Information Literacy Re-visited

The New Literacy Crisis: Immigrants Teaching Natives in the Digital Age, Teresa Coffman, Ph.D., Aileen Campbell, Emily Heller, Emily M. Horney, & Lynne P. Slater

What is Library Literacy and how do you best impart this to public library users? THE LATERAL LITERAL LIBRARIAN

Information Literacy: A Clarification, by Linda Langford

“What do you mean I can’t just use Google?” Information Literacy in an Academic Setting, by Laura Thorne, Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management (Canadian academic survey)

21st Century Literacies: Tools for Reading the World

ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Approved 2000.

assessment tool for information literacy that can be used to measure success: complete list of Information Literacy Assessment Tools; more specifically: James Madison University's ILT (Information Literacy Test) TRAILS' related sources (Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills), Kent State University's SAILS (Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills):

"There are many choices but SAILS will give you an accurate snapshot by group (freshmen-senior) if you want to get just aggregate data. The responses are totally anonymous so you cannot track individuals, but you can compare years if you have at least 50 responses from each cohort." @ collib-l@ala.org

On the same shelf:

Shelf Reading and Reading Between the Shelf: Needs Innovation

Interesting (but boring and strenuous) activity in a library--i.e., familiarization with the library collection--is always a challenge, both for old and new staff. One way to do is shelf-read, read the shelves and what lies between the shelves.

Said Rochowiak" "Shelf reading is very important. If one book is misfiled it is lost to the library," [source]

Rebecca said: "I am all about librarians getting out in the stacks. How else do you know what your patrons see? How else would you know that your collection needs weeding and/or shifting? There is no better way to get to know your collection than by getting in there and getting your hands on the books. I think this is one of the reasons I love weeding so much." [ source]

Senior librarians must consider newer ways of shelf-reading, as well design better (challenging) guides to library orientation--in order to inspire new staff / volunteers (familiarize with the library's collections).

Extracts from a librarian blogger's post, Miss Information is not feeling challenged:

Instead of actual assignments, the recent recruit spends time “getting to know the collection”...
...There were a couple of people who actually needed help—one woman needed the ESL section and another asked where the French books were. Miss Information was useless here though because she hasn’t gotten to know the collection that well yet.

On the same shelf:

Reading between the Shelf - Thought for the day

Multifaith Stacks: Reading Between the Shelves

Shelf reading quote, from a survey, 'Librarians and Shelf-Studying Print Collections': "Shelf reading is still a valid technique for reference training and awareness of scope of materials at hand." See also: Online Shelf-Studying and Librarians

Visualizing Information based on primary and secondary research

Diaries, are one form of primary resource for any research or study. Librarians classify diaries and such original information tools as primary source or tools from primary research. When people digest this information and create a summary (or an interpretation) such a publication becomes secondary, a digest of digests become tertiary (depending on the levels of input) and quaternary.

This categorization of primary, secondary, etc., is essential for those who teach the library users--or call it information literacy.
Whereras, such categorization in research helps (those involved in study and research) identify the resources: what to look and when to look.

William A Katz, in his book, Introduction of Reference Work, says: "If the ideal reference service, to paraphrase Andre Malraux is 'reference service without walls', the nature of information does impose certain limitations on that service. This side of tapping experts in the community for 'firsthand' information, the library generally must rely upon published data... A rough way of measuring the usual timelines of materials is to classify them as primary, secondary, or tertiary." (volume one, 1978, p. 15)

Interestingly, information professionals, esp. librarians have time, patience, motivation, and skills to name the process, at each stage: be it input, thruput or output. Taxonomies, metadata, tags and keywords are a big world today, but many don't know that librarians are trained both in school and in work to identify and standardize names, themes and so on.

In short, we had traditionally three types of reference sources, viz., primary, secondary and tertiary. Now, a fourth category has emerged, viz., quaternary [C. A Morlot, Swiss stratigrapher and archaeologist, Originator of the term "Quaternary" as used in Geology, and related fields]

As a reference source, the word quaternary, has different definitions, and this includes:

• Anon. Catalogs like the Guide to Reference Sources could even be called quaternary sources.
• Urban Dictionary: Quaternary Reference - An unauthoritative reference source based upon unlimited human input.

