Nordic Journal of Information Literacy in Higher Education
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Information Specialist facing new challenges: Open science and research and scholarly publishing as new areas of expertise
Get PDFThe open science and research (OSR) movement has been shaping the world of scholarly communication for a few years now. In Finland, the Ministry of Education and Culture promoted research information availability and open science through the Open Science and Research Initiative. As a part of this initiative, an evaluation of the openness of Finnish research organizations was completed. The first evaluation indicated that OSR functions needed clearer guidelines and a coordinating unit to further improve the cultural maturity in Lahti University of Applied Sciences (LAMK). Furthermore, the scholarly publishing activities also needed a new home base due to organizational changes. As the information and library services had the basic understanding of scholarly publishing, different publishing channels and responsible conduct of research, it was decided that the library takes on these responsibilities.
For the new challenges, the traditional information specialist skills set needed updating. New skills were acquired via both formal and informal learning, benchmarking and trial-and-error. These new skills were immediately put to use in LAMK by creating a new open access publishing platform, organizing workshops and lectures for the staff and creating organizational guidelines for open RDI practices. The next organizational maturity evaluation ranking round proved the library’s new expertise, as LAMK climbed two levels up, being the second highest university of applied sciences in Finland.
As for the role of the information specialists, the new role as OSR experts have opened up new possibilities within the organization. They are now seen more as possible partners in different RDI activities, participating in project work and further developing the way openness is being carried out in all aspects of RDI and teaching. The paper offers a case example of how library professionals can diversify and update their skills pool and shape the future of their profession
Library interactions: Developing research-based teaching and learning
No full textAcross Europe there is a push for strengthening research-based higher education (Fung et.al, 2017). As a pedagogical driven approach, research-based education aims at making students across all levels learn through enquiry and discovery (eg. Cleaver et al., 2017). Core competencies addressed are scientific and critical thinking skills, and skills in scholarly and interdisciplinary communication. At the University of Oslo, the reinforcement of research-based education is manifest in a recent large-scale initiative. The initiative implies that we must build quality in teaching and learning through partnership across and beyond the communities of our university. How can a library in higher education contribute to research-basededucation?
This presentation illuminates three interrelated cases from The University of Oslo Library. They exemplify how libraries can involve students, librarians and their patrons when the aim is to develop innovative education. Together the cases prompt discussions about the methods used to include different actors’ perspectives in current development of learning and teaching design.
The three cases highlight the current state of a long-term movement of our libraries away from librarycentered approaches and towards user and co-creation centered approaches. The methods described respond to the current call for partnership in building enquiry-based learning experiences.
The first case is our staff-development program. Established a decade ago the program focuses on developing a shared understanding of information literacy and pedagogical theories. The program is one element in our effort to change focus from education as a private concern to corporate responsibility. The aim is to make pedagogical competencies a matter of shared knowledge and culture.
The second case presents course design and the methods used to include the perspectives of students, fellow librarians and faculty. Project methodology from informatics has contributed to teambuilding and collaboration among library staff. It has also facilitated feedback from students, faculty and fellow librarians. The result is a revision of courses to students from BA to PHD levels, now with an emphasis on research-based education and active learning.
The last case describes the development of physical and digital learning spaces at the university libraries. Technology has opened for a change in the way students collaborate, learn and study. A project based approach that apply user centered design and user experience have contributed to the collection of information from students and employees aimed at enhancing and developing library space to enhance learning experiences.
Together our three cases tell a story about cultural change within our libraries, about implementation by involvement of different people and perspectives, and about the balancing of specialized expertise with shared vocabularies.
