Nordic Journal of Information Literacy in Higher Education
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Bringing Research Data Management to Academic Libraries
No full textModern research institutions are faced with rapidly increasing challenges imposed by data-driven science and have to deal with new demands from funding agencies and publishers regarding open access to research data as well as from the Code of Conduct for Research Integrity on reproducibility of results. In reply to these requirements, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has adapted a two-fold strategy of bringing together decision-makers, relevant support units in the administration and researchers from all departments for the task of designing policies and services in alignment with common traditions in the different fields of research. This mixed “bottom-up” / “top-down” approach ensures that best practices for research data management can be implemented in the daily routines of employees in a practical and supportive way while ensuring that the researchers can live up to all relevant administrative, legal and ethical standards.
In this presentation, we will show how DTU Library has taken over a central position in this process by investigating the needs and demands from researchers in the different fields, drafting procedures and guidelines for research data management and establishing support functions and training for all aspects of the data life cycle. Within this new and complex area, the creation of new positions for research data management at the library in addition to an optimal utilization of existing resources and knowledge has been crucial for building up the necessary expertise and thus for the success of the strategy.
AuthorsFalco Jonas Hüser, PhDProject Officer – Research Data Managementemail: [email protected] 0000-0001-9645-6691Paula Maria Martinez Lavanchy, PhDProject Officer – Research Data Managementemail: [email protected] 0000-0003-1448-091
Editorial
Get PDFThis special issue of the Nordic Journal of Information Literacy in Higher Education summarizes the Conference Creating Knowledge IX held in Vejle, Denmark, June 6-8, 2018
Reference Management Tools - Same, Same but Different
No full textReference management is an essential part of academic practice, for staff and students alike, and software to support reference management has grown into a standard, almost universal, service across Higher Education institutions around the world.
The market is huge and the solutions plentiful. Some are free and others very pricey, some are extremely basic while others offer very advanced features. So how does one decide which software to run with?
In this workshop, we will explore four popular RM tools that all do the same basic jobs (i.e. store data and support the implementation of reference regimes) but on top of that also offer different and unique features, collaborative, organisational, or compositional.
The tools in focus are: Citavi, Endnote, Mendeley, & Zotero.
This workshop is an opportunity for everybody interested in software-based reference management, seasoned users as well as curious newcomers, to explore as a group and discuss selected solutions, to share best-practice experiences, and, hopefully, to understand more clearly what is gained and what is missed when institutions opt for one universal software solution at the expense of others. 
Co-redefining and co-creating Academic literacies in PhD education: Insights from a project at Umeå University Library, Sweden
No full textOur presentation discusses the practices and findings from a PhD workshop series at the Academic Resource Centre, Umeå University Library, Sweden. The partnership between librarians, writing tutors/researchers in supporting PhD research has recently become a new reality with Information Literacy courses offered as tools for resources and searching (Hassani, 2015; Paasio & Hintikka, 2015; Garson,2016). The insights from our course contribute to this literature by re-conceptualizing “academic literacy”, including Information Literacy, in doctoral education.
Adopting Academic Literacies (Lea & Street, 1998, 2006) as our workshops’ underlying framework, we propose literacy beyond individual, transferable cognitive skills of writing and reading. Rather, it is an interrelated, dynamic, and situated set of knowledge, skills, and personal attributes that help PhD students acculturate into disciplinary discourses, the academic community, and wider social contexts.
Our course approaches literacy holistically as comprising Research competence, Information literacy, and Academic English, with consideration to social processes (power, identity, and authority). The workshops cover critical reading, the literature review, writing abstract, communicating research and writing papers, but the PhD students are also encouraged to make sense of their writing by having critical, inquiry-based reflections about themselves, academia, and social discourses.
The results from the first three workshop seasons emphasize knowledge co-creation – between academic librarians and researchers, and between workshop instructors and PhD students, as one key principle in developing academic literacies. The findings indicate that Information Literacy can be seen beyond tools and resources but rather a springboard that stimulates PhD students’ critical thinking in their becoming researchers. The positive feedback from the participants also gives the rationale for the expanding roles of the library (Delaney and Bates, 2018). These workshops have strengthened our belief that collaboration is one important strategy for librarians and writing tutors/researchers to acquire the skills of the future.
Authors
Mai Trang Vu, PhD, works at the Academic Resource Centre, Umeå University Library, and Department of Language Studies, Umeå University, Sweden, [email protected].
Magnus Olsson, Academic Librarian, Academic Resource Centre, Umeå University Library, Sweden, [email protected].
References
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.
Garson, D. S. (2016). Doctoral students becoming researchers: An innovative curriculum. Nordic Journal of Information Literacy in Higher Education, 8(1).
Hassani, A. E. (2015). The role of Information Literacy in higher education: An initiative at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. Nordic Journal of Information Literacy in Higher Education, 7(1).
Lea, M. & Street, B. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157–72.
Lea, M. & Street, B. (2006). The ‘Academic literacies’ model: Theory and applications. Theory into Practice, 45(4), 368–77.
Paasio, A-L, Hintikka, K. (2015). An Information Literacy course for doctoral students: Information resources and tools for research. Nordic Journal of Information Literacy in Higher Education, 7(1)
NTNU Academic Writing - developed with UX
No full textIn spring 2017, the University Library of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) launched VIKO, the redesigned tool for fostering information literacy and academic writing skills.
The digital and technological development as well as new requirements for information literacy and academic writing skills have made it necessary to revise this tool.
A working group at NTNU University Library developed and carried out an electronic survey to map specific needs of students, teachers, and researchers. We involved our users in developing our information literacy tool in order to give them a more useful user experience. We asked the following questions: Is information about academic writing something you need? Where do you go to find information about this? What kind of content do you desire? The answers suggested that “Yes!” this was something both students and teachers wanted. They were eager to get all the information they needed in their studies in one place.