A good template (sample, model) to visualize bookreview of reference sources, e.g, diary or autobiography, posted on a blog for the autobiographical work, What World is Left, is here: books based on primary and secondary research

Dialing for Answers Where Web Can’t Reach

By RON NIXON

Published: September 27, 2009










"Question Box connects operators like Phiona Joyo Tee, left, Lydia Apio and Charlene Rwemereza Abireebe with people who have questions, especially about agriculture.

KAMPALA, Uganda — "The caller was frustrated. A new pest was eating away at his just-planted coffee crop, and he wanted to know what to do. Tyssa Muhima jotted down notes as the caller spoke, and promised to call back in 10 minutes with an answer.

Each day, Ms. Muhima and two other young women at this small call center on the outskirts of Uganda’s capital city answer about 40 such calls. They are operators for Question Box, a free, nonprofit telephone hot line that is meant to get information to people in remote areas who lack access to computers. " continue reading

A tale of two countries' libraries - Canada versus USA

[TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Jane Pyper, Toronto's chief librarian, in the stacks; books are "the perfect format," the others are ever-changing.]

Click here to read the news story:

A tale of two countries' libraries - Canada vs USA

Europeana ~ On hold

Info courtesy: Dawn Bassett @ A Librarian's ramblings

Please wait, you are in queue, Your Click is Important to Us: "We launched the Europeana.eu site on 20 November and huge use - 10 million hits an hour - meant it slowed to a crawl. We are doing our best to reopen Europeana.eu in a more robust version."

INDIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM as the BEST National Anthem in the World

Free on the Web; E-mail forwards and turth researched @ www.hoax-slayer.com.

Internet Rumour - UNESCO Chooses ....
Commentary: According to this story, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), has announced that the Indian National Anthem is the best in the world.

©iStockphoto.com/Björn Kindler

The story is currently circulating via email, and has also been posted to many blogs and forums, especially those that target an Indian audience. .. continue reading

DNA - Opinion - World’s ‘best’ national anthem : The buzz on the Internet is that Jana Gana Mana, the Indian national anthem, has been declared as the world’s best national anthem by Unesco

Who Has The Largest Individual Vocabulary?

Guess: Native speakers or non-native speakers?

Whatever may happen in the future, regardless of species, who has the largest English vocabulary right now? This is not a straightforward question. Michael Quinion explains why:

“What we mean by word sounds obvious, but it’s not. Take a verb like climb. The rules of English allow you to generate the forms climbs, climbed, climbable, and climbing, the nouns climb and climber (and their plurals climbs and climbers), compounds such as climb-down and climbing frame, and phrasal verbs like climb on, climb over, and climb down. Now, here’s the question you’ve got to answer: are all these distinct words, or do you lump them all together under climb? ...

"Of all the people I know, my meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy definitely has the largest vocabulary, however it’s measured. Growing up in East Bengal, English was not his first language, but I regularly come across English words in his writings which I have never seen before. Take my favourite example: sesquipedalian (meaning a very long word)." continue reading English as a Fecund Language @ Sumangali.org: In the Spirit of Serendipity

Much more about Sri Chinmoy from his fans: My Life with Sri Chinmoy / Photos of Sri Chinmoy / Sri Chinmoy on DVD

Pangea Day: Kenya sings for India

Info courtesy: SHIRIN S. BADLANI & Suresh Lalvani @ http://www.spectrascribe.com/

Pangea Day - May 10, 2008: A Global Film Event Harnessing the ...
Can Your Film Change the World? Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion, uniting millions of people to build a better ...

What other bloggers are saying:

Says Chris Anderson, TED Curator

Take a look at these films. They are each just one minute long. They feature a choir in one country singing another country’s national anthem: a simple idea that packs surprising emotional power.

France sings for USA
Japan sings for Turkey
They were shot by film directors looking to support the landmark TED project Pangea Day (which I hope you have calendared for Saturday, May 10)

Pangea Day Hopes to Bring the World Together Through Film
15 Apr 2008 by Paul

Is Pangea Day Coming to Your Library?
14 Apr 2008 by Nancy Dowd

Connections, Sharing of ideas, Pangea Day, May 10, 2008
1 Apr 2008 by Steve Doyne

Browse more via Google Blog search

Multicultural Canadian Website: Promotes History of Indo-Canadians

The Government of Canada Supports Simon Fraser University Library under a project called "Documenting and Exploring Multicultural Canada".

"This project on the study and exploration of Canadian multiculturalism involves upgrading the Multicultural Canada website by digitizing various documents that record the contribution of different ethnocultural communities to Canadian society. Among other things, the website will bring together documents, newspapers, and sound clips currently scattered throughout different libraries and archive services. The site will be a unique source of information on the history of the Chinese, Ukrainian, German, Hungarian, Vietnamese, and Indo-Canadian communities in Canada. Information will be provided in English and French and in the language of each community."

"The goal of this project is to preserve and provide access to the record of individuals and communities of Canada’s peoples. Through newspapers, interviews, photographs, letters, family papers and oral histories, the people who have made Canada have documented their experience." Says Lynn Copeland, Dean of Library Services, Simon Fraser University Library. Project contacts

See also on the shelf:

• Library and Archives Canada: Multicultural Initiatives
• Japanese Canadian Story Telling
• The Historical Chinese Language Materials in British Columbia (www.hclmbc.org)

Bangla and Bangalooru: The Phonetic Similarity in Jeopardy

PS. Bear in mind the newstory about the trend to restore original syntax & symantics (A.K.A. Indianization) that was announced in the State of Karnataka (India) -- It's official: Bangalore is now Bengalooru / Bangalore or Bangalooru?

Reference and Research Protests posted by Annoyed Librarian:
It can't happen often that a reference book draws more than yawns and mediocre reviews, but the OUP has stopped selling the Concise Dictionary of World Place Names because of some protests and outcries in India. (This was reported a few days ago, but I'm behind on my news.)

According to the story:"Among other errors, the book, the Concise Dictionary of World Place Names, says that the local language in Bangalore, Karnataka’s capital, is Bengali. Actually the language is Kannada. Bengali is spoken in Bangladesh and neighboring regions of northeastern India." Continue reading

The BOBs - BEST OF THE BLOGS - My Electronic Library 2.0

PS. If you see it deserves, vote this blog [request to circulate this message by Blogmaster Heyam Hayek, a Kids Librarian.]

Library ditches microfilm in favour of RIAs

By: Briony Smith
ComputerWorld Canada (30 Aug 2007)
Nestled up in the northern interior of British Columbia, even the small town of Terrace isn’t untouched by the rich Internet applications trend — the local public library has recently recreated its newspaper archiving system into a digital version that’s getting rave reviews. continue reading

Eleanor Muehle Newspaper Archive

When Willings Multimedia needed help building an interactive web-based library for the Terrace Public Library in British Columbia, Canada, they contacted Integration New Media (INM). The two companies worked together to build the “Eleanor Muehle Newspaper Archive”, a dynamic and interactive web application that allows users of all ages and technical capabilities to search through and read newspapers online.

South Asian Literary Recordings Project

Launched in April 2000, to record the voices of South Asian authors for the Library of Congress' Archive of Recorded World Literature, the project has captured the readings of prominent South Asian poets, novelists, and playwrights. The authors recorded so far represent more than fifteen of the languages of India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Google goes desi, starts online Hindi software

Click here for this Google Hindi page

अब तो हिन्दी मैं लिखना असान हो गया है.
मगर सब को क्या मालूम के यह कैसे कम करता है?

Samiran Saha, Hindustan Times

New Delhi, August 20, 2007

The world’s hottest search engine has gone desi. Now you can type in English and get the script in Hindi on Google. You can also search for local content in Hindi and 13 other Indic languages. Engineers at Google have developed software that helps online usage of "Indic" language scripts.

The term "Indic" refers to the Indo-Aryan languages that form a sub-group of the Indo-Iranian languages.

"Indic" is used in the context of the Indo-European linguistics, and is not strictly a geographical term.

Hindi transliteration was launched on the blogger service earlier this year, and the latest service http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic/ is a standalone offering of the same technology.

By launching its search in Hindi Google is looking at the wide base of Indian Net users, a large section of which comprises of those proficient in Hindi.

Google’s new products come from its Bangalore based research and development centre and its other laboratories based in different parts of the world. The two products -- Google Local Search and Google Business Centre -- launched by Google on Monday are specifically designed for those proficient in Hindi.

The Local Search is a tool for Indian users looking for relevant information on the web. With the launch of these products users will now be able to search for information on local businesses like restaurants, shops and hotels by simply searching on http: //local.google.co.in and its Local Business Centre is available at www. google.co. in/local/add.

To switch to Hindi, the users will be aided by the Indic on-screen keyboard software which can be installed by users on their personalised iGoogle pages. Typically, when a user types in English and hits ‘enter’, the script appears in the Indic script through transliteration. Google's Indic transliteration allows the user to type in Hindi using phonetically equivalent English text entered through an English keyboard. Users can create Hindi content and use it in any of the applications including mails and documents.

See also

Google Trends: The Great Desi Survey May 23, 2006, Mayank Austen Soofi

Google News Goes Desi - Launches Hindi News Service
March 16, 2007, Aaman Lamba

Google unveils India Labs, local search
INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK[ MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 2007 03:12:44 PM]

ALA ALCTS Foreign Book Dealers Directory on the web

The ALCTS Acquisition Sections Publications Committee is pleased to
announce that its Foreign Book Dealers Directory is now available as a single, searchable Web publication. Most recently available as three distinct Web sites, the information has been combined into a single file, with access points by vendor name and country (or countries) whose materials each vendor can supply. To replicate the three previous regional versions, there are also lists by region that can be accessed by either the point and click world map on the home page, or by a pull-down menu. The original three regions, Eastern Europe-Soviet Union, Asia-Pacific, and Africa-Middle East, are now six regions: Eastern Europe, Central Eurasia, Asia, The Pacific, Africa, and Middle East.... continue reading
Find suppliers of library materials from many parts of the world with our searchable lists of vendors regularly used by university libraries in the United States.

Museolog’ is a web-driven software system for cataloging museum information

Info courtesy: FN: Frederick Noronha’s blog

Museolog’ is a web-driven software system for cataloging museum information. It is an advanced tool for museum records management, based on the international standards. It was developed by EUROCLID within UNESCO HeritageNet project, and localised by the non-governmental organisations Open Systems. Using this software, initial functions of input and editing of museum catalogues are provided what has been described as “a modern intuitive graphical interface using forms and menus.” continue reading

What do you do when the internet is down?

Annecdote posted by Ivy Lee @ Asian Libraries:

An elderly man queried me why he couldn't access hotmail yesterday. I explained to him that it's a nationwide situation.

Old man: "Oh dear, then what should I do now that I can't access hotmail?"
Me: "How about going back to the days before internet was invented? Like maybe....use the snail mail?"

Dear old uncle has a good sense of humour too and we burst into laughter.

If an old uncle is so reliant on hotmail and has almost forgotten the art of mailing a letter using stamps, well, this just shows how the world has grown "connected" over the years.

It was a test on us librarians' skills to answer quick reference questions without the internet. For example, someone asked what is the national flower of Myanmar. We tried all the encyclopedias, almanacks and factbooks but were unable to find. This morning, I was happy to see my best friend Mr Google greet me on my PC. The first thing I did was look for the national flower. Within seconds, Mr Google tells me that Myanmar's national flower is "The Paduak (Pterocarpus Indicus) blossoms in tiny fragrant yellow-gold flowers" with a colour picture to match. Source: http://www.aseansec.org/18203.htm
God, I admire librarians in the old days before internet. I wonder if there is a documentary somewhere that shows us how librarians handle enquiries before the computer or the internet was invented, and how accurate were their responses compared to us today. It would be interesting to learn, methink.
See also

Go to the library - ways to survive life without the Internet

The Ubiquitous Reference Service & Return On Investment

Case Studies from India: Evidence-based Librarianship

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #83 @ Tales from the "Liberry"

Library Open House - Maurice M. Pine Free Public Library

Maurice M. Pine Free Public Library
10-01 Fair Lawn Ave., Fair Lawn, NJ 07410 (201)796-3400


Gail standing next to Miss Harneet Singh

What the Ancient Egyptians Taught me about Blogging

You may think there can be no way in the afterlife that there is a link between one of the oldest civilisations on earth and one of the most modern pastimes, but you would be wrong. The Ancient Egyptians blogged in Stone. Continue reading MATT JONES

See also:

Blogs and visual innovation

Blog As A Teaching Tool