A recent post on the Inside Higher Ed blog points to a study about measuring the value of “microblog content” or tweets. Ernesto Priego states:

Using a corpus of approximately 43,000 ratings, the authors asked: “What content do Twitter users value? For example, do users value personal updates while disliking opinions?” and “Why are some tweets valued more than others?”

The study is self-archived on the author’s website. Here is the full reference:
Paul André, Michael S. Bernstein and Kurt Luther
“Who Gives A Tweet? Evaluating Microblog Content Value”
Author copy of final version.
CSCW’12, February 11–15, 2012, Seattle, Washington
2012 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

Here are a few reports that people around me have praised or hated, listed in no particular order, just to keep track of should I have a sleepless night:

Think Like A Startup: a white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism by Brian Mathews

Redefining the Academic Library : Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services by the University Leadership Council (on which Jeff Trzeciak participated)

Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2010: Insights From U.S. Academic Library Directors

Peter Hernon, “Becoming a university library director“, Library and Information Science Research, 33-4 (October 2011), pg. 276-283.

This just in, the updated Association for College & Research Libraries ACRL Guidelines for instruction programs in academic libraries, published in the most recent issue of C&RL news.

The Information Literacy Section of the International Federation of Library Associations & Institutions (IFLA) announces new Media and Information Literacy Recommendations, developed with UNESCO’s Information for All Programme (IFAP).

Just stumbled on this: ACIEGE (http://www.aciege.org/): Association des responsables des Centres d’Information des Ecoles de GEstion – or the association of business schools heads of libraries.

The Canadian Association of Information Science has delivered its latest issue of its Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science (via Project Muse on behalf of UT Press, the publisher), vol. 35 issue 4.

A few articles seem particularly interesting, such as:

Enhancing Skills, Effecting Change: Evaluating an Intervention for Students with Below-Proficient Information Literacy Skills / Renforcer les compétences pour induire des changements : évaluation d’une intervention auprès d’étudiants possédant des compétences informationnelles inférieures à la maîtrise
Don Latham
Melissa Gross
pp. 157-173

and

Subject Guides in Academic Libraries: A User-Centred Study of Uses and Perceptions/Les guides par sujets dans les bibliothèques académiques : une étude des utilisations et des perceptions centrée sur l’utilisateur
Dana Ouellette
pp. 226-241

Of course, all articles seem interesting, but there is so little time to read everything!

Julian Treasure presented 5 ways to listen better at TED – the always entertaining and smart talks about ways to change the world. I thought it added some insight about how to provide for a better reference service :

[ted id=1200]

This post presents the PRIMO (Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online) and the MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Teaching and Learning) projects.

PRIMO
Under the ALA/ACRL umbrella, one can find the PRIMO Committee of the Instruction section. Of the many things they do, they offer a database of Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online – aka the PRIMO database.

I remember in the past that a team at Concordia University Libraries (of which I was a member) was awarded the “site of the month” award for June 2006 from the PRIMO Committee for our InfoResearch 101 project.

MERLOT
I remember stumbling on the MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Teaching and Learning) repository about a year ago. It contained a few interesting sites relating to business, such as Stanford’s Educators Corner or the Beginner’s Guide to Business Research.

According to their site, MERLOT is a

MERLOT is a free and open online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff and students of higher education from around the world to share their learning materials and pedagogy. MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, collection of peer reviewed higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services.

I am very lucky to be a business librarian at Concordia University – this is true on so many levels! Of all the reasons, the fact that the John Molson School of Business is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) may be a boon to work towards integrating information literacy in the curriculum.

As their website shows, the AACSB has Accreditation Standards to which JMSB must adhere to. These include the concept of total quality management – or making the most of the resources you have. It also assists in comparing business school together. Every so often, accredited schools must undergo a review process (audit), which serves as a nice entry point should you want to propose changes to how things are done – an external review fosters the feeling of continuous improvement.

For example, the “Assurance of Learning Standards” offers a few points where a library could have a positive impact… these are straightforward issues that school educators must report back on – so they are easily actionnable!

Information literacy as a standard has been articulated in various ways, mostly drawing from the seminal work of Bloom and his taxonomy (classification) of learning objectives.

Beyond the ACRL standards, which are the omnipresent tool for academic libraries in North-America, one can find the SCONUL (british research libraries) has the 7 pilars model or the UNESCO Information Literacy indicators.

Schools can draw on the ALA has the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner and closer to home, a team at Concordia University’s Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) has developed the ISIS-21 model, which looks like this:

In addition, the inspired researcher on the issue could look beyond the education world for a sense of information literacy. The Conference Board of Canada (a think tank) has developed the “Employability Skills 2000+” framework, which lists the desired skills one should have to evolve in the workforce. For example, it lists under “Fundamental Skills” :

Manage Information
• locate, gather and organize information using appropriate technology and information systems
• access, analyze and apply knowledge and skills from various disciplines (e.g., the arts, languages, science, technology, mathematics, social sciences, and the humanities)
Use Number

Or, the Government of Canada published in 2002 Knowledge Matters: Skills and Learning for Canadians, which highlights the imperatives for developing skills in the new economy. One can also find a trace on the importance of skills in the 2009 Business Plan for Indutry Canada, where strategy 2 involves “fostering the knowledge-based economy through enhanced research and innovation, training and skills” – all nice things one could broadly place in the catch all concept of information literacy.