What is it?
National Libraries Day is one day devoted to all libraries - public libraries, school and university libraries, prison, national, law, business and commercial libraries. A nation-wide celebration of libraries, librarians and library staff in all sectors.
In 2012 the day will be 4th February.
Objectives
National Libraries Day will highlight what people can do in their local library. Events will take place in libraries, and a membership campaign will lead up to the date. During the week before National Libraries Day events and activities will take place in a variety of libraries including in schools, colleges and universities.
Focus
The focus will be on three key aspects of the event:
1. Libraries Open Late (or extended opening hours)
2. Membership Campaign
3. Events leading up to the day
Planning is underway for National Libraries Day and you will be hearing more from us, but in the meantime please mark your calendars for 4 February 2012, National Libraries Day.
For more information please contact:
Mark Taylor, Director of External Relations, CILIP
Email: mark.taylor@cilip.org.uk
Phone: 020 7255 0654
via RSS Feed
The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals is delighted to announce that its professional award for para professionals has been credit rated against the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF).
SCQF credit rated awards are described in terms of their level and their credit value. For ACLIP this is 20 credit points at Level 8, which is equivalent to a Diploma of Higher Education, Higher National Diploma or N/SVQ 4. In addition, the credit points may be used by course providers to assess prior learning and to determine how much of the ACLIP credit can be transferred to a new course which will encourage greater engagement with CILIP Framework of Qualifications.
All CILIP’s professional qualifications are now credit rated by various awarding bodies and all members have the opportunity to benefit from the added value that credit rating brings. Colleagues from CILIP’s Qualifications and Professional Development Department and CILIPS worked together to achieve this recognition.
Marion Huckle, CILIP’s Head of Qualifications and Professional Development welcomed the award saying, “It is vital that CILIP members’ qualifications are recognised across the sector and can be transferred by individuals throughout their careers. SCQF credit rating will give members and employers a much clearer understanding of the value that a qualified practitioner brings to the workplace.”
Elaine Fulton, Director of CILIP in Scotland said “CILIPS is pleased that our funding contribution to this work has resulted in such a positive outcome for members. CILIPS is committed to supporting all our members and providing them with appropriate CPD opportunities to support their professional development.”
More information about CILIP’s credit rated awards
More information on the SCQF and credit rating vist (external link)Press contacts:
Marion Huckle, Head of Qualifications and Professional Development
Email: marion.huckle@cilip.org.uk
Elaine Fulton, Director of CILIP in Scotland (CILIPS)
Email: e.fulton@slainte.org.uk
via RSS Feed
The IPF met three times in 2010 and did not meet in 2011. It was suspended at the end of 2010 by CILIP Council as part of its economy measures. We are awaiting the outcome of CILIP's governance review (which has been delayed because of recent restructuring at CILIP) for a formal decision on its future. However, policy and advocacy work at CILIP is ongoing.
find out more about advocacy
The Interim Policy Forum is the focal point for policy generation. It initiates and commissions policy development and evaluates the effectiveness of policy and advocacy activity.
Its membership consists:
Secretary: Guy Daines BA DipLib MCLIP FRSA (guy.daines@cilip.org.uk)
The Interim Policy Forum is the main way that professional policy issues are developed and debated within CILIP. Its main responsibilities are:
It puts forward recommendations for CILIP Council to endorse. It is Council's role to translate these into actions in the strategic plan. The group is supported by the Policy & Advocacy Unit in its work.
The Interim Policy Forum will meet until such time as the current review of Governance puts forward a more enduring set of proposals.
Task and Finish Groups
The Interim Policy Forum sets up small 'task and finish' groups to take forward specific areas of work. Once the group's work is completed, the group can be disbanded.
Current groups include:
Use of volunteers
Information Literacy
There are some committees that report into the Interim Policy Forum:
via RSS Feed
In this section you will find:
Information literacy is a policy priority area for CILIP. A first draft of an information literacy work programme has been prepared (June 2011) and is being considered by the Information Literacy Task & Finish Group. Further details will be available later in Autumn 2011.
In 2009 a meeting was held at CILIP, which agreed a set of recommendations for information literacy. The recommendations state that information literacy needs to occupy a central position in CILIP and that there needs to be a common vision for information literacy.
Read the full recommendations
CSG Information Literacy Group
The Community Services Group Information Literacy Group (CSG ILG) is a Special Interest Group of CILIP. The group aims to provide a forum across all sectors of the profession, which encourages debate and allows the exchange of knowledge in all aspects of Information Literacy.
via RSS Feed
Another kind of Olympics is being held in London next month – the biennial Worldskills competition
While many people her age are out clubbing, florist Victoria Richards spends all her spare time in a caravan in her grandmother's back garden practising different designs and techniques. Richards, 22, is one of 43 young people selected to represent the UK in the world's biggest international skills competition, which is due to be held in London next month.
Dubbed the skills "Olympics", London WorldSkills 2011 brings together young people from across the globe to compete against one another in their chosen skill, styling hair, repairing cars or building robots, against the clock, in front of a live audience.
As a finalist in the floristry category, Richards will spend two days in a packed exhibition hall, alongside 18 other young hopefuls from all over the world, completing tasks that could include anything from making a bridal bouquet to embellishing an item of clothing using petals and leaves. "To be fully prepared you need to practise with every kind of flower and every kind of material, so as soon as you get the competition brief, you can decide on a design quickly," she says.
While it may not attract the same kind of hype as the real Olympics, WorldSkills contestants train just as hard and take the competition as seriously as their sporting counterparts. But it's not all about winning medals; a good performance in WorldSkills can help competitors accelerate their careers and gain skills that will be with them for life.
Richards is so focused on winning gold, she has cut down to part-time hours at the florists in Aldridge, West Midlands where she works.
Every week brings new deliveries of flowers, wires, twigs and practice materials, provided by her sponsors, the Dutch flower importer Barendson and the Leicester-based floristry sundries company Whittingtons. Richards's grandmother offered her use of the caravan, which she has kitted out with shelving for all her tools and floristry supplies.
Richards knows that top-notch technique is not necessarily a guarantee of a medal. In the pressure-cooker environment of the competition, remaining calm and focused is also vital. Like top athletes, WorldSkills finalists are assigned a coach (or "training manager") and given a personalised training programme that can include work placements with top practitioners, giving demonstrations at schools, colleges and exhibitions, and taking part in other competitions.
Of the 200 or so who make the initial shortlist, less than a quarter survive the gruelling two-year selection and training programme (which includes psychological coaching) to represent the UK on the world stage.
For many competitors, by far the most daunting part of being a finalist is being on show to the public, some of whom can't resist trying to talk to the competitors (who are not allowed to engage in conversation) and making comments about their work. "My training manager sent me to a national skills competition in Canada so I could get a feel for the size and scale of the event," says Kerry McStea, who is representing the UK at aircraft maintenance. "There were lots of school children, some of them screaming and shouting. It gave me a real idea of what I'll be up against in the final and how much focus I'll need."
A senior aircraft technician in the RAF, the 23-year-old will be expected, among other things, to carry out an inspection on a plane's engine blades and service a helicopter at next month's final.
So what exactly makes a top tiler, premier plasterer or world-class window dresser? For Adam Bushnell, who is representing the UK at joinery, it's all about precision and attention to detail. At WorldSkills London 2011, he will be asked to complete a series of tasks that might include making a door and frame and building a spiral staircase. "Your internal joints have to be really clean and crisp, so part of the brief might be to make sure there are no gaps in the wood of more than 0.3mm. With such precise measurements it would be easy to score zero for everything."
While the UK was ranked a respectable sixth in terms of the medal score at the 2009 competition in Calgary, Canada (up from 14th in 2007), this year, with the competition being held in the UK, there are high hopes for success.
But although the UK has a strong record on vehicle body repair, beauty therapy and construction skills, there is definitely room for improvement in engineering-based categories, says Eugene Incerti, director of skills competitions at UK Skills, the not-for-profit organisation that manages the UK entry for WorldSkills.
The countries to watch are South Korea and Switzerland, which both consistently make the top five in WorldSkills competitions, he says. "South Korea's impressive performance is probably down to training young people harder and for longer. Switzerland's success may be due, at least in part, to the fact that vocational skills are more highly valued there than they are in other parts of the world, which means standards are often higher."
But the organisers are keen to point out that WorldSkills London 2011 is not just about the competition itself. It is about leaving a legacy for vocational skills that will last long after the international competitors have flown home.
It is the first time the biennial competition has been held in the UK for over 40 years. The hope is that the buzz around the event, which is expected to attract around 150,000 visitors, will encourage many more young people to consider vocational careers.
There will be opportunities to try out a range of practical skills, including bricklaying and car painting. Young people and their parents will also be able to get careers advice from experts while they are there, and talk to employers. "What we're trying to do is offer a really holistic approach," says Aiden Jones, executive director of WorldSkills London 2011. "So as well as the inspirational element of seeing highly skilled young people at work, there's also the practical side with information, advice and guidance. It's like a massive careers fair where you actually get to try out all the different jobs."
Prospective visitors to the event at ExCeL London in Docklands should feel reassured that, unlike the Olympics, which left millions disappointed and others out of pocket after being allocated more tickets than they could really afford, there is no lottery or ballot for WorldSkills London 2011. And they won't be forced to watch the plumbing competition when what they really wanted to see was leg waxing. As Jones says: "Visitors can register on our website to come to the event and there are plenty of tickets to go round."
The poet laureate believes the fun and creativity of mobile texting will turn today's children into exciting poets of tomorrow
Hardly a week goes by without a warning about how educationally detrimental it is for children to spend hours of every day screen-gazing and message-sending. But now there's a note of dissent – from the poet laureate, no less, who says she believes texting is an ideal springboard to good poetry-writing.
"The poem is a form of texting ... it's the original text," says Carol Ann Duffy. "It's a perfecting of a feeling in language – it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is. We've got to realise that the Facebook generation is the future – and, oddly enough, poetry is the perfect form for them. It's a kind of time capsule – it allows feelings and ideas to travel big distances in a very condensed form."
Duffy, who became Britain's first female poet laureate in 2009, is passionate about the teaching of poetry in school. She believes there's a myth that poetry is considered "difficult" or "complicated" by teachers – but says that's simply not borne out by what's really going on in the nation's classrooms, where poetry is enjoying a major revival. "The poem is the literary form of the 21st century," she says. "It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language ... it's language as play." Just, one might say, as text messaging is language at play.
So, if texting is preparing children for a lifetime of poetry, are today's youngsters better at poetry than children in the past? "I think it's most obvious in music," says Duffy. "If you look at rapping, for example, a band like Arctic Monkeys uses lyrics in a poetic way. And using words in an inventive way is at the heart of youth culture in every way."
Duffy says she owes her career as a poet to her exposure to poetry at school in the 1960s and early 70s, when she was growing up – and that's why she's determined to do all she can to further strengthen its place in the curriculum. "I grew up in a bookless house – my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing."
When one of her English teachers died, Duffy wrote a poem containing the lines: "You sat on your desk / swinging your legs, reading a poem by Yeats / to the bored girls, except my heart stumbled and blushed / as it fell in love with the words and I saw the tree / in the scratched old desk under my hands, heard the bird in the oak outside scribble itself on the air."
Duffy says when she realised how much she loved poetry, she started to keep a notebook with her favourite poems in it. "I'd write them out by hand, and it was that very physical act that led me to become a writer. It was quite an intimate experience of poetry, and that's what I'd like us to go back to now with children."
To this end, Duffy will on Wednesday launch Anthologise, a competition for secondary school pupils, which invites them to create their own poetry anthologies. "They can do it any way they want, and they can be any sort of group they want – so it can be a class, or it can be a poetry group in a school, or it can simply be one pupil," she explains. "The anthology can be organised in any way they want – it can be themed, or it can be issue-led ... anything they choose. They'll be given a budget, and they'll also have to think about how to cost it – so, for example, they'll have to think about whether they'll have to pay fees for reproducing poems, and, if so, they'll have to think about how much these fees are."
The idea behind the competition, says Duffy, is to foster a stronger relationship between children and the whole poetry arena – encouraging them to think about the wider issues around poetry, but also encouraging them to read widely, and to experience – as she herself did – a more intimate relationship with poems. "I feel it will lead to new writing," she says.
The deadline for entries to the competition is 1 March 2012, and as well as Duffy the judges include Gillian Clarke, the national poet of Wales; Liz Lochhead, the Scottish makar (national poet); and the Cambridge professor of children's poetry Morag Styles. The winning anthology will be announced three months after the closing date, and it will be published by Picador with a foreword by Duffy, who will also visit the winning school.
"What I hope this competition will do is put some control into the hands of the students themselves," says Duffy. "They will be able to create their own anthologies, and it will help to enhance the way poetry is taught in school."
Duffy's work is studied in schools at GCSE and A-level – but, while she tirelessly tours the country visiting schools, her connection with the world of education has not been without its controversies. In 2008, her Education for Leisure, a poem about violence, was removed from the AQA examination board's GCSE poetry anthology after a complaint about its references to knife crime and a goldfish being flushed down the toilet.
Duffy has always maintained that the poem – which opens with the words "Today I am going to kill something. Anything / I have had enough of being ignored and today / I am going to play God" – is anti-violence.
After Anthologise, she reveals, she has even bigger plans for poetry in schools. "What I'd like to do is create anthologies for other school subjects – for history, for geography, for maths," she says. "I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way. So you'd have a maths lesson, and the teacher would hand out a poem about mathematics. Poetry is a different way of seeing something, and seeing a subject in a different way is often a very good tool to better learning."
For more information on the competition, see www.anthologise.co.uk
School transport spending cuts mean that from this week many pupils will be walking to school along unlit 60mph roads without pavements
Late summer light glances off stubble-filled fields, a delicate breeze rustles through the trees and birds chirp contentedly. But Honeypot Lane, near Chailey school in East Sussex, is not as idyllic as all that – not if you're walking, anyway. It's bendy, has no pavements and the speed limit is 60mph. Cars, lorries, horse boxes and tractors pass with a ferocious buzz, swinging out to avoid pedestrians. In term time the road will be stuffed with coaches bringing pupils in from other areas.
But cuts to discretionary school transport implemented by the county council mean that from this week some of the students who previously caught a free bus to school now face walking the 2.5 mile route from nearby East Chiltington. It is safe to do so if they are accompanied by an adult, the local authority says.
Campaigners, who have collected 450 signatures on a petition against the changes, disagree. They say it's dangerous and argue that asking parents to either walk up to four hours a day or give their children lifts could prevent them from working.
The number of students currently affected by the change in East Sussex is actually very small, but the situation there highlights issues being played out across the country. School buses and concessionary fares are being cut nationwide, from Durham, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to Peterborough, Hampshire, and Devon.
In an open letter sent to Michael Gove this week, a coalition of groups including children's charities, teaching unions and poverty campaigners call on the education secretary to change the guidelines on what constitutes a safe route. They write: "There can surely be no point in standing by whilst savings made by local authorities increase costs to the taxpayer elsewhere due to possible hospital costs to an injured child, extra benefit payments because parents can't work, and lost tax receipts as parents can't continue in their job or have to choose not to go back to work."
The current guidelines presume children will be accompanied by a responsible adult, meaning councils can declare routes up to three miles long (or two miles for under eights) safe even if they are unlit, have 60mph speed limits, no pavements or step-offs, and are used by heavy commercial traffic. The letter's signatories, who include representatives from the NUT and ATL, the Child Poverty Action Group, Unison, Gingerbread, Children England, the Grandparents' Association and the Child Accident Prevention Trust, call for new statutory guidelines that say a route can only be deemed safe if a child of 11 is able to walk it alone.
They also complain that because children on free school meals get transport on routes that are over two miles long and will therefore still get a bus to school while their classmates walk, the kind of cuts seen in East Sussex risk stigmatising pupils from low-income families.
"The statutory regulations are just bonkers," says parent Stephen Israel.
Sarah Osborne, a Liberal Democrat councillor on Lewes district council who is leading the East Chiltington campaign, says not everyone has access to a car to drive their children to school and, in any case, the headteacher doesn't want any more vehicles at the gates in the morning. The school also discourages cycling to school, and has no bike storage because the routes in are deemed too dangerous.
Single parents will be particularly badly hit. One mother, who is on her own, won't be able to transport her son because she'll be at work, Osborne says. "Even if there is a paid alternative – which may be possible via a not-for-profit bus provider – the cost will hit her hard. She is on a very low income but now she's working she is not eligible for free school meals and transport."
Osborne fears families will be put off rural areas by such cuts, adding that she knows of one couple who pulled out of moving into East Chiltington this summer when they realised it would be impossible to get their child to school because both had to leave for work early.
"Villages will become ghettoes for the old, the wealthy and the childless," she says. "It's much healthier for us all to have a diverse community."
Norman Baker, the Lib Dem MP for Lewes and coalition transport minister, plans to bring the letter to Gove's attention personally. He hopes Gove will agree to meet him and Osborne to discuss the country-wide issue. "I'm concerned that in this case the council has reached the wrong decision," he says. "The route is clearly not safe. If this is happening across the country – councils for financial reasons concluding that routes are safe to walk when clearly they aren't – then that clearly is a matter of concern."
In 2008, a survey by ATL found that a lack of public transport and rising fuel costs significantly disadvantaged the poorest children living in the countryside, with 70% of teachers questioned saying transport problems made it difficult for children to get to school or college.
"Lack of transport is a key issue," says the union's general secretary, Mary Bousted. "This is now compounded by the slash and burn approach of the government to local authority grants, which means they can't support rural bus services. As always, the poorer you are, the harder you are hit."
And parental choice rings hollow if parents are unable to get their children to school, the NUT general secretary, Christine Blower, points out.
The Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) also fears the consequences of ending discretionary school bus provision, says its bus campaigner, Sophie Allain. "If we take out these buses then we're not going to be encouraging parents and children to use public transport," she says. "One of the solutions would be to further invest in safe walking and cycling. But in many rural areas they just don't exist. It's going to mean greater congestion, more people in cars."
CBT is investigating how many school buses have been cut across the country. Its previous research found that 70% of English local authorities have already made cuts to buses across the board (ie not just school buses).
In Nottinghamshire, £400,000 has been cut from spending on non-statutory school bus provision, while in Derbyshire funding is being axed for 73 school bus services to 47 schools. Bus companies are being consulted to see if it is commercially viable for them to replace some of the services, but if not they will stop by April next year.
In Durham, the county council is cutting services it does not legally have to provide to save more than £5.5m. From the next academic year only students living more than three miles from their nearest "suitable school" will qualify for free transport, saving £1.6m. Another £1.05m will come from ending free transport to faith schools from the same period. And eight-year-olds will only qualify for funded buses if they live more than three miles away, as opposed to the current threshold of two. Suffolk is cutting £706,000 from school transport funding, and Hampshire is cutting £600,000.
East Sussex county council insists its decision, as part of a process of finding cuts worth £20m in its children's services budget this year, was made only after a proper safety inspection concluded the route was safe. "The decision to end this support was not an easy one to make and was considered very carefully," a spokesman says. "We have had to take into account the need to make significant reductions to our budget and also be clear that if we cannot save it in discretionary areas like this, we would have to cut more vital and fundamental services to children and young people.
"This decision also makes it fairer to all parents, most of whom have not historically benefited from the county council paying to transport their children to school."
The Department for Education says the Department for Transport has protected the concessionary travel scheme in full, and has provided £10m extra funding for community transport in rural areas.
In East Chiltington, the children are weighing up what losing the bus means to them. Stephen Israel's daughter, Greta, says: "They're always telling us to get more sleep, but we're going to be more tired – and we'll have less time to do homework."
The HE proposals will limit intellectual expansion and have a chilling effect on research and scholarship, says Peter Scott
A Conservative higher education minister (of an earlier generation) once got me in a corner and insisted: '"Surely you agree that at least 25% of the research done in universities is a complete waste of time?" I replied that no, I didn't agree but that, even if I did, we would never agree about which 25%.
How little has changed. The recent white paper is not concerned with research. It does not attempt to look at higher education as a whole, concentrating instead on the new student fees market. So it is hardly surprising two fundamental principles are threatened by the white paper – the block grant to universities and the dual-support system of research funding.
In theory universities receive block grants, which they are free to spend as they decide, not as politicians or bureaucrats pre-determine. Also research funding comes in two streams (hence dual-support) – core funding, part of the block grant, and projects funded by research councils and others. So universities are free to set their own long-term priorities rather than second-guess the short-term priorities of funders.
In practice the block grant is split into a T (teaching) grant and an R (research) grant. The calculation is transparent so it is hard for universities to vary the T and R components much. Each year the components get closer to being fixed.
The dual-support system, the distinction between core and project funding, has also faded. Core funding determined by successive research assessment exercises has become more and more like a earmarked grant, devolved to the faculties or departments that have "earned" it. Meanwhile the research councils, and other funders, are encouraged to pay the "full economic costs" of the research projects they commission. So there seems to be less need for core research funding – outside the humanities.
The undermining of these two basic principles is accelerated by the white paper. First, it will no longer be possible even to pretend that universities receive block grants. For a large swath of subjects – notably the arts and social sciences – there will no longer be any T funding. Instead they will depend entirely on student fees. So they will only be eligible to receive R funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce).
Even Hefce's continuing funding for teaching in science, engineering, clinical subjects and other (yet to be defined) "strategic and vulnerable" subjects will be nothing like a block grant. The whole point is that it will now be targeted.
Second, the "dual-support" system of research funding has been further undermined. Admittedly, Hefce will acquire new powers as a regulator rather than being abolished. But its primary responsibility will be to ensure that the new student driven "market" works. This new responsibility has little in common with providing core research funding. So the case for transferring quality-related research funding to the research councils is suddenly much stronger.
However, there is a third and more fatal impact of the white paper on research. Times of hope are nearly always times of intellectual ferment, out of which academic innovation and world-class research grow. The radical thinking encouraged by the establishment of the "new" universities – Sussex, Warwick, York and the rest – was one example. A second example was the brief early hope that the polytechnics would become "people's universities".
An up-to-date example is the coincidence of the growing power of Britain's world-class universities over the past two decades with a 50% increase in students, and the final establishment of a truly mass system of higher education – which is no coincidence at all.
It is not just that more money for higher education means bigger research budgets, or that the expansion of student numbers produces more academic posts and so boosts research capacity. It is also that open systems stimulate open thinking; extending higher education's social reach expands its intellectual possibilities. Just as the white paper will not do the first, neither will it do the second.
The government's closing of higher education's open frontier will not only be a betrayal of individuals and communities given hope by the expansion of recent decades; it is also very likely to have a chilling effect on research. Those who may care little about the former, may care a great deal about the latter.
• Peter Scott is professor of higher education studies at the Institute of Education
The world university league table could spark ideas among UK students of applying abroad to highly ranked universities that charge low – or no – fees
Students looking for any way to avoid £9,000 tuition fees and still attend a top-flight university could do worse than look at Trinity College, Dublin. The 400-year-old institution, ideally located to enjoy the "craic" of the fair city's nightlife, is ranked 65th in the world – just behind the London School of Economics – in the latest league table of the world's top universities, published yesterday. But it does not charge tuition fees to students from the UK.
QS, the international career and education network that compiled the latest world rankings, has for the first time compared tuition costs for all 600 universities. And in the top 200, many have fees below England's top whack of £9,000 a year.
So what are the realistic options for UK students willing to pack their trunk to save on the debts?
Dutch institutions are worth a look. Amsterdam university (ranked 63rd), offers numerous undergraduate degrees taught in English, and charges EU students just €1,713 (£1,516) a year in tuition fees. Also among the top 100 universities in the world are Utrecht (80th) and Leiden (88th).
According to the Student Loans Company, UK undergraduates wishing to study at EU universities would be eligible for a loan from that country to cover their tuition fees. If the countries also offered loans to cover living expenses, they would be able to apply for those. But if students are looking elsewhere in the world, they will have to apply for a scholarship or make their own financial arrangements.
For those happy to go further afield, Hong Kong has three universities in the top 50, all offering a good range of degrees taught in English. The University of Hong Kong is impressively ranked at number 22, with the Chinese University of Hong Kong at 37 and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology at number 40. Fees at the University of Hong Kong are £5,480 a year and £7,829 at the other two, and all three offer a variety of scholarships.
Outdoor types may find Nordic institutions attractive. But although the universities of Copenhagen (52nd), Helsinki (89th), Uppsala (83rd) and Lund (86th) charge no fees to EU students, they do not offer degrees taught in English. Though any would-be undergraduate who happens to be bilingual in Danish, Finnish or Swedish could be laughing in both their languages.
ETH Zurich (18th) and Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (35th), overlooking Lake Geneva, are among the cheapest fee-charging institutions in the league table and are a good option for those interested in studying for an English degree (other subjects are taught in German and French respectively). Fees are just 580 Swiss Francs (£435) a semester for both bachelor and masters degrees – foreign students pay the same as domestic undergraduates.
In contrast, US universities, which dominate the top 20, are likely to be beyond the reach of most UK students, unless they're lucky enough to get a scholarship. Most of the US universities listed charge $38,000-$40,000 (£23,400-£24,600) a year, which does put the £9,000 fees of many UK institutions in a different light. "At undergraduate level, all of the UK institutions listed are comparatively good value," says Ben Sowter, head of research at QS.
UK universities fare well in this year's QS rankings, with 54 in the top 600. Of these, over half are ranked in the top 200 and there are nine in the top 50. The rankings are based on research quality, graduate employability, teaching and how international the faculties and students are.
Cambridge this year pips Harvard to the top spot for the second year in a row, while Oxford, Imperial and University College London come fifth, sixth and seventh respectively. US institutions continue to dominate, with six universities in the top 10 and 20 in the top 50.
But whereas UK institutions, including Cambridge, tend to do well in terms of how international their students and faculties are, Harvard, like most US universities, "struggles to compete" in this respect, Sowter says.
However, the tables show that if the listings were ranked according to employers' preferences, Harvard would come top, Oxford second and Cambridge third. In fourth place, according to employers, come Manchester (29th in the overall table), Warwick (50th) and the LSE (64th), in equal place with Melbourne and the American Ivy League institutions MIT, Yale, Stanford and Berkeley.
But the UK lags behind many other developed countries in terms of public investment in higher education. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), higher education spending accounts for 0.7% of GDP, below the US, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Slovenia.
The Guardian's HE Network has the full QS rankings.
Unlike training, real education opens the way for delight and self-esteem, says Alan Smith
We were talking about warfare, how it seems to transform individuals, how notions of morality and identity are revealed as malleable, when there was a knock on the door. One of the training staff came in and said: "OK if we clean the room?" Of course it was, and so he beckoned in the guy he was training. This guy came in and stood there, looking a bit puzzled; he had a big vacuum cleaner in his two hands. There was something about the situation that made us stop and look.
They got the thing plugged in and after a few words the guy cleaned the bit of carpet near the door. Then he stopped and looked around the room. "Put the chairs up on the desk," said the trainer. The chairs went on the desk. "Now you can clean under it, see?" the guy cleaned under the desk. Stopped. Looked round the room. "Go on, then, put the other chairs up." Two more chairs went on the next desk. He looked round the room. Smiled at us. "Go on, go on clean under there." And so on, and on, like a brick wall made of sponge, until the trainer gave up: "Yeah that'll do." You really couldn't blame him.
"You reckon he was taking the piss?" I asked Casey.
"Course he was," said Ian.
Ian and Casey are workaholics. They have jobs in the prison, they both study, both get involved in projects, both of them have plans to get into work and careers when they leave. On the other hand, I meet people in prison who are drug addicts, who have every intention of continuing as addicts; I meet people who are mentally ill, people who are consumed with resentment and anger, who have never had a job in their lives. I meet people who are criminals and have no intention of being anything other than a criminal. There are people who will remain in prison if not for ever then at least until they are past retirement age. I suspect that the number of prisoners ready for training for employment may be rather small.
Why would they want a job at all? Most of us don't want the jobs we have; we wouldn't turn up for work were we not bribed to do so. People tend to live for the weekend, for holidays; most of us skive and take sickies when we can. Anything but work. It is simply not convincing to offer work to men in prison as if it were the answer to their ills. I have found work to be the source of most of my ills and when I look at the faces travelling to work in the morning I see that most of you feel the same way. On top of that, many prisoners expect that the jobs on offer to them on release will be unpleasant and badly paid.
Not many people are tempted by work and yet education is fading away in favour of employability. Employability has a robust, commonsense vigour about it that is lacking in philosophy, art, history, literature, but it is a delusion. I don't think that it does any harm to put schemes of training in place, in fact for people like the vacuum cleaner guy they provide opportunities for harmless fun, but don't expect them to do much good. Education always does some good; it opens the way for curiosity, delight and self-esteem. Most people are in prison because of neglect, damage and abuse; they do not need to know how to do a bit of vacuuming, they need to know what it is to be human.
This week on the Guardian Teacher Network, you can find resources to cover topics relating to the riots over the summer
The civil unrest over the summer provides an opportunity to cover many powerful topics. The Guardian Teacher Network should give some inspiration.
First, a lesson for secondary school-age children designed to develop critical thinking and positive action in response to the riots. This thinking-skills lesson is based on exploring visual and verbal images of the riots and is an interesting introduction to using the 8way thinking method.
You can read more from the author of the resource in our new blog. We welcome teachers and educators who want to blog about the resources they use or create – please email us at teacher.network@guardian.co.uk with "blog" in the subject field if you are interested in contributing.
For primary school-age children, we have a powerful resource, The Broom. The PowerPoint story is designed to take even very young children on a journey through the riots, focusing on the aftermath and positive outcomes of the conflict symbolised by an ordinary object, the broom.
The Red Cross education team have also written an excellent lesson on the summer's unrest here. Children get to analyse crowd behaviour and also look in more detail at the moving words of Tariq Jahan, who lost his son Haroon aged 21 when he was hit by a car during the riots in Birmingham alongside brothers Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir.
The summer's riots are just the latest chapter in a long line of civil unrest in the UK. See this lesson on changes in the countryside in the 1700s and 1800s, which explains how the enclosures acts led to rioting, smashing of threshing machines, burning haystacks and attacks on landowners.
Emily Drabble
The Guardian Teacher Network offers more than 70,000 pages of lesson plans and interactive materials. This is being added to every day: more than 40,000 teachers have already registered. To see (and share) for yourself go to teachers.guardian.co.uk. There are hundreds of jobs on the site and schools can advertise free: schoolsjobs.guardian.co.uk.
Ahead of JISC’s conference on ‘Research Integrity: the importance of good data management’ next week, a new study by JISC and the Research Information Network has found that data centres have been instrumental in developing a culture of data sharing among researchers.
‘Data Centres: their use, value and impact’: conclusions and implications
1. Data centres are a success story for their users, and funders and policy-makers should continue to support and promote existing national data centres.
2. Data centres are important both for reference purposes, and for novel research. Both these uses should be maintained and encouraged.
3. Data centre staff manipulate, interpret and support use of data sets, and this is highly valued by researchers. The role of data centre staff should be supported, and perhaps investigated further to support advocacy for data centre services.
4. Data centres should continue to collect information about users and usage for planning and advocacy purposes.
5. Although deposit levels are promising, researchers need more encouragement to deposit data. National and international initiatives in this area should be monitored and factored into any consideration of how to improve deposit rates.
6. If data centres are to support the grand challenges of modern research, they need to do more to facilitate interdisciplinary working. Improving facilities for data discovery across data centres may help.
7. The national data centres are just one part of a broader landscape for data curation and storage. Further work needs to be done to investigate how they can work most effectively with local, national and international services.
As part of a wider body of work, this evidence will help to build a case for improving data sharing practice in the UK. Although deposit levels are promising, the study concluded that researchers need more encouragement and support to deposit data in these centres.
Making data available for reuse helps maximize the value of publicly funded research in the UK by providing researchers with essential references, avoiding duplication, and allowing repurposing of information for new enquiries.
The report concludes that research data centres perform an important role by making high quality and reliable research results available in a way which makes it quick, easy and cheap for researchers to access.
Simon Hodson, programme manager at JISC, said: "This is a significant report which underlines the important role that data centres play in support of modern research. The study demonstrates that data centres offer many benefits to researchers and their work, and provides some evidence of benefits to wider society and the economy. It is clear also that researchers believe that many of the benefits of research data centres emerge because they are large, centralised and offer a range of services beyond simply providing access to data. The conclusion is that funders and policy-makers should continue to support and promote existing national data centres as a necessary part of the 21st century research infrastructure."
The study found that usage of data centres is high: most support thousands of researchers and millions of downloads each year. Data from every centre supports a variety of research activities, ranging from original research analysis, through combination and integration with other data, to reference purposes.
Simon Hodson adds: "Research data centres provide an essential service and perform valuable outreach and training, which researchers appreciate. The JISC Managing Research Data Programme – which involves partnerships with a number of national data centres – is helping develop capacity in terms both of skills and technical systems for improved data management in UK universities as part of a coherent national data infrastructure."
The study aimed to demonstrate the importance, relevance and benefits of effective sharing and curation of research data for the UK research community. It looked at the long-term usage and impact of data curated by a cross-disciplinary selection of established data centres. These included the Archaeology Data Service, the British Atmospheric Data Centre and the Economic and Social Data Service, which is part funded by JISC.
JISC’s ‘Research Integrity Conference’ on 13 September will explore the issues that universities and other organizations face when they are maintaining their research integrity - especially as it relates to the management and sharing of research data.
Watch the event onlinevia Jisc news
Researchers into the early days of TV for women want to know what you were watching in years gone by
There is a woman in Derbyshire, now in her 60s, who has fond memories of watching boxing on television. It isn't that she was particularly excited by the sight of two men trying to rearrange each other's faces. That aspect she found rather distasteful, even when screened in bloodless black and white. "What she really liked was that it was one of very few experiences that she could share with her father," says Hazel Collie, a PhD student from De Montford University in Leicester. Collie is asking women aged 40 to 95 for their personal memories of watching "the box" as part of a three-year project called A History of Television for Women in Britain: 1947-1989. The dates cover the period when TV resumed after the war to the coming of satellite broadcasting.
Some respondents have talked passionately about being riveted by early screenings of Panorama. Others recall the excitement of pop music invading screens that had hitherto hosted only big bands and crooners. "For women now in their late 60s and early 70s it was The Six-Five Special and for those now in their late 50s and early 60s it was Ready Steady Go," says Collie. "One woman remembers trying to record Top of the Pops on a reel-to-reel tape recorder by getting her brother to hold the microphone near the screen.
"As women grew older, had jobs and children, it's obvious that they didn't usually get their first choice when it came to family viewing," Collie goes on. "They could also be described as 'distracted consumers', half-watching while doing other things, such as ironing or cleaning."
Her interviewees so far have been women from all parts of the country who responded to advertisements in Saga Magazine and Woman's Weekly. Collie is also keen to hear from Education Guardian readers who are in the age bracket. A public discussion on the subject is to be staged in Leicester next month. Boxing, Panorama and Top of the Pops may well feature, but there is more likely to be a focus on programmes specifically aimed at a female audience. There are also likely to be screenings of dramas made in the early 1960s, such as Compact, which was set in a women's magazine, or The Rag Trade, a comedy focusing on bolshie working-class women in a clothing factory.
"We want to show the roots of contemporary programming," says Dr Rachel Moseley, who is leading the project at the department of film and television studies at Warwick University. "These early programmes undermine the assumption that married women were nearly all housewives back in the 1950s and 60s. The issue of trying to balance work and home life is often perceived as 'post-feminist', but these programmes suggest that it goes back a lot further."
Serious programming for women goes back further still, at least to the early 1950s. In 1951, the BBC put out Women's Viewpoint, which Moseley's colleague Dr Helen Wheatley describes as "basically a precursor for Loose Women [ITV's current chat show]". Without the emphasis on celebrity gossip and trivia? "Yes, there was less pressure to rake in audiences in those days and Women's Viewpoint fitted in with the Reithian idea of the BBC being an improving force. Space was made in the midday schedules for a group of public women to discuss the issues of the day. It's a mistake to think that daytime television was invented in the 80s."
Moseley and Wheatley are keen to undermine current assumptions. "Early television for women was much more varied, innovative and imaginative than we could have predicted and, in fact, has a lot in common with today's formats," says Moseley.
Television ownership expanded markedly with the Queen's coronation in 1953, which was also the year that Doreen Stephens arrived at Broadcasting House as editor of BBC television's women's programmes. She remained in post until 1964. "Yet she's not mentioned in any of the main histories of the BBC," Moseley says.
To set the record straight, the project's research fellow, Dr Mary Irwin, has written a paper on Stephens, describing how her zeal to inform women often brought her into conflict in a male-dominated corporation. Irwin found internal BBC memos suggesting that the controller of television programmes, Cecil McGivern, gave Stephens a particularly rough ride. He once grumbled about the unnecessary amount of gynaecological detail in a programme about childbirth.
