RSC West Midlands Learning Resources Blog

RSC Webinar series for library and LRC staff

2012-01-31T12:51:00.002Z

I've joined up with RSCs Northern and North-West, as well as our colleagues in the East Midlands, to plan a series of four webinars over the next few months, which I hope you'll be interested in attending, or perhaps presenting to.

By timojazz on Flickr

The dates and topics are:

5th March Promoting your service effectively
29th March Successful curriculum integration and support
9th May Getting the most out of induction
30th May Benchmarking for libraries and LRCs

Bookings will open for the 5th March event in the next 10 days. Please contact me, if you have any questions about the content of the sessions, or have something in particular you'd like to share with others, on any of the topics.

The sessions are a great opportunity to meet colleagues from several regions online and I'm sure we're going to learn a lot from each other!

Events, events, events!

2011-12-20T15:08:00.000Z

It’s been another bumper year for the RSC with a wide rangeof events, both face-to-face and online, appealing to many different roles. Ifyou’d like to re-visit the resources from a recent event you attended, or oneyou couldn’t get to, most have an Event Wiki, whereyou can access the event resources.

Recently, I've been involved with our December DigitalLiteracy event and the Introduction to e-learning, where Idelivered a hands-on session on social bookmarking with Diigo, I wouldrecommend the resources from both those events.

Coming up

Measuring Impact

Next year we're running a pair of workshops focusing onmeasuring the impact of library & LRC services, with a respected trainer andconsultant from Lancaster University. There are still a few places left onthese events which take place on 16th Jan and 27th Feb, 2012

Webinars (speakers required)

The next two webinars for library/LRC staff are in February and March and the topics are below. If you feel you'd like to share any insights of your own during the sessions, do get in touch with me.

Promoting your service effectively online (22nd Feb)
Successful curriculum integration and support (29th March)

Digital Literacy

Following our successful face-to-face event last week, we are planning an online session in April, where Sarah Knight from JISC will hopefully be joining us, as she was ill and unable to attend the face-to-face session

UK RSC events

If you want a summary of events across the 12 UK RSCs you can visit this link on the JISC RSCs' website. Some events allow bookings from any region, particularly online ones, but you will need to check the terms and conditions for each event.

Have a good Christmas and a happy New Year!

by kfjmiller

Extra help from the RSC

2011-11-11T12:50:00.001Z

The RSC recently launched a new initiative for 2011-12 known as "RSC Assist". We are inviting learning providers to propose short projects (lasting no longer than 3 months to a final outcome), which will benefit from the support of an RSC advisor, who can spend up to a day at your organisation.

As well as assisting you with the project, we would also write a short case study on the activity, or a lessons-learned report, which would benefit other providers with similar aims. We have already had several applications from IT staff and other groups, but I would encourage library staff to also apply and think about any development areas which I could support them on through RSC Assist. There is an application link below for you to use - please also feel free to discuss any ideas with me, before completing the online form.

Application link

Library systems – going open source?

2011-09-28T12:55:00.002+01:00

I attended a seminar last week by PTFS Europe – a company who install and support open source library management software. The most well-known open source systems are Koha (for small to medium libraries) and Evergreen (mainly for library consortia). I was surprised to find the vast majority of the (large) audience from universities and public libraries and a little research suggests few FE colleges have considered the open source LMS option, despite pioneering the use of open source with software such as Moodle.

PTFS understandably wanted to get a positive message out about open source systems, but notwithstanding this, I was impressed by the software I saw and its functionality, as well as the pace of development (6 monthly releases of Koha) and growing community of users. The paid support of PTFS or similar companies (and there are several in the UK) would give you confidence in the stability of the system, with the peace of mind of having technical support, if needed. Could open source library systems be an option for FE and why is interest so limited?

"Koha" is Maori for gift. New Zealand image
by theboywiththethorninhisside on Flickr

Functionality
Koha is entirely Web-based and offers a very wide range of features, including many extras which have been developed by Koha users, or developers at organisations like PTFS. Koha has many worldwide users and its presence in the UK is growing. Staffordshire University recently adopted the system and other high profile libraries have it - for example the Kings Fund and Halton Council library service. If you take a look at an example of the Koha OPAC, you can’t fail to be impressed.

Licensing
“Open source” means that a piece of software’s source code is freely available and any development is made available to all users and developers. There is no charge for the software itself, but unless you are willing to support and develop it in-house, you will need to pay a third party company to install it, migrate data from your old system and provide technical support. Open source library systems certainly shouldn’t be seen as a cheap or free option then.

Costs?
I asked the PTFS people why they hadn’t made inroads into FE and they feel the main reason is cost. Compared to a typical FE college using a system like Heritage, they feel they can’t compete on the annual maintenance charge. They may be right - if anyone has had a quote from PTFS or another company, do get in touch with me.

Sharing your LMS
If your college has recently merged, or is in merger talks, Koha and Evergreen operate in multi-site mode very well. Colleges are also increasingly talking about sharing systems (such as HR, VLE) with other colleges to save money. An open source solution like Koha or Evergreen could fit the bill here, as maintenance costs could be shared, but the individual partners would still have their own LMS and catalogue.

Attending this seminar opened my eyes to the open source option for library systems and the fact that big libraries like Staffordshire University are adopting them says something about their quality and possible future impact. Whether FE adopts open source library technology, still seems to depend unsurprisingly on money, as well as the fact that many libraries are simply happy with their proprietary systems (nothing wrong with that!). Heritage IV from IS Oxford is very dominant in FE and to be fair to them, does a pretty good job for most FE libraries.

Useful links
Koha community website
Evergreen LMS
PTFS Europe
Software Co-op (UK Koha support company)
VU find (open source library resource portal)

Is it time your library was on Facebook?

2011-09-16T15:05:00.000+01:00

A lot of library and LRC staff in our region seem to think so and many already have a presence on Facebook or are thinking about it. I've also helped one college (Warwickshire College) with a planning session, which involved thinking about some of the advantages and also risks involved. In this post, I've included some of the resources I used and some hints and tips I've acquired.

Flag flying in Cambridge Massachusetts,
the birth place of Facebook. By Essygie on Flickr

Why bother?
The chances are, over half your users will be "on Facebook". So having a presence for your library or LRC is a good way to get among them and deliver some positive messages about what you do and what your service has to offer.

A Facebook site is also a good alternative launch page for your e-resources and other Web-based services such as your library OPAC. Facebook also works well as a means to display content from other services you may use, such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter or Delicious.

Viral marketing
Facebook is designed to increase the popularity of pages virally - so if one person likes your pages, people who like them will be aware of what they like and so-on. Provided you get your message correct and the tone right, you can very soon pick up a lot of followers - much more quickly than a static website.

Conversation
The holy grail is to generate some two-way traffic on your pages and encourage users to comment on your services and how they can be improved. This isn't easy and relies on your postings being interesting and adopting the right tone (see tips below).

Facebook Applications
As well as updating users on what's going on in your library, there are a range of additional library-related Facebook Applications which you might want to add, to enhance your Facebook site. Here are a few examples:

What are the risks?
The main risk factor is reputational and anyone contributing to your Facebook page should bear in mind that they are representing your organisation on the Web, with a potentially large readership. It's worthwhile establishing some ground rules and boundaries, to ensure that communication is informal and chatty, without becoming over-personalised.

A stagnant Facebook page is worse than none at all and doesn't give a good impression, so you do need to plan a programme of regular contributions and make sure that at least one (preferably more) members of staff are responsible for maintaining a steady flow of information.

Hints and tips

Adopt an informal, chatty tone with good use of humour. Anecdotes and musings are much more interesting than announcements!
Update the site daily and give several people responsibility for upkeep
Seek approval from your organisation, as well as the support of the marketing department
Set clear aims and objectives about what you want to achieve from the site, but be realistic!
What are the do's and don'ts when adding content? How do you deal with inappropriate comments from users (usually rare)?
How can you measure the impact of your site? For example including it in a student survey.
Involve students in the development of the site. What would they enjoy reading about? What is dull?
Facebook is usually a supplement to formal communication channels, such as websites, VLE etc. Don't forget these need to be maintained too!

Links

Facebook for libraries – article in AmericanLibraries magazine

Includes detailed how-to instructions and tips for gaining followers.

The author's library Facebook page

Mandy Boyle: Facebook for libraries – best practice guide (Powerpoint presentation)

Introduces what Facebook is and what it can do for yourlibrary and your users.

10 great library Facebook pages

Kindles

2011-09-09T14:08:00.000+01:00

By Simply Bike on Flickr

The Amazon Kindle seems to be establishing itself as the leading e-reader and a few colleges are starting to buy these. There are of course many other options (not least tablet devices), including the excellent Bebook and Sony Reader. The RSC has examples of the Kindle and Sony e-reader, if you'd like to borrow one for a short period to try out.

I thought it would be useful to summarise what you can and can’t do with a Kindle from a library point of view, as well as some of the benefits of the Kindle more generally .

I’ve had a Kindle for a few months now and have enjoyed using it, especially as I haven’t had to spend a penny on content, as most of my reading is from out-of-copyright works, which can be freely downloaded from sites such as Project Guthenberg.

This kind of material can also be freely lent to students on the Kindle. However, it isn’t currently possible to lend Kindles containing copyright material within the terms of the Kindle license, although this may be changing soon (see JISC Legal advice below).

Usability
The Kindle is a compact, but robust device with a very clear e-ink screen, which can be read even in bright sunlight. Battery life is excellent and will last for up to a month with wi-fi turned off. Although some of the buttons on the Kindle are rather fiddly, the overall accessibility of the device is good and it includes a good text to speech facility (but not available on all books) and the maximum font size is quite large. Readers can also get an instant definition of an unfamiliar word, which is useful. The Kindle also includes a basic Web browser, which although you wouldn’t want to use this as your sole access to the Web, it is still useful to have.

Lending
The UK Kindle license is designed for personal use and copyright Kindle content must be viewed on the Kindle linked with the original Amazon account used to purchase the e-book, which makes lending impractical. In the US, Amazon have introduced e-book loan within their license terms (anyone can borrow, but you have to be US-based to lend), which is a better model for libraries. There is also a text book rental service available to students – but again not yet in the UK.
A quick trawl of Twitter and various news sites reveals a lot of rumour and speculation that Amazon is on the verge of revising UK licenses to make them more like the US, but there’s been no concrete announcements as yet.

Overdrive are working with public libraries (and at least one college that I know of) in offering their managed lending software, which can be used with a variety of devices (but not yet the Kindle).

JISC Legal advice on Kindle lending: here and here

Other uses of Kindle
The Kindle can do a lot more than display books – have a glance at some of these other usage options:

Send to Kindle:
Install the Send to Kindle Google Chrome plugin and you get a button on your Web browser, which when clicked, sends the content of a website to your Kindle for reading later. A great way of reading lengthy web pages off-line, on the easier-on-the-eye Kindle screen.

Kindle Publishing:
If you are a budding author, Amazon have now introduced direct publishing to the Kindle store:

Not got a Kindle, but have a PC or an I-pad/I-phone?
You can read Kindle e-books using an Apple App or Amazon’s free Kindle for PC software.

Must get free software: Calibre
Calibre is a great piece of free software for your PC and will manage your e-books across multiple devices (and formats) and allow you to turn your Kindle into a feed reader, so you can catch up on the latest content from your favourite newspapers, magazines or blogs.

"Hack" your Kindle – 100 tips and resources
Well worth exploring!

More information

The lis-ebooks JISCmail is a good place to start and is mainly populated by librarians.
JISC e-books for FE project page
E-books in the library Powerpoint. Although American, this sums up many of the issues for libraries well.

Sprucing up your LRC

2011-09-01T09:31:00.002+01:00

With, or without money to spend, the Summer is always a good opportunity to de-clutter and re-organise your library or LRC and if you are lucky, a chance to replace some of that worn and out- of-date furniture, as well as adding new technology.

In early June this year, I visited Kidderminster College to complete a Learning Space Review. This is a short visit and report, which aimed to help Jackie O’Brien and her boss, Jill Edwards (now retired) to re-organise and improve the look and feel of the LRC at the 8-year old college.

I visited the college again last month and was thrilled to see the review report had stirred Jackie’s imagination and perhaps also helped her case in gaining funding for some new furniture and equipment to complete the new look. Here are some photos of what was achieved on a relatively tight budget.

The report recommended improvements to the clarity of signage, as well as removing many low priority signs and notices, which were badly formatted. Two LCD information screens were added (one behind the counter), which can be used for announcements and quick demonstrations of e-resources.

Some un-used furniture and shelving have been removed to achieve a less cluttered look, with more space for users to circulate. The new colour co-ordinated furniture is much more attractive than the old.

The PCs were previously in long rows, which cut the area in two and are now arranged in a more social arrangement, allowing learners the choice of working in groups, or alone.

Display spinners have been used to better display fiction and other materials.

Jackie delivers many library and information skills work shops with learners and the teaching area is now screened from the rest of the library to give more privacy and to avoid distraction

If you'd like a Learning Space Review for your library or LRC, do get in touch with me. If you'd like to get in touch with Jackie about the changes she made, she can be contacted on jo'brien@kidderminster.ac.uk

E-books: how do you get to the top of the league?

2011-08-12T12:05:00.000+01:00

I’ve had a few enquiries from librarians who want to see their college’s position in the JISC e-books for FE usage rankings improve and would like some tips and advice on how to improve e-book and e-resource use. Although you shouldn’t get too hung up about your place in the league table, statistics are a useful tool in planning your strategy for promoting e-resources and giving you an indication of its success, or not.

E-resource usage statistics
Individual e-resources are starting to make available more and more detailed statistics - take the time to interpret these. If individual titles or databases aren’t being used, despite promotion, maybe it’s time to cancel them and consider alternatives? For Shibboleth users, the new Raptor tool is available to help you make sense of usage – it does need technical input to install it though.

Authentication and launch page
There is plenty of evidence that complicated sign-in procedures, or links buried deep in websites will turn off users to your e-resources. Make signing in as easy as possible and improve the prominence of your e-resource links. It's also worth branding your e-resource collection (why not “e-library” or “library 24/7"?) to raise the profile of the resources you have to offer.

Library OPAC and VLE links
When I’ve contacted contact colleges with high levels of e-book access, it was clear that the high usage rates were often due to just a few copies (or in some cases even pages) being used heavily by many students and had been highlighted by tutors, often with a link from a VLE course page. This underlines the point that it’s vital that tutors are part of your promotional strategy, as many students will only look at material recommended in the classroom as essential reading.

E-resources and e-books are often difficult to search and may be beyond the skills of some learners. To help overcome this, a good step is to ensurethe most appropriate e-books (at least) are catalogued on your library system and visible and clickable through your OPAC. A further step is to tag them with course codes or course titles, so relevant e-content can be found even more easily.

Case studies
A case study from Neath Port Talbot College (thanks to JISC RSC Wales) highlights the importance of library staff awareness of e-resources.
Here the LRC staff focus on up-skilling themselves to gain a detailed knowledge of the resources they have to offer and how they can be used to support teaching and learning. This assists in their face-to-face training and enquiry work, as well as in production of relevant support materials.

In another case study, Hull College focused on providing a critical mass of resources, with potential impact on all subject areas, as well as improving ease of access and a broad promotional strategy, targeted many groups of potential users.

Staff awareness
To promote a “product” you need to understand and believe in it (so the sales people tell us). This is true for e-resources too. One way of improving take up, is to ensure your own staff are familiar with your e-resources and how they could be used by different groups (staff, HE students, vocational students etc.), as well as understanding the variety of different ways they can be accessed and limits on printing etc.

Marketing and promotion tips and tricks
Once you have a reasonably broad collection of e-resources and you've solved any access issues, it's worth having some kind of launch event or promotional push, as well as the day-to-day promotional materials like flyers and shelf "wobblers".

Below are a couple of lists of tips and tricks you may like to try. Finally, one college in our region is experimenting with QR codes, which are printed on the shelves and books themselves, to indicate an e-book is available. By scanning with a mobile device, the QR code links directly to the online version of the book.

8 Step Plan (thanks to Chris Skerrow of Hull College)
Tips List (thanks to Scott Hibberson, RSC Yorkshire & Humber)

JISC MediaHub - now rully released

2011-08-05T09:46:00.000+01:00

JISC MediaHub is the new multimedia platform from JISC, which brings together a range of collections previously available separately (such as Education Image Gallery and Newsfilm Online). MediaHub offers a choice of content, including freely available material, subscription only and links to content from sites outside MediaHub itself.

Francesco Troina (http://www.phototroina.com)/GovEd Communications (http://www.goved.co.uk)

MediaHub hosts a lot of content, including audio, video and images, but fortunately there are several ways of searching for the content you need, including by subject, by geographical location, using a timeline and by individual collection. You can also sort items by their popularity and using MyMediaHub, view past searches and items you've tagged.

For full access, your organisation requires a subscription to the JISC eCollections service - more details are available here

The Virtual Training Suite – getting a new lease of life

2011-08-02T13:33:00.000+01:00

The Virtual Training Suite (VTS) is a set of 60 short, subject-based tutorials which help students develop their Internet search and evaluation skills and understand the key resources for their subject. Although JISC are no-longer funding the collection from 1st August 2011, agreement has been reached with the company TutorPro, who will retain the content and enhance and develop it for use through mobile devices, such as tablets and smart phones. The newly formatted tutorials can be viewed (including on mobile devices) here.

The tutorials in their current form are also
available for download from the Jorum repository and can be re-purposed and re-used within the terms of a Creative Commons license. The popular Internet Detective tutorial, which teaches generic Internet search and evaluation skills continues to be funded and is available here

It sounds good to me...British Library Archival Sound Recordings

2011-05-09T13:09:00.001+01:00

This is the first of a series of posts highlighting some of my favourite (and I believe most useful for teaching and learning) free resources funded by JISC.

Today, I’m highlighting the British Library Archival Sound Recordings collection, which, though not having the catchiest of titles, is a really inspiring collection of resources, with the potential for use across many subjects.

Picture from stockXchange

What’s in it?
Almost 50,000 recordings including spoken word, environmental, music (classical, jazz, world music), arts, literature and performance. The spoken word content includes fascinating interviews with scientists and historical figures – which could form an interesting component to a history or science lesson. The works of artists and sculptors can be brought to life, when you hear from the artists directly and English Language students may enjoy comparing examples of different dialects from across the UK.

Recorded sounds like these can often bring to life an otherwise dry lesson. The “soundscapes” can take you to a far off location, such as a rainforest at sunrise or a far off sea-shore. What is the dawn chorus? No need to explain – find a recording of this in the collection and simply download and play. Here's a couple of examples:

Dawn Chorus
A Holocaust survivor describes arriving at Auschwitz

The JISC Collections record for the archive explains more about the resource and here's an interesting YouTube video about how the collection was put together.

How can they be used?
Over 23,000 of the recordings can be used by everyone, the rest of the collection is accessible through a free license by FE and HE organisations, covering use for teaching, learning and research. The recordings can be streamed from the site, or downloaded and if you wish, divided into smaller segments.

How do I subscribe?
The British Library license can be obtained by emailing: asr@bl.uk

Finding more resources

The JISC Collections Catalogue is the first port of call for JISC-funded resources
The JISC Digitisation Programme has funded many resources, including the British Library Sound Archive.

Discover-e. What's in it for you?

2011-05-04T14:39:00.000+01:00

Discover-e is our free, two day, online conference and is nearly upon us - taking place on 17th and 18th May. If you haven't booked yet, please do so here.

This year's agenda offers an even wider range of sessions, using Moodle and the Web conferencing tool, Elluminate. As well as the formal sessions, there are also several chances to win a prize, by joining in some of the competitions - the more you take part, the better your chance of winning!

You are welcome to take part in as many of the activities as you wish, but I'd like to highlight a few sessions, which may be of particular interest to library and LRC staff:

17th May, 3:30-4:30 JISC Digital Media: Introduction to screencasting
Screencasting is a great way to explain how to use resources such as library catalogues and e-resource databases effectively - JISC Digital Media will be explaining how it's done.

18th May 11:15-12:15
Moving centre-stage: placing your library or LRC at the heart of teaching and learning
In this session, 3 speakers from East and West Midlands Colleges explore how they're achieving this aim; delegates will also be exploring their own tips and ideas.

12:15-1:15 Making the most of the JISC Collections, update and Q&A
Anna Vernon of JISC Collections will be updating us on the latest resources from JISC and sharing promotional tips for the JISC e-books; there will also be ample time to submit your own queries to Anna

Intellectual property dilemmas

2011-04-20T13:42:00.001+01:00

I recently attended a very good free briefing entitled “Managing and protecting intellectual property and digital dilemmas”, which was run by Eversheds solicitors. I can recommend this session to everyone – it was an eye opener and a useful way of guarding against complacency when it comes to intellectual property; the next sessions are in Leeds and Newcastle.

Below are some of the key messages I took from the session and some resources you might find useful.

By Citizensheep on Flickr

It’s now much easier to break the law and you’re more likely to be caught

Web technologies make it much easier to share your own, and re-use other people’s materials, but also make it easier to infringe copyright. E-learning materials can have many elements, all of which may have a different copyright status (e.g. sound track, images, recordings of students, script etc.) and it can be very difficult to determine who has the rights to what.

Record keeping
As you use different materials and combine them together to create new resources, keep a record of the copyright owners concerned and any permissions (or attempts to gain permission) you get, or licenses which apply. Once a piece of work is completed, it can be very difficult to unpick this information.

Performers’ rights
As library staff, we’re accustomed to copyright issues relating to text-based materials, but it’s easy to overlook other rights, such as those of performers – these become an issue when using video or still images of students or staff.

Permitted acts
If you work in an educational institution, there are some permitted acts, or exceptions in law, but these are tightly defined. Eversheds made the point, that unfortunately the law often hasn’t kept pace with technology, so some of these permissions are quite out of date and therefore of little use:

Fair dealing: use for research and private study, criticism or review, reporting current events
Visually impaired persons
Educational purposes
Libraries and archives [section 18.5 of linked document]

Know your licenses
Learning providers have access to a variety of licensing schemes which they can buy into, but these give only limited additional rights and usually for non-commercial purposes only. These licenses are changing all the time and some are being extended, so it’s worth keeping up to date by subscribing to any newsletters or email alerts from licensing organisations:

By woody1778a on Flickr

Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA)
Educational Recording Agency (ERA)
Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA)
Creative Commons

Use available expertise
This is such as complex subject, it’s essential to use the expertise available (especially if you have responsibility for copyright at your organisation!) and insist on appropriate training for yourself. Your Principal or other Chief Executive usually has final responsibility for legal issues and if unsure, these questions should be referred to him/her to seek legal advice.

Policies
Intellectual property rights touch on many areas of your organisation and shouldn’t just be left to the library to monitor and manage. A key point made was that there are a range of interest groups involved, such as IT services, personnel (copyright in work while employed is owned by the employer, unless contracts state otherwise), curriculum leaders and learning technologists/E-learning staff, as well as student services, who have a role in protecting students’ rights.

Resources

Web2rights is a really useful set of resources funded by JISC, including diagnostic tools, flow charts, explaining what steps you need to take when creating resources and a useful animation, explaining many of the issues. The project has also produced a short, interactive course using Xerte.
JISC Legal are the lead JISC Service on legal matters and a good starting point – their helpdesk will respond to specific queries.
General Copyright Guidance Graham Davies has been updating this site for many years (last updated 19th April, 2011!). It introduces the topic well and has many useful links and practical tips (e.g. So What about YouTube?).
The UK Intellectual Property Office website has some useful resources and links to courses. Their Copyright Essential reading is just that and in plain English.

Making your library or LRC more accessible

2011-04-15T10:08:00.001+01:00

The RSC’s Accessibility for library and LRC staff event last week in Birmingham gave delegates a timely update into a range of small, as well as more significant ways libraries can develop their services to ensure all users have equal access, regardless of disability.

Bullring by Mallsecrets on Flickr

If you weren’t lucky enough to attend, I thought it would be useful to summarise some of the topics covered and give you links to some resources to get you started.

Providing inclusive library services
The first of the morning sessions, by Alistair McNaught of JISCTechDIS emphasised the importance of understanding the needs of disabled users when planning services. To help us understand disabled users’ needs, he recommended two Web sites, which help put yourself in the shoes of learners with autism, dyslexia, hearing or visual impairments:

Simdis simulates some of the issues facing learners with disabilities when they access resources (a free downloadable browser plugin may be needed)
Watchwords is a deaf awareness tutorial developed by Sussex Downs College and JISC TechDIS

Reaching disabled users is about marketing services effectively to them and Alistair made the point that user guides, signage and other materials need to be in a format which can be comfortably understood and he demonstrated some useful tweaks, as well as mentioning some case studies:

Printed library guides can be made more accessible by using the in-built Styles in common word processing packages
Offer a Podcast or video, rather than just printed information
One college uses a cartoon strip format to explain what services are available in the library

During this session and the sharing good practice exercise in the afternoon, we came up with many ways we can adapt and improve services to make them more accessible – here are a few of them:

Offer extended loan periods, or allow borrowing by proxy (some students may not have the confidence to come to the busy library desk.)
Provide simple assistive technologies, such as adjustable desks and keyboard and mouse alternatives
Meet with your learner support colleagues so you can begin to understand your users better and tailor services, such as induction to the needs of different groups
Improve wheelchair access by changing the configuration of desks and other furniture.

Providing resources in alternative formats

Alistair’s session on obtaining books in alternative formats was an eye-opener to many and the key message was that publishers will usually supply books in alternative (usually PDF) format, if asked (a fee is sometimes payable). Many libraries are also now providing e-books and it is worth highlighting the inherent accessibility benefits of these over printed books. Reading on screen gives you access to text to speech options, magnification and adjusting screen colours, for example.

There are many ways of making text more accessible online and we explored a few options:

The Adobe (PDF) Reader has some really good features, such as zoom and text flow and automatically scrolling text

Free text-to-speech tools, such as Balabolka

Magnification tools and on screen rulers, such as VU Bar to help with reading

To assist with search, Alistair recommended the Vionto visual search engine

JISC TechDIS have recently published a guide to obtaining textbooks in alternative formats

AccessApps and MyStudyBar

Alison Wootton's session in the afternoon gave delegates a chance to try out MyStudyBar and the AccessApps suite of free software. MyStudyBar would be a great standard tool to install on all PCs in any library or LRC and AccessApps software can be made available to users on memory sticks to borrow. Why not create two or three tailored collections of software on sticks to suit the needs of particular student groups?

Here is a collection of screencasts, explaining how you can download and make use of AccessApps

Library budgets - updated results

2011-04-12T15:09:00.003+01:00

5 more respondents added to the results.

Sample size

18 respondents

Sectors

14 FE College respondents, 4 sixth forms

Budget size

Average budget (both sectors): £57,548

Average FTE: 3493

Average spend per FTE: £15.73

Smallest FE budget: £3,000 (460 FTE)

Largest FE budget: £238,500 (8,462 FTE)

Smallest spend per FTE: £6.52

Largest spend per FTE: £28.18

Click to enlarge table

What expenditure must be met from this budget?

Books, journals, e-journals and e-resources were common to most, IT resources, text books and curriculum materials, less likely to be funded from the library budget.

Increased or decreased?

13 of the libraries who answered this questions had seen a budget decrease, three by as much as 40%. 3 libraries had benefited from a 10% increase and one by 20%, in the last year.

Do you have the opportunity to discuss your budget with a senior manager?

Always: 13

Sometimes: 4

Never: 3

Didn’t get chance to complete the survey?

It’s still open to complete here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PGVRQ8R

If I get any more replies, I’ll update the results.

Library budgets – the results

2011-03-17T14:40:00.001Z

My survey of library and LRC budgets closed on 14th March (well actually I’ve left it open, if you want to complete it!) and I’ve started to pull some headlines from the results.

The most striking feature is the wide variation – one large college spends less than a pound per student on library resources and at the other end of the scale, another (only slight larger by FTE) spends more than 28 times as much.

What you do with these figures is up to you. You could place your own budget somewhere on this scale and benchmark it against similar-sized colleges, which may give you a little ammunition, when arguing against a cut, or requesting additional funds (not an easy task I know).

Sample size
13 respondents – a bit disappointing, but the results are still interesting

Sectors
11 FE College respondents, 2 sixth forms

Budget size
Average budget (both sectors): £63,607
Average FTE: 3610
Average spend per FTE: £17.61
Smallest FE budget: £3,000 (460 FTE)
Largest FE budget: £238,500 (8,462 FTE)
Smallest spend per FTE: £0.85
Largest spend per FTE: £28.18

Click to expand table

What expenditure must be met from this budget?

Books, journals, e-journals and e-resources were common to most, IT resources, text books and curriculum materials, less likely to be funded from the library budget.

Increased or decreased?
Not surprisingly, 7 of the 13 libraries had faced a budget decrease, one by as much as 40%. 3 libraries had benefited from a 10% increase and one by 20%, in the last year.

Do you have the opportunity to discuss your budget with a senior manager?
Always: 10
Sometimes: 2
Never: 1

Didn’t get chance to complete the survey?
It’s still open to complete here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PGVRQ8R

If I get enough additional data, I’ll update the results.

Library budgets

2011-02-21T10:43:00.001Z

Libraries have always been a soft target when it comes to funding cuts, across all sectors. Many librarians I meet, talk of freezes on recruitment and redundancy, as well as the need to do more for less. Our recent Webinar on the changing roles of library staff, outlined some of the ways libraries are becoming more and more central to teaching and learning, and perhaps harder to cut.

Image by James Audubon - author of the world's most
expensive book (which sold recently for £7.3 million) Thanks to koiart on Flickr

Resources budgets are also under heavy pressure it seems and if you’re lucky enough to be consulted about your future budget, it’s always helpful to have some comparative figures up your sleeve, so you can compare your proposed budget allocation with the rest of the sector.

The regular CILIP survey of FE libraries used to provide this information, but unfortunately hasn’t been carried out since 2003. I’d like to try and get a picture of library budgets across FE and sixth form colleges in our region and have created a very short (less than 2 minute!) survey for this purpose.

Click here to take survey

If you answer the survey, your institution and your own identify will remain anonymous (even I won’t have access to them). I would encourage you to respond – if it helps just a few libraries negotiate a slightly better budget for next year, it will have been worth it.

More free e-books!

2011-02-03T14:50:00.002Z

The popular JISC E-books for FE collection has recently received extra funding from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, so that 60 more in-demand books can be added to the collection, voted for by the FE and sixth form communities. The vote is now complete and the final collection of new books are to be made available from April 2011.

By http://www.flickr.com/photos/vectorportal/

New user-driven model

The initial collection was purchased by JISC (following a national vote) regardless of usage, but a new model is to be used for the additional 60 titles, meaning that JISC only pay for books that are used; less popular titles can also be exchanged for better alternatives.

Promoting the collection

E-books need a lot of pushing to get them used and the key seems to be promoting individual titles (and perhaps linking from your VLE) rather than the whole collection. You'll find a list of promotional tips here, which you might find useful

Free e-books on the Web

I’ve been collecting a range of useful e-books links, including information about e-book readers and sources of free e-books, take a look at the list: http://www.delicious.com/mattgallon/e-books

Satisfaction survey

As well as e-books, JISC Collections offer a wide range of free and subscription resources to UK further and higher education and they are currently running a survey to get your feedback. If you’d like to take part, please visit this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NTDXSR2

Learner, serve thyself?

2011-01-12T13:13:00.000Z

I’ve had a few queries recently about library self service and its pros and cons. Another related issue coming up has been RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tagging, which can make self-service run more smoothly and improve efficiency (or not?); more on this in another post. At least one college library in our region is going down the RFID/self-service route, with mixed results (I have contact information if you'd like to find out more).

Why self-service?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosipaw/4546176248/

There’s an argument (which I agree with) that learners should be as self-sufficient as possible when using a library/LRC service – this gives them a feeling of independence and satisfaction. A useful exercise to measure this, is to view your reception area from the point of view of a new learner. Is the signage and information clear? Could they get to work without having to ask staff what to do? Although this independence is welcome, there should always be staff help close at hand, with learners encouraged to accept it.

Bigger libraries (public/HE) with very busy service points, tend to promote self-service as a means of freeing up staff from mundane issue desk duties, so they can concentrate on more productive tasks like enquiry handling and other aspects of learner support. This is probably true for them, but in college libraries the volume of issues and returns will be much lower. I also feel that the process of issuing or returning a book gives you an opportunity to engage with a learner, which would be missed if he/she used a machine.

How much self-service?

Self-service conjures up images of expensive self-issue and return machines, but there are other areas where learners can serve themselves, for example:

Library catalogues Can users view their borrower record and renew and reserve items? Some systems also allow users to specify topics of interest and receive updates, among other functions.
E-resources access Single sign on so learners don't have to remember a separate Athens password, but use their familiar network login, frees up access to resources and takes the strain off library staff
PC bookings Many of the automated booking systems allow self-booking via the Internet (there may be a cost to set this up though)
Student printing/scanning etc. Modern multi-function devices (MFDs) allow users to mange their own printing/scanning etc., with a budget of print credits.
Requests and comments Does your library catalogue, website or VLE page offer a mechanism where users can suggest improvements or new resources?

Examples and case studies (mainly self-issue)

Self issue at Exeter College using Heritage library software
Self issue at Walsall College using AccessIT library software (contact details available on request)
Blackburn College focused on self-service in its new Higher Education library and were able to change staff roles to higher level duties, including more learning support
Harrogate College: self-issue and RFID using Heritage library software and Dtech RFID
Self-issue and RFID at Telford College of Technology using Heritage library software and 2CQR RFID

Learning Resources Events

2010-12-22T11:06:00.002Z

The RSC has a wide range of events which will appeal to library and LRC staff - here's a reminder of what's coming up and also how you can obtain resources from past events.

January 26th: Changing roles of LRC and library staff (Webinar)
This free online session is an opportunity to discuss how the library/LRC role in colleges is changing and explore some examples from our region. Many will agree that changing with the times is key to survival at the moment and there are many innovative models emerging, which place library and LRC staff at the heart of the learning process in "learning advisor" or "learning facilitator" roles.

Book here

If you would like to talk about your own experience with changing roles during this Webinar, please get in touch with me

9th Februrary: Giving learners the best support: key issues for library and learner support staff (Face-to-face event)
This event is jointly organised with RSC East Midlands and takes place at the City Learning Centre. This event is aimed at non-teaching staff who support learners and the main themes to be covered are:

e-safety (safe learning online)
study skills
copyright/avoiding plagiarism
accessibility and inclusion

Book here

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:

7th April: Accessibility and Inclusion for library and LRC staff. Face-to-face event to be held at the Studio, Birmingham

17-18th May: RSC West Midlands Online Conference

24th May: Learner voice for library and LRC staff (Webinar)

7th June: Joint LRC Forum: Sharing Good Practice

PAST EVENTS:

Visit the RSC Wiki, for resources from past RSC West Midlands events

West Park, Wolverhampton

By tracey_dw on Flickr

Oh...and Happy Christmas!

Exploring the RSC WM Wiki

2010-11-26T09:50:00.000Z

The RSC Wiki has been around for a few years, so now's a good opportunity to highlight some of the most popular pages and encourage you to get involved in writing an article, with the possibility of receiving an Amazon voucher for your trouble.

Categories
The Wiki uses the Mediawiki platform, which will be familiar to Wikipedia users and is divided into seven categories, with further sub-categories according to the interests of RSC customers; you can also search by keyword - here are the categories:

Popular Pages
The Wiki, on average, receives around 4000 page views a month and the most popular pages are these:

2010 Event wikis Most RSC events have a wiki associated with them, which includes all the content of the event and contact details for presenters. You can also access archived content from the last three years' events
Webcasting tips This page has a host of tips on delivering a successful webcast, as well as links to a wide range of webcasting tools, free and to buy.
E-portfolios This section introduces you to e-portfolio technologies, how to use them, where to find them and research backing their use.
RSC Projects and Initiatives Visit these pages for information about RSC projects and resources generated by them.
Online resources A collection of pages on searching for digital media, HE resources, Open Education Resources and more

Make your own contribution
The RSC particularly welcomes articles (of at least 1500 words) from West Midlands learning providers and as an incentive, we can offer a £20 Amazon voucher to the authors of the next five articles published (maximum one per applicant). If you'd like to take part, have a think about a topic you'd like to write on within the remit of the Wiki and submit a short proposal to me. Email: m.gallon@rsc-wm.ac.uk

Resources for HE

2010-11-12T15:15:00.001Z

I've been writing an article for the RSC West Midlands Wiki, which attempts to summarise the resources available for today's Higher Education students. It's not been an easy task, but hopefully will give students and lecturers some pointers about what's out there.

University of Manchester by suchnone on Flickr

View the article here

Exploring what the Web has to offer for Higher Education was an interesting experience and I was struck by the many new resources which have become available in the last year or so, in particular:

Social networking for academia
A number of publishers are creating social networks for individual subjects, particularly in science and technical areas. Here are some examples:

Biomedexperts is a social network of over 300,000 life science researchers which indexes their research and helps academics establish connections with people having similar interests

UniPHY is a similar network for engineers, physicists and other scientists

Blogging for academia
Publishing outside traditional journals is a growing activity and blogs are an excellent way of publishing to a wide audience (often wider than specialist journals). The blog aggregators below use a form of peer review and accreditation to maintain quality and offer an excellent way of staying up to date with the latest thinking in the subjects covered.

Nature Publishing Group run Nature Blogs, a community run blog tracking and indexing site, with carefully chosen blogs from the natural sciences.

Science Blogs offer a similar service, with over 80 selected bloggers writing on scientific and technical subjects.

Google Books
Google Books allows you to search the full text of over 15 million books (October 2010), which have been scanned or converted to text by Google; the fully viewable, free ones are mostly out of print, or out of copyright. In-print books, which are charged for, can be viewed for a charge or you can choose to be diverted to a range of online book sellers for purchase. You can also browse by subject and also create your own "library" with favourites and attached book reviews. The advanced search option allows you to specify fully viewable or sample only content.

Web 2.0 and libraries: social bookmarking

2010-11-02T09:16:00.002Z

The Web 2.0 technologies are (usually) free web-based tools, which allow people to create their own content and easily interact and communicate with each other. This is another in a series of occasional posts on Web 2.0 which focuses on one tool at a time, with an example of innovative use by library or other staff.

Social bookmarking

CC license: user fdecomite on Flickr

Social bookmarking tools allow you to manage a collection of web links (or bookmarks) to resources, which you value and want to share with others. Unlike your web browser favourites, these aren't stored on your PC, but on a social bookmarking web site, which allows others to search your book marks and also receive updates as new items are added. Many social book marking web sites also allow you to promote your book marks by linking to them from other systems, such as the Moodle VLE.

When adding resources to your collection, you tag them with suitable metadata (information about the resource), so that users can find them easily; this might include a description of the resource and why it's valuable.

Social bookmarking is a useful tool to help libraries promote the online resources they have to offer and keep their users updated - here are a few examples of how libraries are using social bookmarking tools:

You could set up a collection of book marks for the main subject areas of your organisation and encourage teachers and students in these areas to subscribe. Links to the bookmarks could be made from VLE courses in these subjects. Halesowen College have used the Delicious tool to create subject-based collections of bookmarks
A team of library staff could share a social bookmarking account, to keep each other up to date with resources they are discovering and recommending to users. This could be particularly useful when a team work across different sites.
You could use a social bookmarking site to promote a particular type of resource, such as a collection of e-books. Users would be notified whenever new e-books are added to the collection.
Tag clouds can be added to your library website, blog or VLE course. Here is a tag cloud of my Delicious social bookmarks:

I am mattgallon on Delicious
Add me to your network

Social bookmarking tools

Delicious is one of the most popular tools
Diigo offers a great range of features, as well as the basics
Citeulike is a social bookmarking site aimed at the academic community

If you'd like to some help in setting up a social bookmarking site for your library or LRC, do get in touch with me: m.gallon@rsc-wm.ac.uk

Turbo-charging your OPAC

2010-10-22T10:44:00.002+01:00

The RSC facilitated a training session on making the most of the OPAC (library catalogue for the uninitiated), for users of the Heritage IV library system this week. The forum,
following the training, also gathered people’s thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of this system and how it should develop in future.

CC License d.view.us on Flickr

If you’re a Heritage user, but couldn’t make the session, you may be interested in the summary of the forum and the feedback from the developers of Heritage, which are posted here.

Whichever library system you’re using, the session did remind me that an OPAC is a crucial way of promoting a library and its resources, as well as communicating with users. The latest updates to OPACs often allow you to personalise the search experience for users and in the case of Heritage, different groups of users can even be presented with a different interface, with more or less advanced functions.

Many delegates at the event came away with a list of tweaks and updates to think about for their own OPAC and will be busy during half term. Perhaps it’s worth setting aside some time to make sure you’re offering users the most up to date, accessible and best-presented OPAC?

Here are some of the actions, I’d be doing (if I had an OPAC to look after!)

- Checking I've got the latest version: The latest update is likely to be more accessible, easier to use and better presented

- Branding: Logos and corporate colours can be easily applied to OPACs, by anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML.

- The “back end”: Out of the box, your OPAC won’t be tailored to your users’ ability and subject interests. There are many ways you can help users search more easily, such as changing the complexity of search results display, creating alternative terms lists (center/centre etc.), displaying images of book covers etc. etc.

- Announcements and news. The Heritage OPAC and many others, allow you to display news items and other information about the library.

- Reader services. Most OPACs can be configured to give users access to their reader record and if you wish, allow them to renew and reserve items.

- Speed. A slow library catalogue will put users off. If you need to perform regular house keeping on your enquiry index, is this being done?

- Accessibility. The Heritage OPAC can now display different font sizes and screen colours. Are your staff and users aware of these functions?

- Visibility. Can users access the OPAC easily in the library and via the Web?

Accessibility kit bags from RSC West Midlands

2010-10-15T13:54:00.001+01:00

Over the last year, the RSC has been lending “kit bags” of accessibility and learning technology hardware and software to learning providers. I have charge of one of the bags, which so far I’ve lent to library/LRC staff of 9 learning providers. If you’d like to borrow the bag for 2-3 weeks in the coming year, please email me: m.gallon@rsc-wm.ac.uk

After a year’s use, I thought it would be useful to summarise the contents of the bag and some of the feedback we’ve been receiving in the survey which borrowers complete on returning the bag.

Box contents

Z Pen – handwriting recognition pen

Netbook PC

Finger mouse

Wireless mouse and keyboard

BigKeys keyboard

Digital voice recorder

MP3 player

Digital camera

Flip digital video camera

E-book reader

Reading Pen

Where was the equipment used?

A third of borrowers used the equipment with learners in a library or learning centre, of the rest the majority of use was classroom based.

How was it used?

There were a wide variety of different uses of the equipment, including:

- Loaning to learners for supervised use within a session

- Demonstration and familiarisation of staff

- Assistance in making purchasing decisions – trying before purchase

- Impromptu demonstrations of equipment across the counter

- Trialled by learning support staff with individual students

Which equipment was the most popular?

- The Net book PC was the most popular, with many positive comments about its flexibility and long battery life, as well as relatively low cost compared to lap tops or desk top PCs.

- Next most popular was the Flip HD video camera, which impressed due to its simple controls and many possible uses

What didn’t people like?

- There were some compatibility issues with the Z Pen and some questioned its ease of use

- The Reading Pen suited some users very well, but was rejected by others.

The feedback confirms my belief that accessibility and other technology, however good it is will not be popular with everyone and expensive equipment should always be purchased after consultation with its user(s). I’ve been impressed with the enthusiasm shown for the equipment though and many learning providers have bought items as a result of having chance to try them out. I look forward to reading the feedback from this year’s batch of users!

Getting acquainted with the new Equality Act

2010-10-11T10:00:00.011+01:00

The new Equality Act 2010, came into force on 1st October and has implications for everyone working in public education. The Act brings together the legislation of recent years in a simplified and strengthened form, aiming to protect individuals from unfair treatment and support the development of a more equal society.

Organisations now have a duty to consider how they can support equality and avoid discrimination in planning provision. The duties of earlier legislation (race, disability and gender), are now joined by sexual orientation and religious belief in a single equality duty.

Today (11th October), JISC TechDIS releases a new publication which focuses on the accessibility and inclusion aspects of the Act. The RSC has a limited number of hard copies of these, but an accompanying web site will also be available and posted here.

You can find out more about the Act by using the links below. Over the years, TechDIS have developed a collection of self-evaluation tools, as well as guidance material for library and LRC staff and these will be useful in ensuring your service is in tune with the aims of the Act.

Guidance on the Act

Video: Understanding the Equality Act 2010

Guidance for Education Providers (Word DOC)

Equality Act – what do I need to know? (for individuals)

Summary of the Act’s provisions

EHRC: how can the Act be used? Case studies, examples etc.

November 2010 training by the AOC on the implications of the Act

TechDIS guidance and tools for library/LRC staff

This page includes the following:

·         Best practice guides
·         Library case studies
·         Online accessibility and inclusion self-evaluation tool
·         Guide to obtaining publications in alternative formats
·         and much more...!

Thinkuknow about e-safety?

2010-09-24T14:27:00.005+01:00

I’ve just attended the free Thinkuknow trainers' course by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). The aim of this course is to introduce you to many of the tools young people are using online and some of the associated risks, such as cyber bullying, sexual abuse and harassment.

The second part of the session equips you to deliver CEOP’s Thinkuknow training sessions to young people and the training materials are available to you, once you’ve completed the trainers’ course. The materials are of extremely high quality, including videos, presentation slides and activities and are often hard hitting, but do get the key e-safety messages across in young peoples’ language. There are three sets of materials for different age groups from 4 to 16.

My first question was: “where are the materials for post-16s?” The answer is that Thinkuknow's remit doesn't cover this group yet, but may in future; Childnet International are working on resources for post-16s. Some of the Thinkuknow materials are still worth using and are freely available on the CEOP YouTube site. A good example of a video suitable for post-16s is the one entitled: “Matt thought he knew”.

The CEOP web site is an excellent resource for e-safety materials and there are several practical downloadable tools you can start using straight away, to encourage reporting of cyber bullying and other problems.

The ClickCEOP button is available for Facebook and most Web browsers and gives users access to more information about avoiding risk and explains how to report incidents to CEOP. There are also free downloads for web-site owners, who want to help make their web sites a safer environment for young people.

My eyes were opened by this course to the online risks which face children and young people and I would recommend it to anyone. However, the key message is that e-safety risks aren't avoided by preventing learners from accessing the Web, but the best approach is to educate them about avoiding risk and what to do if something goes wrong. Library and LRC staff are supporting hundreds of users of the Web and it's important that we understand the risks and have the means to educate users; CEOP and Thinkuknow can help with this.

E-safety is a focus of RSC West Midlands' support this year, so look out for events and resources. For library staff, here are a few questions to consider about e-safety and how prepared your library or LRC is:

Do you know the details of your organisation's e-safety policy?
Do you have technology in place to monitor computers and have access to it?
Are learners aware of how they can report e-safety incidents?
Do you know what to do if a learner discloses an e-safety issue to you?

JISC Legal have also produced a list of top ten tips on e-safety for organisations

Open Educational Resources (OER)

2010-09-17T08:17:00.002+01:00

What are Open Educational Resources? You may have already asked yourself this question, as the term "OER" is increasingly used and much time and money spent researching them, by JISC and others. Let me try and bring you up to date:

Definition:
"Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner."
From OER Commons

Examples include full courses or modules, assignments, quizzes, presentations and ephemera like images or podcasts. No charges are made for their use, although there may restrictions on how they can be used, under some OER licenses.

A few issues spring to mind immediately:

How can we promote them better? As I would suggest they're under-used at the moment (certainly outside HE).

The starting point here has to be raising awareness of the many easy ways of searching for OER and including these alongside existing search tools and e-resource databases.
How can quality be controlled in an arena of constant exchange of material?
Working differently. Teachers when planning, and library staff when delivering resources, need to adopt a different mindset, encouraged by their organisation. Rather than create something from scratch, teachers find the required resources online and adapt them to fit the bill (and then exchange them again).

How can we encourage teachers and other staff to exchange the resources they produce with others? I've found through experience this is easier said than done!

Make the tools for sharing available and easy to use. Staff have little time for sharing, even if they want to, but freely available tools exist to make this easy (look at Slideshare.net for example).
Give contributors control over how their resources can be used. This is where licensing comes in and schemes like Creative Commons allow people to share their work and influence how it can be used and receive credit if they wish.
Time (at least initially). More of this is required if searching for resources and sharing is to happen. Organisations needs to be persuaded of the benefits of OER and will then support their use among teachers and other staff by giving the necessary time for training and developmrny of new working models.

