Social Software, libraries & e-learning

At our meeting on Wednesday we had a look at Jane’s very thorough literature review but we noticed a lack of references to what is happening in Australia & New Zealand - we know you’re busy over there! Yesterday I happened to see Peter Godwin at a meeting (a very interesting Focus group on e-books organised by Sage) so picked his brains on the subject. He mentioned Judy O’Connell’s blog Hey Jude which has a link to her delicious account. If anyone can give us some more leads please get in touch!

I too am about to set off on holiday. Having a couple of days walking the Thames path this week (I’m doing it in short stages). Then off to Cephalonia for two glorious weeks. If anyone has news of Library 2.0 in Greece I’ll be happy to visits colleages out there.

As Jane said, the CDE conference was a very enjoyable day and an excellent opportunity to share details of our project with non-Librarians. It was also a chance to find out what is going on with other projects - which are probably a reflection of e-learning research generally. There was a great emphasis on inclusion and access both in terms of disabilities but also the digital divide and availability of internet access. The use of mobile technologies may be the answer for some students; certainly it looks like being a hot topic.

At our meeting on Wednesday Susan Eales reminded us that the OU will be hosting the first International M-Libraries Conference in November.

More news soon ….

Here’s my presentation slides from yesterday’s CDE Fellows conference presentation. It was good to talk to an audience of mainly non-librarians and to make the point that we too are interested in such initatives. Concepts such as ‘Library 2.0′ were clearly very new to the audience. Gwyneth has promised a longer report on the day, but it was a useful conference and good to present in a strand related to the distance learning student experience more widely.

Following today’s Steering Group meeting I’ve got a fair amount of editing still to do on the literature review, so the revised date for publication will be mid July. However, feedback to date has been good and the group feels it’s a useful overview of the topic.

Tomorrow I will be at the Department of Information Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth: revisiting my old haunts for a few days. I’ve also been invited to talk to the distance learning librarianship students who are at a study school for the week. I’ll be talking to them about e-learning and information literacy, but the odd reference to LASSIE will no doubt creep in! Then I’ll be on my hols for a week so no blogging unless the rain gets really bad and I find myself sat in internet cafes, rather than wandering around the hills of north and mid Wales! Farewell for a week or so!

In actual fact my podcast, is a screencast - it’s available as Flash movie and so technically can’t be put onto an ipod or other type of MP3 player. But is is available from the new Citing and Referencing page on the LSE Library website, if you want to check it out and give me some feedback.

I’ll be at the Fellows conference tomorrow talking about LASSIE’s experiences in a Web 2.0 world. I’ll make the presentation availabe on Wednesday if I remember, before the Steering Group meeting. Yes it’s that time again already and I hope we’ll be able to finalise the literature review and make that available very shortly.

I’ve almost finished my literature review and hope to be able to circulate it more widely after next Wednesday’s Steering Group meeting. I’ve also been working on my presentation for the CDE conference today. Not a huge amount to report, except I have added the BookShare application to my Facebook account which I think has potential for sharing library resources. Plus I joined a Facebook group for eLib project survivors (my first real research was for a eLib project called NewsAgent for Libraries.) I’m also getting incredibly addicted to Facebook, which is a bit worrying - but I know I’m not alone as there seem to be a lot of librarians using it! I’m going to start working on the CiteUlike reading list next week, plus I’ll get the podcast online very soon.

Just a quick update this morning. I’ve been working on a presentation for the CDE Fellows Conference next Tuesday. I’m presenting in the ‘Experience’ strand. I also spent yesterday using Camtasia to create a podcast, which I am hoping to pilot with some LSE students. They aren’t distance learners, but I’m going to make it available rather than them attending a face to face class. I’d like to get some feedback to see how they think it compare to attending a training class. Once it’s available from the library website I’ll post the link. But my experience of using Camtasia was really positive. I found it really easy to edit the ‘project’ afterwards to cut out the bits I didn’t want (mainly at the start and end). I recorded the screen and my audio and then added markers throughout the file to create a flash movie with a table of contents that allows you to jump through the presentation. Neat!

I’m desperately trying to finish the literature review now in time for our next Steering Group meeting which we’ve just fixed for the 20th June - thanks to Meet-o-matic. A very handy little tool.

Today I’ve been concentrating on writing about libraries and distance learners and libraries as social spaces. I’ve been reading Going the Distance: library instruction for remote learners, but Susan J Clayton, but also reading up on the OU support for students, various journal articles, plus I found a useful online bibliography on distance learning librarianship. Libraries as social spaces is coming together more slowly as it’s difficult to know what to focus on, but there are quite a few articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education libraries section that are useful. I’m trying to write something on Information Commons, ‘library as place’ and changing learning spaces more generally.

I’ve been asked to do a podcast next week for the Government department at LSE on citing and referencing. I plan to teach the course face to face and record the audio and powerpoint using Camtasia. I think this might be a useful case study, because although the students are not distance learners apparantly lots of them have asked for it, so it will be a good chance to get some feedback from students. I’ll be fascinated to find out whether they really will listen to a citing and referencing podcast!

Yesterday was the Heron User Group meeting, so a chance to catch up with friends as well as chair the meeting! I found out other Heron users are also exploring social software, for example playing with Facebook and I heard more about Lyn Parker’s exploits in Second Life, which convinced me I really must install it on my Mac as it definitely won’t run at home or work. Anyway, off to the South Bank now to enjoy the sunshine!

The CDE Fellows’ Conference on 19th June is now open for registration. It is free to everyone within the Federal University of London. Jane will be speaking and Sandra Tury will also be reporting on her CDE project, alongside a whole range of researchers from around the University. Not to be missed if you are working with Distance Learners. Information and registration at http://www.cde.london.ac.uk/support/events/event3319.htm

I’m really excited as I found out yesterday evening we’d had a paper accepted at a conference in September in York. It’s being organised by the Social Information Research Unit at York and is called “Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0″.