I am back at work today after six months away on sabbatical.  Hooray for me!  Okay, not really.

The newest Project Information Literacy progress report is out: "Lessons Learned: How College Students Find Information in the Digital Age."  The report details the findings from a survey of over 2300 college students from across the U.S.  (I blogged about the previous progress report here.)

Like the previous report, a portion of the newest study focuses on the typology of how students achieve 'context' within the research process.  The Project identifies four contexts that students cover as they research a topic:

--Big picture context---Selecting a topic, narrowing down a topic effectively, understanding the overall background and landscape of a research topic.

--Language context--Understanding the terms and vocabulary of a specific subject area.  This could also include brainstorming appropriate keywords for use in the research process, and understanding the context of specific keywords (or subject headings) in online databases.

--Situational context---Understanding how information fits within the parameters of the assignment, the research topic, the professor's expectations.

--Information gathering context---The act of finding, evaluating, using and citing research sources for course assignments.

Most interesting to me in the latest study was the finding that students are achieving these contexts (at one level of proficiency or another), but with a different set of resources than librarians have typically recommended.

Much of this centers around how students achieve 'big picture context.'  In the report, the authors provide an example of a traditional library research guide, which recommends consulting trustworthy, authoritative sources first, as a way of gaining understanding about a topic.  (Encyclopedia Britannica, anyone?)  This is model that every librarian knows and loves---I wrote a textbook chapter for CAS 100 carefully explaining this process for students back when I first started work at Penn State.

What the newest study found, (and what we all know from our students) is that students no longer go to authoritative sources (e.g., subject encyclopedias) first for that big picture context.  They consult course readings first (wise, time saving strategy), then turn to the Internet (and of course, most frequently, Wikipedia.)  To pull a quote from the report:

"All in all, the librarian approach is one based by thoroughness, while the student
approach is based on efficiency." (p. 20)

The entire research process is less static and more organic, evolving as the student gains more understanding of the topic.  This is a perfect illustration of the way that the student research process has changed with the availability of web-based information.  This change alone can inform future iterations of the ACRL Information literacy standards.  While the current standards reflect the older model of identifying the credibility of sources earlier in the research process, newer standards (such as the AASL learning standards) do not adopt this static model, and instead embed inquiry, critical thinking, and the evaluation of information throughout the entire research process.

There's much more to consider in the report, including recommendations for building stronger connections between library resources, librarians and the curriculum.

Last week, I had a great time presenting with Anu Vedantham during a webcast hosted by the Blended Librarian Online Learning Community.  We discussed digital literacies, the changing face of information literacy, and digital storytelling.  I also shared some of the results from the first iteration of our Faculty Fellowship research project survey, and compared them with the recent ECAR IT survey results.  We had over 100 librarians in attendance, and it was a terrific discussion! 

If you participated, thank you for joining us!  If you weren't able to attend, the webcast is archived via the Blended Librarian web site (you have to join the Learning Times Library community in order to see it).  

The slides from my portion of the presentation are below: (links to all of my presentation materials--including cited articles--are available here.)

Below are just two of the Nutrition 360 PSAs that are starting to appear on YouTube. It's exciting to see the culmination of the students' projects.

P.S. You know you're a librarian when complete citations from good sources at the end of a video completely make your day. :)

I'm participating in a webcast with John Shank, Steven Bell, and Anu Vedantham on "Digital Literacy, Digital Storytelling and The Role of The Academic Librarian"
This webcast takes place on Tuesday, November 10th @ 3pm Eastern.

Here's the event description (taken from the LearningTimes web site):
An emergent trend in higher education today is the ever-increasing number of faculty who are allowing students to create video and multimedia projects as an alternative to the traditional research paper. This session will explore the current and future roles academic libraries and librarians should play in this environment. The topics covered in this session are: digital literacy and the librarian's role, working effectively with faculty on assignment design, and digital storytelling & video assignments and the academic library's support role.

Please consider joining us for the discussion!

To register for the webcast, you'll need to create a new user account with the LearningTimes Network: http://www.blendedlibrarian.org/join.html
Once your account is approved, you'll be able to register for the event.

(Bureaucracy, I know, but I promise the event will be worth it!)  :)

I am spending the fall in Ottawa where the media is chock full of stories about the H1NI vaccine, the swarms of Canadians trying to get the vaccine, and the general futility of the entire situation.  There are even people advertising to wait in line for vaccination wristbands, for a fee.