More information
A great starting point to find out more, is to attend RSC West/East Midlands' event on 24th November. Entitled "Out in the open: discovering and sharing freely available educational resources", this event is full of practical tips as well as advice on licensing issues.

Book here

Open Educational Resources Infokit from JISC Infonet.
This is a wiki-based resource and really is everything you wanted to know about OER and were afraid to ask! It's well organised, authoritiative and up-to-date.

https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/

Getting started

Jorum
UK FE and HE resources
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/

OER commons: open educational resources from around the world
http://www.oercommons.org/

Slideshare
Share and search for Powerpoint presentations
http://www.slideshare.net/

JISC OER Programme

HEFCE funded research by JISC aimed at researching models for using OER

and embedding them

Open Learn: Creating open educational resources

The Open University are a leading proponent of OER in the UK, this free introductory course is a good starting point.

Sharing Excellence

2010-09-10T11:36:00.002+01:00

One of the strengths of the RSCs are the opportunities we provide for sharing good (or even excellent) practice. In my experience travelling around the West Midlands, every organisation I visit has some good practice that others can benefit from.

One of the most successful ways of recording this good practice have been the case studies produced by RSC Information Officers for the Excellence Gateway (Kirsty Hill has written 42 for our region). These can be viewed on the Gateway itself (link below), or more easily via a new Delicious site, which the RSCs have created. This allows you to sort them by region or theme and all the library and learning resources ones have been tagged too.

Delicious case studies page: http://www.delicious.com/elearningcasestudies

Excellence Gateway: http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=casestudies

We are always interested in new ideas for case studies and if there's something innovative that you'd like to share with others, do get in touch and we can consider it. The RSC wiki is another place where good practice can be shared and we are currently offering a £20 Amazon voucher for writers of articles for the Wiki. Do get in touch with me if you are interested and I can explain the terms and conditions.

Web 2.0 and libraries: social networking

2010-09-03T15:09:00.000+01:00

In this latest post on libraries and Web 2.0, I'm going to look at social networking tools. The most widely known of these is Facebook, although there are many others. Facebook has a huge user base among students and this could be seen as an advantage. If a library establishes a Facebook profile, you have a ready-made audience, or problematic; in some people's eyes - distracting learners and tying up in-demand PCs.

Social networking sites essentially allow somebody (or an organisation) to establish a profile, with information about them and connect easily with others to share information and communicate; there are often other features available too, such as the ability to show videos, connect with other Web tools and deliver updates by RSS feed.

Here are some of the advantages I see of using social networks to communicate with library users and (perhaps) deliver resources:

Joining a social network gives you an opportunity to reach students in their own domain and raise your service's profile
Networks may offer you a communication channel to non-users
Students are familiar with the environment and communicate freely there - it's a good opportunity to get your message out and get feedback.
Networks are good at integrating other tools and resources, for example the Bibme Citeulike referencing tool or Oxford Dictionary of Bibliography in the examples below.
Social networking lends itself to a more informal, relaxed communication, compared to traditional library marketing through web sites, leaflets and signs.

Possible disadvantages to consider:

You should consider the reputation of your library and organisation and consider this when posting in informal language.
Getting established on a social network takes time and many users won't visit your pages - you need to weigh up the effort needed and the benefits
Facebook is a closed network, which people need to join and won't have the same visibility as a website, for instance
When using informal language on a social network, you should bear in mind the reputation of your organisation

Good library examples:

University of Wolverhampton Learning Centres
Edinburgh City Libraries
North Warwickshire and Hinckley College Library
Leeds Libraries
Lincoln College Library
Libraries using Facebook, Facebook page

Other social networking tools:

LinkedIn (business and professional networking)
Librarything (for book lovers; a tool is available for library catalogue integration with the site)
Last.fm (music sharing)
Ning (closed, secure social networks - no longer free though)

Screencasting

2010-08-26T11:01:00.001+01:00

Screentoaster example

Screencasts are videos of activity on your computer screen, to which you can add a voice-over and sometimes a webcam image of yourself speaking. Screencasts lend themselves well to short and snappy explanations of common tasks, such as searching a library catalogue or e-resource, or logging on to the network or VLE; the resulting videos can be linked to directly (as below), or downloaded. Common video file formats are used, so they can also be uploaded to other sites, such as YouTube or a video repository.

There's a wide range of free screencasting software available, some of which needs to be installed on your PC. I prefer the online versions, which can be used within your Web browser and are the easiest to use (although have fewer features). The article below from JISC Digital Media explains some of the software options:

Article: free screencasting tools

Screencasts are very easy to do – I created an example in less than 15 minutes using www.screentoaster.com. You can view it here

Web 2.0 and libraries

2010-08-18T08:25:00.005+01:00

The Web 2.0 technologies are (usually) free Web-based tools, which allow people to create their own content and easily interact and communicate with each other. This is the first of a series of occasional posts on Web 2.0 which focuses on one tool at a time, with an example of innovative use by library or other staff.

Blogging

Licensed from www.sxc.hu

A blog is simply a web-based journal of entries which can be subscribed to by RSS, or sometimes email. A blog usually has a searchable archive and can include multimedia content in its postings.

Many libraries are using blogs as a way of communicating with users and reaching people who rarely visit the library itself. Warwickshire College LRC have been keeping a blog for several years now (known as Shelf Life) and it’s proved popular with students. When you visit, look out for these features:

Topical posts, which appeal to college students (the most recent is on the welfare of game birds!)
Postings to suit the different college sites (students can click on their own campus)
Up-to-date college news, as well as LRC-related stories. It’s very important that blogs are updated regularly.
Opportunities for student feedback, e.g. a survey of noise levels in the LRC; “We want to hear from you” invitation on the front page.
Tutorial section with a good screen cast on using the library catalogue
LRC staff area. This hasn’t been used much yet, but could be a good way of helping staff at the different sites keep in touch.

If you'd like to some help in setting up or planning a blog for your library or LRC, do get in touch with me: m.gallon@rsc-wm.ac.uk

To find out more about the Shelf Life Blog, please contact Jane Keightley: jkeightley@warkscol.ac.uk

Warwickshire College Shelf Life Blog: http://warkscol.wordpress.com/
More UK library and librarian blogs: http://uklibraryblogs.pbworks.com/
Blogger, free blogging tool (which this blog uses): http://www.blogger.com/
Wordpress, free blogging tool (which Shelf Life uses): http://wordpress.org/
Web 2.0 Libraries Jiscmail list

If you have any comments on this post, please click "comments" below. Do you know any good blogging examples, or are you using a blog at your organisation?

Learning space review service

2010-08-13T10:44:00.002+01:00

A couple of colleges have asked me to review their library or learning centres from a physical space point of view, where they are planning a refurbishment or re-organisation of the areas. The short reports I produced were well received and helped bring some short-term changes to the areas, as well as helping with longer term planning for refurbishment.

I’d like to offer this review service to everyone and propose the review would work in the following way:

Review visit with tour and questionnaire, plus optional informal chat with a few users and staff. The main areas I would look at are these:

Overall impression