Results of this survey and additional depth interviews with students and staff have been the starting point for both the updated content and the new graphical design of VIKO. To accommodate the wish of having all information in one place, all content is now placed on the University Intranet together with all other information relevant for the students. A page listing relevant topics helps students navigate in the content relating to academic writing.
The content of the redesigned tool is structured into four topics: defining a research topic, finding sources, structuring your text, and using and citing sources. We know that people have different ways of learning, so offering content for different learning styles like visual learning, auditory learning, and read/write learning will contribute to improving the learning outcomes
Creating new digital tools through co-creation activities with students
No full textDo we as librarians really know what students at our universities need to develop their information literacy? Yes, to some extent, but not necessarily completely. In Spring 2018, two librarians at Aalborg University Library have joined forces with two student project groups to explore the students’ views on what they need and how that corresponds with our knowledge and professional experience of what it takes to become information literate. We also focus on how best to accommodate these different needs in terms of digital tools.
Teaching activities at Aalborg University are based on problem-based learning (PBL). The students work in groups with projects focusing on real problems, and they are responsible for their own learning. Thus, in our partnership with the two project groups, the students are the driving force in the development, and we are collaborators in their process. One group is exploring the idea of developing a knowledge-sharing tool for use in project-based group work. The other group focuses on developing a tool that can support the process of information searching.
In our presentation, we will focus on the students’ ideas on how to create relevant tools for students, the actual tools, and our experience with engaging in co-creation-processes with students. Our co-creation processes are defined as an equal partnership with the students. However, although we have defined the scope of our partnership, we do not provide the solution. Our co-creation processes and their outcome are characterized by being deliberately unpredictable in order to further innovative ideas and creative thinking.
 
Turning a library into a skill center for scientific information and knowledge management
No full textIn the past, library users had to come to the library. Today, the library has to approach their possible clients, with interactions and services that prove the value of the engagement, especially in higher education. Libraries must be recognized and acknowledged as skills centers for dealing with scientific information.
Since 2013, we have gradually transformed our library into a multifunctional learning space, but also into a center that scouts, evaluates and selects information management solutions for life sciences and chemistry, develops own solutions and keeps their patrons tuned to the latest developments. We reach out to our clients in multiple ways. We raise awareness for selected new tools and databases through Infocus, a personalized e-mail newsletter, which is created based on users’ interest profiles. Infocus is complemented by Infozine, a magazine for users of scientific information, which is sent to all members of the departments we serve and also to external subscribers. Community building is also done through various F2F outreach formats, classical courses that are part of bachelor and master students’ curricula, and courses with workshops for PhD students. There are also new formats such as Coffee Lectures (10-min presentations on tools, databases and services) or Menu Card Seminars that are tailored to the needs of an individual research group. Through these intensified interactions, we, in turn, learn a lot about current research processes and problems and thus understand better our client’s information needs
NVivo – an Introduction
No full textAre you curious about the possibilities of giving courses in Nvivo in your library? In this workshop, we will give a brief overview of the software, and show some basic operations in the program. The goal for the workshop is that participants get a good understanding of what the software can (and cannot) do. The workshop is aimed at users with little or no experience in using Nvivo or other CAQDAS software.
The workshop will briefly cover:· Starting a new project· Importing text, video/sound, pictures and social media data· Pros and cons to different methods· Basic analysis of data· Presenting your data and analysis· Q and A
You can bring your own computer with Nvivo installed. This is not mandatory, feel free to join us with or without your computer! It is not necessary to listen to our previous presentation (Track Session 2A) to participate in the workshop
Knowledge and competence for a networked world
No full textKEYNOTE SPEECH.
The world of today may be viewed as networked, both socially and technologically, with characteristics such as globalization, mobility of people across contexts, bottom-up user involvement, interweaving of physical and virtual contexts, and general pervasiveness of ICT.
In her talk, Nina analyzes the competence demands which are posed on citizens in a networked world. She argues for a view of knowledge as a unity of experiential, practical, and propositional aspects, realized concretely in relation to the demands of the situation, yet points out that in a networked world, people are continuously required to use knowledge, learned in one setting, in new contexts. This raises the question of how people transform and resituate knowledge across contexts.
Finally, Nina discusses implications of her talk for design for learning the knowledge and competence required. Throughout the talk, she will engage in discussion with participants about the way her heoretical points plays out in library practice and which roles libraries and librarians can have as facilitators of others’ development of knowledge and competence for a networked world
“More than Meets the Eye” - Analyzing the Success of User Queries in Oria
Get PDFDiscovery systems allow academic library users to locate a wider range of resources than previous OPACs. However, actual usage of these systems may still be challenging. The main aim of this research is to get a better understanding of the hurdles users face while searching contemporary library systems.This study utilizes a transaction log analysis approach, using popular and zero result queries datasets gathered from the statistics module of a library discovery system. It explores what types of queries users perform, how successful the queries are, and examines underlying reasons for unsuccessful queries. To our knowledge, this is the first academic paper to use data originating from built-in transaction logs of the Oria library discovery system.The analysis shows that queries are often curriculum-related: we could pinpoint a relation with curriculum for 58% of the popular queries, and 28% for the zero result searches. A vast majority of popular queries refer to books, databases and journals, and over half of the queries used the title to locate a resource. 20% of the popular queries turned out to be unsuccessful. Zero result queries typically involve long queries, and in many cases consist of pasted reference citations.Our conclusion is that the examined discovery system is rather sensitive. Whilst this suggests the importance of increasing users\u27 information search skills, it also points to the need for enhancing discovery systems and their underlying metadata. Furthermore, due to the prominence of curriculum-related queries, a better integration of curriculum materials ought to be achieved