I tried hard not to become inflamed or influenced by the media coverage, but it was hard to resist it.  Eventually, I caved in and decided to go wait in line for a bracelet that would qualify me and my kids for vaccination appointments at a clinic.  (As an aside, how wonderful is it that I can get vaccinated here, even though I am not a permanent Canadian resident?  I love Canada.)

At 7 am. on a Saturday, I drove in pouring rain to a clinic on the outskirts of Ottawa.  There were hundreds of people already in line---some had been there since 1 am.  I joined the line, and waited under my umbrella for 45 minutes.  Throughout the wait, workers gave periodic updates---that the bracelets for that day's appointments were almost gone, and that we (meaning the people who had not been waiting in line since the pre-dawn hours) would probably be out of luck.  No one budged from the line.  The rain continued to pour down on us.

After an hour in line, we received the news that the bracelets were indeed gone.  Cold and soaking wet, I made the drive home, sad that I had wasted the morning with no tangible, positive outcome for my family.   

I came home and started researching the situation further, to see if there was a way around the mess of waiting in line at the clinics.  The Ottawa Public Health site has a great, updated page, with (voila!) a Twitter feed.  The feed is updated consistently, giving wait times, and even letting people know when there are no lines at specific clinics and shots available.

Within an hour of following the public health Twitter feed, I learned of a clinic that had no lines and spots available immediately.  We all piled in the car, and had our shots within a half an hour.  Twitter win!

The next day, the paper was again filled with stories of Canadians waiting in line for vaccinations, with thousands of residents being turned away.  Following the public health Twitter feed, I could see that there will still clinics with periodic spots available throughout the day.

It's a great example of the new power (and still relatively untapped use) of social media.  If more Canadians were using real-time, social information (like Twitter) rather than static media (like print newspapers), lines and crowds at clinics could be better managed and directed. I feel lucky that I was able to mobilize and use this information.  I feel sad for all of the Canadians who, without the benefit of this information, will continue to wait in line for their immunizations.   

I am working on two projects right now---a book chapter on the importance of environmental scanning in public services librarianship and a research study on student digital literacy acquisition.

ECAR just released the 2009 Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, and there are many aspects of the report that relate to both of my current projects.  Information literacy, use of technology in the classroom, and student adoption of mobile technologies (and higher ed's responsiveness to this trend) are just some of the area covered in the report.  I'll start with what this report shares relevant to environmental scanning, future trends, and libraries.

Environmental scanning is a powerful tool for gathering critical and strategic information relevant to an organization's current initiatives and future direction.  This information can be taken from a variety of sources, including current literature reviews, recent research, interviews and focus groups.  The data is synthesized to create a portrait of the current issues and future trends that must be addressed to be certain that the organization retains effectiveness and relevance.

All that said, documents like the ECAR report are an excellent contributory resource for an environmental scan.  This report focuses on freshman and senior samples at a variety of colleges and  universities.  If I were working on an environmental scan for use in an academic library,  one of the major aspects of this report to use deals with student adoption of mobile devices.

From the report:

Good news for the library web site:  94.6% of student respondents use the library web site on average of once a week.

73% said they were actively using the library web site for their coursework at the time of the survey.  That's more often that course management systems (73%), presentation software (73.5%) or spreadsheets (53.2%). I have not seen robust, reported use like this, well, ever.  Color me surprised.

IM use is on the decline among students (74% report using IM with a median of several times per week) as opposed to 90.3% for social network use and texting (median daily use.)

And a student quote from the report:  "After describing the institution's library
system as "amazing," the student wrote, "I love it how I can send a text message on my
phone to locate the book." (p. 62) 

There's much more to read in the report on the current state of student mobile adoption and use, but I would (from an environmental scanning standpoint, of course) take this as a warning bell for several initiatives:

1)  Design a mobile interface for the library's web site as soon as possible.  (We are currently working on this within the context of the overall redesign of the Penn State Libraries web site.)
The report shows that mobile use is rapidly growing, and will soon be the primary way that many users visit web sites.

2)  Design a mobile app that integrates the library with other university-specific resources just as quickly.  (There was a quote somewhere in the report about the proliferation of commercial apps, and how higher ed. has so far failed to maximize this opportunity to connect with students.)  I know quite a few universities have done this, and we are in the process of it at Penn State.

