Imaginaires, représentations, pratiques formelles et non formelles de la recherche d'information sur Internet: PhD thesis

A French-language thesis on schoolchildren's concept of internet searching has just been put online.
Cordier, A. (2011) Imaginaires, représentations, pratiques formelles et non formelles de la recherche d'information sur Internet : Le cas d'élèves de 6ème et de professeurs documentalistes. UNIVERSITÉ CHARLES DE GAULLE – LILLE III. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00737637
I did not really spend enough time with it (considering my moderate French language skills) to give a good account of what it is about, but I think it is an investigation into 11-12 year old French schoolchildren's experiences of searching the internet, contrasting this experience with what the school librarians have as their goal for information literacy teaching. The latter are urged to pay more attention to the pupil's practice with information and technology.
This is the French abstract "L'objectif de ce travail est d'apporter une meilleure connaissance des imaginaires, représentations et pratiques non formelles développées par les élèves de 6ème sur la recherche d'information sur Internet, et d'effectuer un parallèle et une confrontation avec les pratiques de formation mises en oeuvre par les professeurs documentalistes. Pour ce faire, une étude qualitative, combinant entretiens semi-directifs et observation distanciée, a été menée au sein de trois établissements scolaires français. L'adoption d‟une éco-posture pour analyser la recherche d‟information sur Internet permet de considérer les pratiques de recherche et de formation de manière située, en tenant compte des contraintes opérées par les espaces d'action identifiés. Le sentiment d'expertise personnellement ressenti en matière de recherche sur Internet joue pour les deux types d'acteurs un rôle fondamental à la fois dans l'appropriation de l'outil et dans l'appréhension des séances de formation. L'étude révèle un écart important entre les pratiques de recherche ordinaires des élèves et les pratiques prescrites par les professionnels."
Photo by Sheila Webber: yet more anemones, October 2012

Recent articles

A few assorted articles I hadn't picked up before:
- Kelley, J. (2012) "Off the Shelf and Out of the Box: Saving Time, Meeting Outcomes and Reaching Students with Information Literacy Modules" Library Scholarship. Paper 15. http://dc.cod.edu/librarypub/15
- Limberg, L., Sundin, O. and Talja, S. (2012) "Three Theoretical Perspectives on Information Literacy" HumanIT. 11 (2) http://etjanst.hb.se/bhs/ith/2-11/llosst.pdf [I had already blogged the other papers in this issue, I think this one must have been added later]
- Gunton, L., Bruce, C., & Stoodley, I. (2012) "Experiencing religious information literacy : informed learning in church communities." Australian Library Journal, 61(2), 119-132. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/51026 I already blogged an earlier article on the same research
- Emami, M. and Seify, S. (2012) "Determining the information literacy competence (ILC) of faculty members in University of Applied Sciences and Technology." Interdisciplinary journal of contemporary research in business. 3 (9), 1488-1495.
http://www.journal-archieves14.webs.com/1488-1495.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: Autumn starts to touch the beech leaves.

2 short research papers: Social Media as Information Source, and; Developing an IL game

Kim, K., Yoo-Lee, E. and Sin, S. (2011) Social Media as Information Source: Undergraduates’ Use and Evaluation Behavior. In: Proceedings of the 74rd ASIST Annual Meeting Retrieved 18 September 2012 from http://asist.org/asist2011/proceedings/submissions/283_FINAL_SUBMISSION.pdf
An interesting short paper that reports on a survey of what sources students used, what they used them for and what evaluative strategies they used. For example Wikipedia was used for initially scoping a topic, and evaluated through looking at the links and sources, whereas Youtube was used for recreation and for instructions on how to do things, and was evaluated through the video quality and people's opinions.

Markey, K. and Leeder, C. (2011) The Effect of Scoring and Feedback Mechanisms
in an Online Educational Game. In: Proceedings of the 74rd ASIST Annual Meeting. Retrieved 18 September 2012 from http://asist.org/asist2011/proceedings/submissions/38_FINAL_SUBMISSION.docx

This describes the stages of piloting this information literacy game, and the changes that needed to be made as a result.

I discovered these 2 papers (and further interesting ones) as part of the October 2011 ASIST annual conference proceedings; http://asist.org/asist2011/proceedings/openpage.html.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Blackheath Farmers' Market, September 2012

The Value of Information Literacy: Conceptions of BSc Nursing Students at a UK University

I'm currently travelling to the Special Interest Group Phenomenography and Variation Theory conference in Sweden (my first blog post from a plane! (Norwegan airlines) and so it is appropriate to highlight a recently completed PhD using the phenomenographic approach: Dr Antony Osborne's The Value of Information Literacy: Conceptions of BSc Nursing Students at a UK University. This investigated the perceptions of nursing students at a UK university. In phenomonography you aim to discover what the differences are in the way in which people experience or conceive of a phenomenon. You normally do this by conducting indepth interviews probing this experience or conception, and then you put all the interview data together and identify the qualitatively different ways in which people are experienncing/ conceiving of the phenomenon. I haven't had time to read the thesis yet (actually I'm having family health problems which mean I'mjoining the conference later than intended) but you can find the whole thing at: http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/14577/
Photo by Sheila Webber: View from St Thomas' Hospital ward (of Houses of Parliament and Big Ben etc.), August 2012