Irwin writes: "The virtual absence of Stephens from historical records means that, until this point, any concentrated analysis of the early history of the development of television programmes for women is to all intents and purposes non-existent."
Three years ago, Moseley and Wheatley wrote an article for the television section of the Cinema Journal, asking Is Archiving a Feminist Issue? "In order to make convincing arguments about contemporary women's programming," they argued, "television scholars need to be able to see where the address, format, representations and concerns of 'the new' originate and how they have developed. We need, in other words, to pay attention to 'the old' of television as well as 'the new'."
The article may have helped to secure them a grant of £397,880 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. And it's definitely part of their remit to write a document for the industry on the need to be aware of the history of women's television, and to preserve what has survived.
• Memories of the early days of women's television can be sent to hazel_collie@hotmail.com
FBI forensic guidance combs through the incriminating nature of follicular evidence
Despite its reputation for sporting nearly-identical conservative haircuts, the FBI – the Federal Bureau of Investigation, America's government gumshoes – assembled and published an all-inclusive guide to hair. And despite its reputation for tight-lippedness, it made its guide available to anyone who might have a use or desire for it.
Hair Bibliography for the Forensic Scientist might make a fine gift for anyone who cares about the sometimes-tangled relationship between hair and crime. You might regard this as completely legal intellectual pornography for those who watch CSI [Crime Scene Investigation].
The author, Max Houck of the FBI's Trace Evidence Unit in Washington DC, at least pretended that his 17-page report, published in 2002 in the journal Forensic Science Communications, would appeal strictly to professionals. "It is hoped that this listing will provide some assistance to forensic hair examiners who are seeking information and support for courtroom forensic challenges," he wrote.
Some light, even playful, touches suggest that Houck knew his paper would also find its way to amateurs, and even to casual fans of the hair-and-crime game.
The list begins coyly with Don't Miss a Hair, a seven-pager published in 1976 in the FBI law enforcement bulletin.
Next comes more cutesiness: From Bad to Worse: Hair Today, Scorned Tomorrow, which you can find in a 1997 issue of the journal Science Sleuthing.
Then comes a more specific, and mildly grizzly, title that's worded with strange ambiguity: Laboratory Solves Variety of Crimes with Animal Hairs (FBI law enforcement bulletin, 1960).
Then a return to the strictly human, and a higher degree of specificity: Pigmentation in a Central American Tribe with Special Reference to Fair-headedness (American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1953).
One report's title almost begs you to go and find out how, exactly, its authors, DL Exline, FP Smith and SO Drexler, gathered their knowledge: Frequency of Pubic Hair Transfer During Sexual Intercourse, published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1998.
The list is dominated by 10 items written or co-written by BD Gaudette. That's Barry D Gaudette, chief scientist for hair and fibre, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Gaudette's An Attempt at Determining Probabilities in Human Scalp Hair Comparison, co-written with ES Keeping in the Journal of Forensic Sciences in 1974, specifies a rule of thumb that you can use in writing either a crime novel or a maths textbook: "It is estimated that if one human scalp hair found at the scene of a crime is indistinguishable from at least one of a group of about nine dissimilar hairs from a given source, the probability that it could have originated from another source is very small, about 1 in 4,500. If, instead of one hair, n mutually dissimilar human scalp hairs are found to be indistinguishable from those of a given source, this probability is then estimated to be (1/4,500) to the nth power, which is negligible when n is greater than or equal to three."
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
Karen Hans is Librarian at St Martins-in-the-Fields High School in South London, and works in a varied role which includes reader and information literacy development, promoting the library, choosing stock, running the budget, developing VLE, arranging author visits and trips, and the inevitable crowd control!
During and after my gap year and first degree I worked as a Library Assistant in the public, hospital & business sectors. I had wanted to be a social worker or teacher, but eventually changed my mind and switched to librarianship - and after some years working in an academic library, I was becoming bored with the scope of my assistant role and decided to train as a librarian. I grabbed the chance, as my employer gave me time off and also paid for my MA, and then when I completed the course I got my first job in a school library – there were lots of transferable skills from the academic sector. I chartered ASAP and also rapidly improved my knowledge of children’s literature.
Why would I recommend the sector? Well, you will never be bored! It’s so satisfying seeing children develop into confident readers, and children’s literature is a great area to work in right now. Also there’s the fun side of organising author visits, and often the chance to pursue your own interests, such as graphic novels, or storytelling. Plus there is the challenge of working with pupils and teachers.
It’s always busy and you have to prioritise your strengths, and hopefully your enthusiasm inspires the pupils. Each school library is very unique, as is each school, so you can have a great influence on the library you manage within the ethos of the particular school.
via RSS Feed
Tonya Chirgwin is Resources and Development Librarian at Cheshire West and Chester Council, working behind the scenes supporting the Library Management Team, particularly with the annual Service Plan; this consists of liaison and discussion work across all staff, resulting in a report Tonya collates, which outlines the aspirations for the service for the year ahead. She also produces a monthly staff newsletter.
I first studied music, and it was during my postgraduate study that I started to get interested in librarianship following a careers event I attended and also because of all my own use of libraries for research. I knew then that I wanted to train as a librarian.
At first I only considered working in academic or special libraries, but when I finally arrived at Library School many years later I began to consider working in a public library. When I finished my course my first job was with Cheshire County Council as a Library Assistant in a busy branch library. After three years I realised that working with the public was not for me! I attended the CILIP Branch and Mobiles Conference as part of my training, and one of the papers was on “best value” for public services – and once I’d chartered the job of Project Assistant for the Best Value Review was advertised I got it!
The job involved lots of interesting research, which meant I learnt not just about libraries, but archives, arts and museum services. I also learnt a lot about best practice, and the balance between strategy and the everyday practical requirements of both public and staff.
Then a new job came up, Resources and Development Librarian, and it built on my skills, so I applied and got it. As well as the challenges of this job, I liaise with other professionals on the Adult PLUS steering group, which maintains and develops the national Adult Library User Survey, and I also sit on CILIP’s Publicity and Public Relations special interest group committee, and a highlight of my year is helping with the annual conference.
So although I no longer work so much with the public my job is certainly varied and just goes to show that there are some interesting posts for librarians outside the mainstream in the public sector!
via RSS Feed
Megan Silver is Prison Librarian at HMP Cookham Wood & HMYOI Rochester, where she deals with collection development, budgeting, staff management, administration, events and activities and all aspects of customer service.
For ten years I worked at three Kent College libraries running IT, but when the chance came up to study part-time on a post-graduate Library and Information Studies course I took it; once I started working I went on to charter. I needed a change and the role of librarian across two local prisons interested me. My experience of college libraries and managing teams, budgets and resources appeared to be excellent grounding, but when I was offered the job I thought long and hard about it: did I feel comfortable working in a prison environment with people who have often carried out dreadful crimes, and how would the role would affect future career choices and the ability to move out of the sector?
In many ways being a Prison Librarian is similar to working in a public library, but a vital aspect is working with very challenging customers. Each prison is different, but things can become volatile, so your ability to read a situation is very important and you need the confidence and communication skills to diffuse a situation quickly or to act decisively to summon assistance.
It is possible to feel isolated so it is essential to build relationships with other librarians in the authority and to get involved with the CILIP Prison Libraries Group and the training they offer; networking helps you stay abreast of developments both in prisons and the wider library world.
No two days are the same, and whilst it can be frustrating there is the satisfaction of creating a calm and welcoming space where offenders feel safe and comfortable to learn in what can otherwise be a turbulent environment. Not everyone will feel suited to work behind locked gates but it can offer a challenging career which is never boring.
via RSS Feed
Lisa Hutchins is a freelance information architect who designs the information structures of websites. This means deciding on the order and hierarchy of their pages, designing the navigation bars in conjunction with a designer and working out what words to put on them, working with metadata in the form of tags and categories, using technical tools such as thesauri and controlled vocabularies, coming up with ways to make search more efficient and persuading all this to work inside various content management systems and on various server set-ups.
All these things are done with the user firmly at the centre of the process which might mean doing extensive user testing to find out what works and what doesn’t, researching how competitor and ‘online neighbours’ do (and don’t do) the job, spending time with Google Analytics and other statistics packages, thoughtfully doodling designs on bits of paper, building semi-functional prototypes and having intense conversations with colleagues to champion the needs of the user among their many competing priorities and those of the client.
To be an information architect you need to be patient, organised and someone who can switch between detail and the big picture without losing sight of either. You need to have excellent people skills and to be able to negotiate with all kinds of other IT professionals to make sure your expertise is used to best effect in the site design. You need to be a skilled listener and to hear the things people aren’t saying as well as the ones they are. You should be able to rise above office politics and get people from different camps talking to each other. You need to be quietly assertive as well as creative and to have that ability to come at a problem sideways which leads to your finding innovative solutions to difficult problems. You need a passion for the subject of usability, the ability to evangelise for it and the aptitude to keep abreast of technical developments across a wide range of technologies. And you need to be mentally tough enough to constantly sell the importance of your work - as a champion of users - to the sceptical and downright cynical. Anyone wanting to know more about this fascinating subject should read Information Architecture and the World Wide Web by Morville and Rosenfield which is a well-regarded, readable textbook on the subject.
An information architect might work for a large organisation with a big website to run, or (probably most often) they might move between a series of contracts as their skills are needed. I am freelance and work on general website development, bringing my content and information management skills to the table alongside my partner’s design and coding skills. One of the biggest challenges I face is convincing the people who write the cheques of the value of my work. It’s obvious what the designer and the coder do - they make it pretty and they make it work. You would be amazed at how many people see the content as a bolt-on extra that follows on from the design rather than seeing that usability and content inform the site’s look and feel. And the information structure - if I do my job well, it is seamless and invisible. A large part of the challenge I face is to make the invisible both visible and compellingly relevant to non-specialists.
The sort of tasks I might carry out during my working week are as follows. I could be handling incoming enquiries to establish what potential clients want, whether we can provide it and whether we both have a similar understanding of what that work is worth. I might be preparing a formal written pitch for a potential client or even a tender document if we are approaching a larger organisation for work. A lot of these discussions are done by phone when a client can explain to me what they need and I can discuss our approach. It’s also a great way to learn about a client’s business or organisation and find out what they think their users will be looking for. We are careful only to accept projects we know are fully within our scope (or the scope of certain collaborators we trust implicitly to work with us) and where the clients are positive and enthusiastic about their project. If they are clearly doing it because they feel they need a website but aren’t really invested in having a good one - that can never end well. Similarly if they have an unrealistic idea of what our work is worth. This means that, for one reason or another, we can end up rejecting as much work as we accept.
I might be project managing - dividing a project up into tasks with deadlines for us and for the client (such as supplying images, logos or written materials or signing off aspects of the project) and entering the elements into project management software. I might be doing research about design trends, the websites in a certain category or usage statistics. Because we use WordPress and I am expert with it I tend to build the page structure and set up things like categories myself rather than handing it over to a developer - that’s something I really enjoy doing. I may have my head buried in really detailed research, or be thinking of methods that will gather the data I need with the resources I have available, or trying to have big, general ideas about top-level design features.
I may be writing the user documentation to go with a new website or maybe talking a user through the WordPress interface. They may have an urgent problem that needs troubleshooting so my partner and I might be communicating with them via email or telephone to solve it. I may have to talk direct to their hosting company to deal with server-side problems and get issues resolved or do routine tasks like set up email accounts and get server-side software updated. There’s a big aspect of customer service and dealing directly with clients in this job. I might be researching different customisations (known as plug-ins) that we might advise a client to use or possibly working with my partner to thrash out aspects of visual design that we can both agree on.
I might be writing or editing written content - the kind full of keywords that search engines like, although I’m not a SEO specialist and I’m not interested in doing that full-time. Another content task I might be doing is migration - taking the stuff off an old website and repurposing it for a new one, writing anything that is needed along the way. I may be working out which social media services are most relevant and allaying a client’s fears about using them. I might be setting up Twitter accounts or Facebook pages and getting everything to talk to everything else. I might be organising documents into a document library, tagging and categorising them. I might be adding press releases to a client’s blog. I might be writing posts for the company blog or getting busy on Twitter to try to keep in contact with our local businesses. I may be going to a conference, networking or training event or making sure our own website is functioning properly and up-to-date - important shop window that it is. And then there are business administration tasks such as finance, record-keeping and compliance to carry out.
You can read Lisa's full account in her original blog post 'A Day in my information professional's life'
via RSS Feed
Phil Jones is ICT and Information Coordinator at Coventry Libraries and Information Services, a newly created role in which he manages e-resources, staff training, liaising with partner organisations and training providers, providing information on internal and external resources, working with IT support staff and investigating service developments.
I was originally looking for a job in radio production and got a part-time job as a Library Assistant in Central Library in Coventry – and although some of the tasks were repetitive the huge variety of both customers and staff was a revelation.
I did this for three years before moving up to Senior Assistant level, where I gained useful administration and supervisory experience. I then decided to do my MA and got a place at Loughborough, and completed the course whilst still working 26 hours a week - I found that working whilst studying meant I benefited from seeing how theory could be applied to my workplace.
After the course I got a job in my authority as a part-time Senior Community Librarian/Library Manager. With my jobshare partner I had responsibility for two community libraries along with fourteen staff – quite a shock to the system. I went on every training course to gain additional necessary skills and regularly consulted my more experienced colleagues, and also relied on my teams in both libraries who were kind and patient in equal measure.
I feel passionately about the importance of libraries in spreading information and knowledge as well as opportunities for personal growth for all, and I see library work as a vocation. Becoming more involved in CILIP has given me an excellent insight into other areas of the profession, opportunities to meet colleagues and an awareness of developments in libraries generally. I would highly recommend working in public libraries – there can be few jobs which enable you to contribute so much to the public good especially if you can bring with you IT literacy, strong people skills and a public service ethos.
via RSS Feed
Read all the latest political stories relevant to library and information professionals on the LIS in politics blog
CILIP monitors weekly political news relevant to library and information services including Westminster and Whitehall, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the European Union, major political TV and radio programmes, Parliamentary questions and statements, Select Committees and party conferences. It is mainly based on information provided by DeHavilland's political intelligence resource.
You need to be registered and logged in to CILIP's website to read the blog. You then navigate to LIS in politics. Using RSS, you can receive posts in your email inbox.
Libraries All Party Parliamentary Group
All-party groups are more informal than other cross-party bodies such as select committees of the House. They mainly comprise backbench Members of the House of Commons and Lords but may also include ministers and non-parliamentarians.
via RSS Feed
The BIC/CILIP RFID in Libraries Group is seeking nominations for the RFID Innovation Award, which is presented each year at the RFID in Libraries Conference. This year the conference will be held at the Bloomsbury Hotel in London on 8th November 2011.
Entries are encouraged from libraries which believe they have been innovative in the specification, installation and use of RFID technology since the last conference in November 2010. Entries should comprise of no more than 200 words and be submitted by email to jason.russell@cilip.org.uk for distribution to members of the Group.
The closing date is Monday 12th September, and the winner will be chosen by members of the BIC/CILIP RFID in Libraries Group and announced in the October issue of Update magazine and also on the event website www.cilip.org.uk/rfid2011
The winner of the 2010 award was Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council. Previous winners include Westminster Libraries, Cornwall County Council, and the University of East Anglia.
-ends-
Contact:
Jason Russell, Head of Events and Marketing, CILIP
Tel: 020 7255 0544
Email: Jason.russell@cilip.org.uk
via RSS Feed
A new report ‘The value of reuse of open educational resources’ produced by the HEA and JISC, highlights the need to support learners and academic staff alike in the referencing and the reuse of online resources.
Open educational resources (OER) are materials which educators make the content available online to learners and also to other educators, to share, re-use and remix. The report claims, that their use in teaching offers new and better ways to engage with learning anytime anywhere and raising the richness the course.
Given the huge volume and diversity of content on the Internet, the report suggests that ‘students are often nervous about their ability to critically evaluate...becoming lost in the web and risk wasting significant amounts of time engaging with resources which prove later to be off topic or unreliable.’
David White, senior manager development technology-assisted lifelong learning at the University of Oxford author of the Value of Reuse report says, “The report advises staff to help develop students’ digital literacy skills especially in the area of critical analysis of resources – for example by making them aware of citation standards that exist for online videos and podcasts.
“There is a challenge for providers of open content because the resources are out there on the web and open to all, it can be difficult to know how they are actually being used. We’ve used the analogy of an iceberg to show the extent of hidden use. It emphasises how many openly licensed and non-licensed resources may actually be being re-used in the classroom but invisible to the original resource authors.”
Amber Thomas programme manager at JISC explains why these reports were commissioned, “OER has a range of benefits, and we wanted to better understand its benefits to users as well as releasers, so the study on ‘the Value of Reuse’ was designed to analyse the relationship between use and impact.
Sean Mackney, HEA senior deputy chief executive, said, “OER is a fantastic example of how technology can be used to share innovation and excellence in teaching practice, not just here in the UK but right across the world. This report gives those involved in higher education teaching, particularly those who may not have considered the potential value of OER before, ideas around how they can make the most of the opportunities OER can provide.”
JISC will be enhancing the knowledge of UK universities and colleges in how to approach open educational resources and technology-enhanced learning through its digital literacies programme and oer work.
View David White's video blog at: http://bit.ly/prKyD9
Listen to a podcast with David White, the author of the value of reuse report (Duration 11:15)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
via Jisc news
Facet Publishing release guides for librarians on cloud computing, the web of data and metadata for digitised resources
Getting Started with Cloud Computing, edited by Edward M. Corrado and Heather Lea Moulaison, is a one-stop guide to implementing cloud computing in libraries. In this edited collection, international thought leaders on library technology including Marshall Breeding and Nicole Engard demystify the terminology, deflate the hype and provide library-specific examples of real-world successes that can be emulated to guarantee efficiency and savings in libraries.
In Facilitating Access to the Web of Data, author David Stuart introduces librarians to the emerging web of data and the semantic web, exploring technologies including APIs, microformats and linked data. The book’s topical commentary and practical examples drawn from the international LIS community explore how information professionals can stay ahead of the information skills of the masses and harness the power of this new phenomenon to inform strategy and become facilitators of access to data.
Metadata for Digital Collections: a how-to-do-it manual by Stephen J. Miller is a practical, hands-on volume that introduces readers to fundamental concepts and practices of metadata design and creation for digitized resources in a style accessible to beginners and LIS students, as well as experienced practitioners with little metadata training. Each chapter offers a set of exercises, with suggestions for instructors and a companion website includes additional practical and reference resources.
-ends-
Press contact:
James Williams, Marketing Manager, Facet Publishing
Tel: +44 (0)20 7255 0597
Email: james.williams@facetpublishing.co.uk
Notes to editors:
1. Getting Started with Cloud Computing (July 2011; 232pp; paperback; 978-1-85604-807-1; £49.95) is published by Facet Publishing. It is available from Bookpoint Ltd, Mail Order Dept, 39 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4TD | Tel: +44 (0)1235 827702 | Fax: +44 (0)1235 827703 | Email: facet@bookpoint.co.uk | Web: www.facetpublishing.co.uk. The book is available in the US and Canada from Neal-Schuman Publishers www.neal-schuman.com
2. Facilitating Access to the Web of Data (July 2011; 208pp; paperback; 978-1-85604-745-6; £44.95) is published by Facet Publishing. It is available from Bookpoint Ltd, Mail Order Dept, 39 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4TD | Tel: +44 (0)1235 827702 | Fax: +44 (0)1235 827703 | Email: facet@bookpoint.co.uk | Web: www.facetpublishing.co.uk.
3. Metadata for Digital Collections: A how-to-do-it manual (July 2011; 368pp; paperback; 978-1-85604-771-5; £49.95) is published by Facet Publishing. It is available from Bookpoint Ltd, Mail Order Dept, 39 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4TD | Tel: +44 (0)1235 827702 | Fax: +44 (0)1235 827703 | Email: facet@bookpoint.co.uk | Web: www.facetpublishing.co.uk.
4. Edward M. Corrado is Director of Library Technology at Binghampton University, New York, USA
5. Heather Lea Moulaison is Assistant Professor at the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA
6. Dr David Stuart is currently a researcher in the Centre for e-Research at King’s College London, and an honorary research fellow in the Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group at the University of Wolverhampton, where he was previously Web 2.0 Research Fellow. He has a PhD in information science and regularly writes about library and information science topics for professional journals and magazines.
7. Stephen J. Miller is a senior lecturer in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA.
8. Facet Publishing, is the commercial publishing and bookselling arm of CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, is the leading publisher of books for library and information professionals worldwide. At the forefront of library and information development, Facet Publishing has a comprehensive list covering all the major areas of professional activity.
via RSS Feed
CILIP members are invited to nominate titles for the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards 2012.
The CILIP Carnegie Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding book for children and young people. The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding book in terms of illustration for children and young people. Both medals are judged by a panel of CILIP’s youth librarians from across the UK.
We would like to encourage nominations from all members, whatever sector you may work in. For more details, and to check the awards criteria please visit: www.ckg.org.uk/awardsprocess
or
via RSS Feed
This section has information about CILIP's work in relation to schools and has school librarians advocacy materials.
Department for Education's National Curriculum Review - call for evidence
April 2011
CILIP's evidence
School Libraries - A Right
School Library Commission: MLA & National Literacy Trust
In September 2010 the School Library Commission report was published.
Its key finding is that many school libraries are underutilised resources that do not fulfil their potential to improve literacy levels and support pupil learning and attainment.
The Commission promotes a number of recommendations to governors, headteachers, sector bodies, and local authorities. Key recommendations include:
More information on the School Library Commission and report is available on the MLA and NLT websites.
In March 2010 CILIP responded to the MLA and NLT's School Library Commission
Read our submission
National Survey of School Libraries
The report of the National Survey of School Libraries has been published and was launched at the House of Commons on 20 July 2010.
The survey received detailed replies from 1,547 secondary, middle, special and independent schools and exhaustive activity reports from over 1,000 of these, supplemented by information from 655 primary schools.
The headlines from the report are:
Go to SLG website to download full report
Read survey results press release
The survey was instigated by the School Libraries Group (SLG) and supported by the School Library Association and CILIP Scotland, with funds provided by the Wendy Drewett Bequest.
School librarians advocacy resources
via RSS Feed
Download the podcast