3)  Start thinking about eventually scaling back on IM-based reference services.  Text messaging is the way for the near future.  It is so interesting to see IM usage receding so quickly.

I'm going to try to post about the IL-related findings as well in a separate post.  If you have any thoughts on the report's findings, environmental scanning, or other things I should do while in Canada, let me know!

Pew released a new report on Twitter users today.  It has some interesting data on who updates their status frequently (or infrequently) and where the user traffic resides for this online activity.

Here are a few points I noted:

Connectedness is a slippery slope: the more devices (laptop, Kindle, iPod, mobile phone) a user owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another similar service to update their status. 

Twitter has a long tail: the top 10% of all Twitter users accounted for over 90% of all tweets.

Adoption increases the likelihood of more adoption: Internet users who already use sites like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn are more likely to also use Twitter: (35% of Internet users).  Users who do not use any other social networking sites are much less likely to use Twitter (6% of Internet users).

I am coming back from beyond (i.e., sabbatical in Canada) to share a report that Lorcan Dempsey discussed on his blog this week.

The Discoverability: Phase One Final Report was produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries (and specifically by a sub-group of Libraries' staff serving on the Libraries' Discoverability Team, which reports to their Web Services Steering Committee.)

This report outlines analysis of current modes of access and discoverability trends for library resources and services, also sharing recommendations to maximize greater user discovery in the future.  Our Web Steering Committee has produced a Tactical Plan, and many of the recommendations in this report back up one of our identified tactics:   "Increase the discoverability and transparency of Libraries resources and services."

Below are the five major trends shared (taken verbatim from the report):

Trend 1:  Users are discovering relevant resources outside traditional library systems.
Google was not driving users to their e-resources (journal articles, etc....)  Instead, users going to e-resources were referred from the A-Z list of journals, PubMed, the catalog, Google Scholar, and citation linker.  Web page referrals most frequently came from Google.  Use of Google Scholar is increasing.

Trend 2:  Users expect discovery and delivery to coincide.
While circulation of library materials has decreased in general at UMN, the number of recalls has exploded (undergraduate requests have increased 296% over stats from five years ago).

Trend 3:  Increasing usage of portable Internet-capable devices.
UMN does not currently track the usage of their site by devices running mobile operating systems.  1.6% of the site's traffic was from unknown operating systems, a portion of which could have been from mobile devices.  The authors state, "There is little reason to expect much traffic from mobile devices when the design of our web pages is not optimized and mobile usability is so poor."  Nicely said.  As a mobile user, I am beginning to wonder about the utility of mobile sites in general, and if an app (such as iStanford) has more utility for your core group of users.

Trend 4:  Discovery increasingly happens through recommending.
This section of the report highlights the importance of exposing collections (both print and digital) through sources like Wikipedia (14.6% of users coming from another site were referred from Wikipedia).  Also mentioned is the importance of affinity strings in building a system that automatically recommends relevant resources to the user, according to their profile.

Trend 5:  Our users increasingly rely on emerging nontraditional information objects.
Blogs, images, video, and data were mentioned in this section (the use of ArtSTOR has greatly increased over the last year at UMN).   The importance of exposing non-print, digital collections is highlighted.  (This is something I'm exploring as part of my sabbatical as well.)

The entire report is truly worth a read, including Appendix B, which lists similar discoverability initiatives and imperatives occurring at peer institutions. 

This week, we held the first Libraries / ETS Digital Literacy workshop as a precursor to the Learning Design Summer Camp.

The workshop had a fantastic attendance (nearly forty people!) and provided a great opportunity to discuss digital literacies, fair use and copyright, and explore multimedia creation in a hands-on environment.  It was a terrific learning experience, and I'm grateful to those who collaborated with me on the workshop (Chris, Hannah, Kim and the DC crew) as well as those in attendance.

At the beginning of the workshop, we did a brief exercise to get everyone started thinking about the skills associated with digital literacies.  The headers 'information literacy' 'technology literacy' and 'media literacy' were posted on large whiteboards in the room.  Participants were given post-it notes, and asked to write down at least one skill that they associated with each literacy, posting them on the whiteboards.

Below are Wordles that reflect the skills our participants associated with each literacy.  It was an interesting exercise, and shows how much cross-over and blending there truly is between information, technology and media literacy:

(all images created by Wordle: http://www.wordle.net)

Information Literacy: