Gig review: Information Literacy with Heidi Julien

It's very very fortunate that we were able to arrange an evening seminar and discussion on Information Literacy with Heidi Julien on Wednesday evening.  Much appreciation and thanks must go to Philip Calvert, Dan Dorner, Timothy and anyone and everyone else in the SIM faculty and community who organised for Heidi to talk with us.

To my recollection, I've never attended a discussion on information literacy with a scholar before, and not to my surprise I found Heidi's discussion quite accessible.

Questions raised afterwards when discussion was opened, were very realistic questions, from the practitioners themselves, such as this bit of reality from a librarian at Victoria University,

"Can we call it something else?" [to lure them in] 

(verifying this for accuracy when Twitter is back up)


A great time was had by all, I'm sure.  And I managed to snaffle a colleague at my workplace away from apathy to make the venture into town with me!  Also, I finally met Tom Avery face to face, whom I've been communicating with on the Twitterverse, which was cool.  And of course, lots of networking was had by all.

I must mention that Tom raised a good question in his tweet:

"Is information literacy a social construct?"

(verifying this for accuracy when Twitter is back up)


A valid point that was seconded by others listening in.

One overriding and pertinent question Heidi posed to the group (of 35+) regarded the difference between scholarship in informaiton literacy and what practitioners are wanting out of the research.  Is the information researched usable?  Or is the gap between scholars and practitioners too big?

What are your thoughts?  Tell us what you think

Gig review: Meet the Leaders

Kia ora koutou!

Dude! I should've posted this a while ago, but here 'tis:

A big thank you to all involved - invited and attendees at the Meet the Leaders event on Friday evening.  It was awesome and with thanks to Ross Becker we have some fantastic photos of the event.

Chris Szekely, Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library

Sue Sutherland Deputy Chief Executive, National Library and Acting Director, National Digital Library

Mark Crookston, Senior Advisor, Appraisal, Archives New Zealand and Secretary, Wellington Branch Archives and Records Association of New Zealand

Anahera Mōrehu  Kaiwhakahaere Māori me Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa (Manager Māori and Pasifika Services), University of Auckland and Incoming Tumuaki, Te Ropu Whakahau

Gabrielle and I took part too...

while Laurinda was the bell-ringer looking on...

A great night was had by all.  Thank you to Gabrielle Hikaka and TPK for the venue and fellow committee members principally responsible for putting this together and holding it together on the night - Laurinda :)

Here's to a roadshow of this around the regions!

Peace out

Gig Review: Victoria University SIM Orientation Wellington Fri 26 Feb 2010

Kia ora koutou!

Again, another great event that I'm glad I went to. Lotsa schmoozing and networking went on and met some cool people.

I did not attend the full day that all VUW SIM students attended (involved learning about research and logon's and passwords and all that unnecessary stuff), but I did join in at 3pm when we had guest industry professional speakers talk for 15minutes about how they got to where they are and what they love about what they do.

Guest industry speakers were:

• David Jones (aka DJ) as a representative from Te Roopu Whakahau. DJ is currently the Maori and Pacific Island's Subject Librarian at Victoria University and is doing a great job developing a Maori and Pacific island collection to be housed on the main floor of the central library at Kelburn Campus.
  
  
• Paula, representative from RMAA (Records Management Association of Australasia)
  Totally engaging and entertaining speaker, who says that
  "Building relationships and relationship management will be the most important skill to learn in the Master of Information Studies and your career." Amen!
  
  
• Rachel Esson (a personal favourite of mine), a LIANZA member, and currently head of Research and Learning Services at Victoria University's Library and on the TELsig committee (Tertiary Education Libraries special interest group)
  PLUG --> TELsig workshop 18th March and
  "How to make a difference" Conference in July
  

• Joanna of ARANZ (Archives and Records Association of New Zealand)
  Started at Fletcher Challenge, was there for 10 years and established their archives and now works as an archives and records management consultant and is also doing a Masters in "Maintaining and Sustaining Community Archives".
  
  Quote from Joanna: "Your education is preparing you to enter into any sector of the profession", and this was reiterated by Alastair Smith in closing the formal part of the day for the students.

And after the speakers, there was scones, cakes, fruit and non-alcoholic liquid to be consumed in the School of Information Management communal area! Fabulous afternoon, well-spent couple of hours out of my day. And by "spent" I mean, time, because it didn't cost anything to attend!

Your grand tour of the major centres was a success Timothy, congratulations. I thoroughly enjoyed this event.

H

Gig review: Twitter Workshop @wcl_library Thu 25 Feb 2010

Kia ora koutou

Just have to say that this was an awesome workshop and I'm glad that the committee decided to sponsor it. The workshop was held by and at Wellington City Libraries on Victoria Street. I got a lot out of it and am looking forward to more workshops that Magalie Le Gac, an enthusiastic staff member of Wellington City Libraries, facilitates.

The morning session focussed on learning the theory before getting into the application.

Such things covered were:

• How many people are using Twitter? It has a pretty fast growth rate. Here's some stats I found. There's a lot of people tweeting out there! Currently around 6% of the NZ population is on Twitter. 30 Libraries in NZ use Twitter at the moment.
  
  
• There are access issues for libraries in NZ to do with blocking the website. Particular problem for council's as two attendees at the workshop mentioned it was a problem where they worked.
  
  
• Uses for Twitter for Librarians:
  Online Reference
  Professional Development (sharing links to good articles)
  Monitoring library uses
  Disseminating information about the library
  Following useful Twitterers (e.g. @Te_Ara, @NLNZ, @citygalleryWGTN, @NZStuff)
  Marketing Tool
  
  
• Advantages
  
  
• Disadvantages
  
  
• Potential pitfalls
  
  
• Different platforms to use (other than twitter.com)
  Hootsuite
  igoogle gadget
  Tweetdeck
  
  

Now I didn't attend the afternoon session but I hear it was a good hands-on one using self-directed tutorials that Magalie had compiled earlier. Magalie actually included me in the email with the links to these so I could go through them and "self-direct" myself in learning about Twitter, but I think I'm good for now.

If anyone would like to share their experience of the afternoon session that'd be way cool if you'd comment on this post!

Hope you enjoyed it, and again, I'm really glad that LIANZA Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui decided to sponsor this event/workshop. Well worth it. Cheers Magalie!

Hana