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:

As part of my summer Fellowship in ETS, I'm collaborating with Digital Commons staff to present a workshop on digital storytelling and library research.  The workshop is a precursor to the Learning Design Summer Camp, and is simply a great opportunity to discuss student multimedia creation, copyright and fair use, and information / technology / media literacies in an interactive environment.

Following is the workshop info (including registration link) that Allan Gyorke sent out today.  Hope you can join us!

At our first meeting today about the TLT Faculty Fellow digital literacy acquisition project, we discussed the concept of information literacy, and how it embeds within the multimedia creation process.

As our work begins, I'm collecting general works on information literacy to provide a background for the team.  In the process, I found a recent report with some interesting findings on undergraduate students and the research process.

The University of Washington Project Information Literacy Progress Report, by Drs. Alison Head and Michael Eisenberg, looks at the challenges undergraduate students face finding information for course assignments and personal needs.

The progress report focuses on the issue of "context"---specifically, how students attain context during the research process, in the following forms:

--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.

These contexts combine to create the student experience throughout the research process.  What's not addressed in the paper (but which could also be identified) are the affective, emotional skills that students need to move successfully between contexts and successfully navigate research for course assignments.

Some interesting findings in the progress report:

The tendency to procrastinate occurred most frequently among students enrolled at research
institutions. (Color me unsurprised by this one.) This was explained as occurring because students had access to such large online collections that they could always find "something to cite."

Students from smaller institutions began their research sooner rather than later, following a more traditional process of gathering sources from ProQuest, etc... and even requesting materials via interlibrary loan.  Is this because these students were more likely exposed to course-related library instruction in their smaller setting?  This problem alone would make an interesting comparison study between University Park and other Penn State campuses.  The report also notes that students in smaller schools viewed faculty (and librarians) as more helpful and accessible.

I love this quote: "Findability was often the most intimidating part of course-related research."  Students consistently reported trouble finding what they were looking for, online or physically in the library.

In nearly three quarters of students surveyed, their research began with Wikipedia---particularly for the value in gaining an idea of the big picture surrounding a topic, and for assistance in learning the language and terms of a topic area.  One student aptly describes Wikipedia as "A great place to start, and a horrible place to end."

The contexts identified in this report could provide a structure for placing information literacy outcomes within student assignments.   To see how our work on this project and others related to digital literacy progress throughout the summer and beyond, feel free to follow the project's wiki page.

I've been thinking lots lately about the Libraries digital collections---for two reasons. 

1)  We're currently in the process of hiring (and I'm chairing the search committee for) a new Digital Collections Curator in the Libraries.

2)  I'm in the very exciting phase of actively planning for my upcoming Faculty Fellowship in ETS.  (Hooray!)

It's funny how things in life often fall into place.  When we began the search for the Digital Collections Curator, I knew the position's relevance to our current collections, to the Libraries web presence, to the Libraries' relationships with other digital and scholarly initiatives and to another newly created (and currently in the search process) position for an ITS/Libraries Digital Architect.

What I didn't think about right away was the Digital Curator's importance with regard to library instruction and information literacy.  Relevant and remarkable collections, in print, online---wherever they are, are wonderful to have.  But if the riches of the collections are not integrated into the curriculum, what is their impact and overall importance?

The Digital Bridges project at Columbia University helps faculty and librarians connect digital collections within the curriculum.  This is the embodiment of what I've been turning over in my head lately---a mechanism for connecting archival and other online library collections with student assignments, including online media creation.

One of the things I hope to work on during my time as a Fellow is integrating Libraries' held digital collections (including streaming audio, images, and archival materials) into the flow of student media creation.   The fogginess of copyright and fair use have discouraged the use of these materials in the past, and in some respects, have disconnected Libraries' digital collections from this process.  Compounding this difficulty is, in the words of the Digital Bridges project:

"Today's students enjoy, on one hand, an abundance of information--an abundance enabled by a historic convergence of technology, information architecture, and innovative efforts to disseminate the products of human inquiry in newly available ways. On the other hand, they learn in a networked environment prone to distraction, hype, and even hostility to curated or edited information, in which an increasingly dynamic 'participation' can be framed as oppositional to authoritative material."

What a great challenge this is---to bring digital collections within the stream of instruction, much as we have done with print collections in the past.  How lucky I am to have two opportunities to participate in and effect change in this process. 

One of the tenets of the Digital Bridges program captures the lasting effect of this need beautifully.  Excellent student work is in itself 'worthy of collection' and contributes to a knowledge base for future students, faculty and the general public.  What better way to build and integrate our collections for the future?

Earlier this month, the CogDog (aka Alan Levine) came to Penn State to talk with us about 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story.

I know I wasn't the only person in the audience entranced with his use of Cooliris in his presentation.  It was gorgeous, slick, and just very cool.  I came away determined to find a way to make it work for myself.

Of course, because my technical skills are essentially nil (I've blown up and put back together this blog more times than I can count), I couldn't do it the way Alan recommends.  Let's just say that it involved editing an rss feed.  I really couldn't even conceive of what I was supposed to do.

But I found a workaround!  So, if you are technologically challenged like me, but love the overall look and feel of Cooliris, here's a way to show a powerpoint presentation in Cooliris.  It looks neat (you'll have to trust me---I can't embed the thing here).

Here's what you need to do:

1.  Install the piclens plugin for powerpoint (it converts your slides to a format cooliris can read)

2.  When your .ppt is complete, save it, and then convert it using the piclens plugin (it will appear under your add-ons).

3.  One of the files created as a result of your conversion will be called 'index.html'.  Right click on the file, and select 'open with...Firefox'.  Once the file is launched in Firefox, click on the Cooliris icon in the corner of your browser.

4.  Voila!  Cooliris powerpoint!  It is beautiful and slick.  I am not so sure if links to web resources will work using a file locally like this (haven't tried that yet).

5.  If you want to be really smooth, combine this with Portable Firefox, and you'll have a Cooliris presentation fully packaged and ready to go on your flash drive.

P.S.  If you can parse out Alan's original method so that it makes more sense to the tech-challenged like me--let me know.  I'd love to be able to create a file that I could simply access on the Web more seamlessly.