ReferencesFung, D., Besters-Dilger, J., & Van der Vaart, R. (2017). Excellent education in research-rich universities. [Position Paper] League of European Universities (LERU). https://www.leru.org/files/ExcellentEducation-in-Research-Rich-Universities-Full-paper.pdf
Cleaver, E., Wills, D., Gormally, S., Grey, D., Johnson, C., & Rippingale, J. (2017). Connecting research and teaching through curricular and pedagogic design: from theory to practice in disciplinary approaches to connecting the higher education curriculum. In: Carnell, B & Fung, D, (eds.) Developing the Higher Education Curriculum: Research-based Education in Practice. London, UCL Press, pp. 145-15
Student active learning in net based education: Educational development in teaching of information literacy
No full textDuring 2018 the Anna Lindh Library at the Swedish Defence University (SEDU) offers all information literacy education online. The transformation to online teaching has a number of reasons and here are some: • The number of students is expected to grow with 30 % within the next two years. Classes will be larger and there is a scarcity of physical classrooms on the horizon. • Military contract education students have expressed wishes for more flexible learning.• The Swedish University Computer Network (SUNET) provides infrastructure and software services, hence SEDU has adequate technological environment.
As a first step in the transition to net based education, we have used the web conferencing software Adobe Connect to carry out the teaching. The teaching has been scheduled and synchronous. We have designed it with search exercises, conducted individually or in groups to stimulate student-active learning. Synchronous design like this may also have social advantages, according to Biggs. (Biggs, 2011, p. 71). In addition to Adobe Connect, the school\u27s Learning Management System has been used as a synchronous communication platform with the students.
According to Hrastinski technology, if properly used, it can increase learning opportunities. (Hrastinski, 2013, p.15). We also believe that online education can be a solution when the student groups grow. It enables remote teaching and it is in close proximity to the platforms and databases used in today\u27s information search.
One of the challenges of applying net based learning to information literacy instruction is that the students are not familiar to the technique yet. Another challenge is that librarians do not meet the same students over a longer period of time, or not even when they need the instruction the most. Therefore the combination of scheduled synchronous instruction and asynchronous communication will possibly turn out to be the most successful.
ReferencesHrastinski, S. (2013). Nätbaserad utbildning: En introduktion (2. ed.). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Biggs, J. & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at university: What the student does (4. rev. ed.). Maidenhead: Open University Press.Delaney, Geraldine, & Bates, Jessica. (2018). How Can the University Library Better Meet the Information Needs of Research Students? Experiences from Ulster University. New Review of Academic Librarianship, 24(1), 63-89
The Archives of Babel A Wikipedia - Workshop
No full textIn September of 2012, the American novelist Philip Roth published an open letter to Wikipedia in The New Yorker. “I am Philip Roth,” it began, and proceeded to explain how the editors of Wikipedia had gotten the inspiration for his novel The Human Stain wrong. Though the article had in fact only mentioned a theory about his sources, Roth was adamant that it did not belong anywhere in a discussion of his novel. He wanted the idea removed entirely. This, it turns out, was a profound misunderstanding of the editorial practices of Wikipedia, and the theory that Roth would prefer we forget remains in the article to this day.
His letter in The New Yorker, of course, is duly cited. How well should librarians understand the editorial process behind Wikipedia’s articles?
In this workshop, we will take a practical approach to the problem and have a look at what goes on behind the scenes, even edit some pages if we feel so inclined. The workshop will be led by Thomas Basbøll, a philosopher and writing consultant who has spent a few years working as a volunteer editor at Wikipedia and even has even been banned from editing certain pages for a time. The overall goal of the workshop is to demystify one of the most accessed sources of knowledge in the world and help librarians decide how to best help people like Philip Roth, and his readers, make sense of its “authority”.
Thomas Basbøll is the resident writing consultant at the Copenhagen Business School Library. He holds an MA in philosophy from the University of Copenhagen, and a PhD from the Copenhagen Business School. He works closely with students, teachers and researchers in their attempts to master “the craft of research” and is an avid blogger (blog.cbs.dk/inframethodology/). 
Co-creating libraries? Who should be drawing the map of the library landscape?
No full textKEYNOTE SPEECH.
