public Library. Of Bob Usherwood's book he says "... I commend Bob Usherwood's book to you. It is (to borrow a phrase which should resonate with Reader Development Librarians of a certain vintage) well worth reading".

Perhaps Bob has been reading my past discussions under the heading Battle lines where I have looked at the debate between the webbed and the web-sceptics. Fighting seems to have broken out again.

Helen Nicols lives in Sheffield and works in Leeds, and writes a blog called The Business of Knowing - thoughts about knowledge sharing, learning and how business can benefit from encouraging both. In a recent post she includes a video of a presentation by David Weinburger author of Everything is miscellaneous: the power of the new digital disorder. The presentation is about the organisation of knowledge and compare and contrasts the old way and the new digital way of doing this. He argues that we have been very good at organising physical objects (such as books on shelves) but that today there is no longer any need to order things in a single way. His presentation covers Aristotle, Dewey, classification and categorising, tagging, wikipedia and other miscellaneous things. He suggests that as both data and metadata are digitalised this changes the whole way we approach knowledge. There is much in this presentation that we can take issue with - his ideas on publicly negotiated knowledge (e.g. Wikipedia) for example - but if you put up with the stuttering start, this is a masterclass in the new ideas that all librarians and information managers should be familiar with.

But that does not mean we should agree with it all. Professor Tara Brabazon who holds the chair of media studies at the University of Brighton has criticised an increasing dependency on a diet of unchecked information found through internet search engines as "white bread for the mind". According to press reports in The Telegraph and The Times Prof Brabazon claims user-generated content sites such as Wikipedia are creating an age of banality by providing consensual information and stifling debate.
"I want students to sit down and read. It's not the same when you read it online. I want them to experience the pages and the print as much as the digitisation and the pixels. Both are fine but I want them to have both – not one or the other – not a cheap solution."

This view is supported in a study by Dr Ian Rowlands, a lecturer in library and information studies at University College London. It looks at how people use and search web-based information. Young people tend to use search engines such as Google and Yahoo as their first, and often only, port of call in searching for information. They have a poor understanding of their information needs and find it difficult to develop effective search strategies. They also spend little time evaluating information for relevance, accuracy or authority, it says.

Rowlands says children born after the big bang of the web lack a mental map of the information landscape, which could be affecting their ability to search for and evaluate information.

"As a kid, I grew up spending hours in the central reference library in Plymouth. This helped me form a clear understanding of the information landscape because of the physical layout of the library, and the appearance of materials. You get a sense of how big one collection is compared to another. Dictionaries, maps and official statistics all have a specific place, feel and appearance in the library and this helped me understand the concept of these sources of information and how to use them," he says.

Libraries are not keeping up with the demands of students and researchers for services that are integrated and consistent with their wider internet experience such as Google, the study says. Information consumers do not necessarily use services in the way libraries assume, and a one-size-fits-all policy towards the design of library systems will not be effective. The study recommends that libraries invest more in monitoring and evaluating the way people use their services, to ensure they stay relevant and to allow libraries to argue against static or declining budgets.

Dame Lynne Brindley commenting on the report said that libraries should also play a key role in helping to teach information literacy skills. "That the younger generation is technologically more literate but not more information literate is a challenge that must be tackled by libraries and education more widely. Students who simply want to use Google and take what it says as gospel do a real disservice to the skills people will increasingly need to survive the digital economy".
STOP PRESS. Link to BL press release and pdf file of report.

What is clear is that this battle is not a head-on conflict between two opposing concepts. The "webbed" are not promoting the use of poor quality information but their emphasis is on using technology to open up access to all information. The "web-sceptics" don't want to dismantle the new digital environment, nor (despite the headlines) do they want to ban Google and Wikipedia. Instead they want to promote a critical approach to information. There is a crying need for a synthesis between the two points of view.

SINTO Objectives

As I have said before, this is not a personal blog, but I don't want it to be a blog "about" SINTO either. I don't think that you want to know how I run SINTO - you want to know about the benefits you or your library can get from SINTO.

Last week we had meetings of the SINTO Executive Board and the Members' Forum. The Executive Board manages SINTO and so is very important in directing exactly what we do but I don't think that most people want to know the details. However, in the spirit of freedom of information, I will be putting up notes on the SINTO wiki.

The Members' Forum exists so that the views of SINTO members can be heard and matters of general professional interest can be debated. This ensures that SINTO is responding to the needs of its members (assuming that they articulate their needs). All SINTO member organisations can send a representative along to the meetings. At the last meeting we discussed a marketing strategy for SINTO. The results of this discussion are on the wiki. One outcome was to come up with a revised statement of the objectives of SINTO:

SINTO exists to develop library and information services in our
region through co-operation, workforce development and planning; and to promote
information fluency and investment in information.

We wanted to mention information literacy as a goal because of Sheila Corrall's presentation at the Library and Information Show. Someone suggested that "information fluency" was a better term for what we had in mind (e.g. see the leaflet from St Martin's College).

This statement may need some more work but I think it does indicate what we are all about and the benefits that you can expect from joining in.