Co-creation is receiving increasing interest as a way to involve users in the design and development of goods and services in many areas of life, including libraries. The concept of co-creation challenges established roles and relationships between “producers” and “consumers” of services by suggesting that neither the producers nor the consumers are able to create appropriate services alone, rather services should be co- created, i.e. created together. Thus, while co-creation as a term is new, the basic idea is not. It draws on normative ideals with an impressive intellectual heritage, such as democratic citizenship and civil society.
In his talk, Christian will sum up on what we know about co-creation and discuss its relevance for the library landscape. The discussion centers around the question: Who should be drawing the map of the library landscape? 
FRILUX-ing: the new verb at the University of Oslo Library
No full textNew practices and innovation are changing the culture at the University of Oslo Library. This has resulted in consistently using user experience/UX methods to put the user needs at the very center when new services are developed.
The paper will outline why there is a need of a UX strategy at a leadership level in service and user centric organizations, like academic libraries, and show the value of UX as a competitive advantage. Our case study is from a Norwegian University Library, which has evolved over a period of six year to now be at the forefront in Scandinavia when it comes to using UX into the academic library. Thanks to the support of he Norwegian National Library and the continued efforts of many “UX-librarians” at our library, we are now using design tools in different contexts to create user-friendly services. UX has evolved over time and staff now uses it as an active part of different practices in the organization. In addition, the leadership has included the use of UX-methods in projects in their strategic plan for the library to ensure that the user perspective is taken in account in the services delivered by the library. In this paper we will also explain why we do not have a UX group, and why we instead use a hub approach to gather different, but relevant, staff for each project. Findings, like relevant activity in the organization or new services, will be presented. Furthermore, the paper will give a long term perspective on the use of UX, emphasizing the need for constant evolvement (Gasparini & Culén, 2017), user research and ethnography (Gasparini, 2015a) in order to enhance the user experience of the library (Gasparini, 2015b). Finally we wish to introduce Frilux (www.frilux.no). Frilux is a platform for sharing UX experience. We will outline how we have arrived at this new platform, why we wish to share it with other libraries, and why Frilux is a useful tool for libraries who want to:
• Apply UX and Design Thinking (Brown, 2008)for library development• Use UX methods when working together in the organization across subjects and system• Share their experiences with others• Meet like-minded
ReferencesBrown, T. (2008). Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84–92.Gasparini, A. (2015a). A Holistic Approach to User Experience in the Context of an Academic Library Interactive System. In A. Marcus (Ed.), Design, User Experience, and Usability: Interactive Experience Design (pp. 173–184). Springer International Publishing. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20889-3_17
Gasparini, A. (2015b). Perspective and Use of Empathy in Design Thinking (pp. 49–54). Presented at the ACHI 2015, The Eighth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions. Retrieved from http://www.thinkmind.org/index.php?view=article&articleid=achi_2015_3_10_20121
Gasparini, A., & Culén, A. (2017). Temporality and Innovation in Digital Humanities: The Case of Papyri from Tebtunis. Interaction Design & Architectures(s) IxD&A, (34), 161–18
NVivo courses in the library: Working to create the library services of tomorrow
Get PDFIn 2017, we started a project with the goal of offering a new service to academic staff and PhD candidates at the NTNU University Library: courses and guidance in the use of NVivo, a software to alleviate the workload in structuring and analysing qualitative research data.
Such software is useful for a plethora of subjects, like geography, anthropology, sociology, but also subjects like art history. Faculty members and PhD-candidates at NTNU have expressed enthusiasm when contacted about future courses in NVivo. Some employees have experience with NVivo, while others have tried to make their own tools and systems for analysis to fulfil their needs. Based on their feedback, experiences and valuable suggestions, we will offer the course in the fall 2018, either as a standalone library course or as a joint venture with one or more departments in the Humanities and Social Sciences faculties.
Our article will focus on how we have identified a new skillset and how we developed a new course for our patrons in close cooperation with them. In our article we will walk you through our ongoing project. We are very interested in feedback and hope to spark a discussion on the creation of new services in the libraries.  
“Students Can Write!”: How Can Students Explore and Improve their Writing by Using Different Academic Genres, Sources and Voices?
Get PDFOne purpose of this article is to shed light upon the concept of voice in writing, related to genres and sources in humanities. Another purpose is to participate in the academic discussion on voice. We want to raise awareness about the use of voice, in general, among students and supervisors. We want to inspire and motivate students to voice their texts explicitly and naturally – by using different genres and by entering into dialogue with central sources. Such sources can be used to create new meaning and for sense making, but they do not carry a given answer (Dervin, 1999; Holliday & Rogers, 2013).
The variation and complexity of voice is present in the variety of sources students find and use, such as articles, textbooks, dissertations, interviews, films, pictures, etc. Voices are explicit or implicit in all kind of sources used. Voices emerge as authoritative and experienced within academia, for instance in textbooks and articles. Voices may be creative and inviting. Some are attractive and believable, others hesitant or uncertain, as voices in many texts written by students.
Students, at all academic levels, express insecurity when working with academic writing and genres. However, by analysing and practicing different academic genres and by attending to voice(s) in others’ texts, students are empowered to explore genres and sources and to voice their own texts. By using and entering into dialogue with various sources, students make choices about how to present and interact with sources. In these ways, students develop their voices and improve their texts.
Our theoretical point of departure deals with voice, dialogue (Elbow, 2007; Bakhtin, 1986) and the use of sources combined with the search for information (Dervin, 1999; Holliday & Rogers, 2013). We analyse and compare two examples of the use of sources in academic texts, in order to show how texts representing two genres, use voices and sources in different ways. We present supervisors’ guidance strategies, representing supervisors’ voices. We – and supervisors – mention students’ general challenges with academic writing. Finally, we present dialogic strategies and propose a new dialogic strategy. This new strategy combines and unites reading and writing in different genres, drawing on and entering into dialogue with central sources, with different and clear ways of voicing; explicit and implicit voicing. Our dialogic strategy – and other intended dialogic strategies – can be used by students and all supervisors who assist students in writing, when dealing with voice(s) and sources.
 
Unboxing co-creation with students: Potentials and tensions for academic libraries
Get PDFCo-creation has received increasing interest as a way of develop products and services in collaboration with customers and clients. Recently, co-creation has been introduced in higher education; however, there is no general agreement about what this entails, and while the concept of co-creation has been used in a number of differing contexts, descriptions tend to focus on potentials only and not the tensions inherent in this kind of collaboration.
In this paper we describe a conceptual model for co-creation with students and explore the potentials as well as the tensions inherent in co-creation with students at academic libraries. Through a case study at The Royal Danish Library, Aarhus University Library we develop a conceptual model for co-creation with students that identifies the key aspects of co-creation with students and indicates its key potentials and tensions
Fifteen minutes of data: to approach complex matters in easy ways
No full textThe concept Fifteen minutes of data (Datakvarten) started during spring 2017. We saw a growing need to engage librarians with data, research data and related issues, and with the creation of our digital lab we got the final incentive. However, it is a new area to many and can be complex, so there was some hesitation and reluctance amongst our colleagues. This initiative aimed to integrate it in a nice and easy way to our daily work. We wanted to develop a competence on the subject within our whole unit but needed to fit the learning process into already busy schedules.
The fifteen minutes of data happened on our regular unit meetings, occurring every other week. Workshop sessions were mixed with lectures and seminar methods to engage everyone in different ways. We tried to follow a logic path in pic of topics, to start with the basics and step up the complexity bit by bit. Topics could be about what data really is, PSI (Public sector information), visualisation, data literacy and data formats. The year ended up with a quiz to repeat the most important. We had a logotype and used a special jingle to introduce each session, which was much appreciated.
It was important to meet the whole unit, with different previous knowledge and interest. Fifteen minutes is not a long time, but we can conclude that it was worth the effort and planning time – it went well and the concept will continue throughout 2018. With the presentation we want to highlight the concept and encourage others to try it, but also raise questions about what every librarian should know and master about data. What trends do you see? What lies ahead