People
Keynote 1 - Peter Brophy
Peter Brophy is an independent project director, author, editor and consultant. He became involved in IT applications in the late 1960s and developed IT and management information systems for libraries in the early part of his career. Moving on to management, he directed library services at the then Bristol Polytechnic (now University of the West of England) and both library and IT services at the University of Central Lancashire.
From 1998-2008 he was Director of the Centre for Research in Library & Information Management (CERLIM) at the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and held the Chair in Information Management at that University. Particular research foci included IT services for disabled people, the use of narrative in management and in evidence-based practice, and library service evaluation. He was Principal Consultant with LIMC Ltd. until 2009.
He is the author of a large number of books and academic papers, including 'Narrative-based Practice' (Ashgate, 2008), 'The Library in the Twenty-First Century' (Facet, 2nd edition, 2007) and 'The Academic Library' (Facet, 2nd ed., 2005).
Peter Brophy is a Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals (CILIP), and was President of the Institute of Information Scientists in 1998-99. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Higher Education Academy. He was awarded the OBE for services to blind and visually-impaired people in 2009.
Library and information users come in all shapes and sizes – literally and figuratively! They have all kinds of objectives, though all want to achieve some kind of enrichment – in knowledge, learning, satisfied curiosity or simple enjoyment. Information and library professionals impact these processes in many subtle ways – not just in providing sources of information, texts, images and objects but in anticipating ways of enabling and enhancing the experience. And every service is in some way distinctive – the mix of user, source, service, provider and outcome, at a particular time and place, is always unique.
From earliest times to the present day narratives and stories have been used to paint rich pictures of the complexity of the world in which we live and to convey subtle insights into the ways in which human beings interact with each other and the world. Whether we want to understand a situation, assess its relevance or convey its complexity to others, narrative has a role to play. In this paper, Peter Brophy will discuss how narrative can enhance EBP – and will reveal whether Marvin survived the fall!
Keynote 2 - Martin Hall
Professor Martin Hall is a historical archaeologist and strategic leader. He joined the University of Salford in April 2009 as VC Designate, before taking up his role as VC on 1 August, 2009.
Salford University, he says, offers an exceptional learning environment for students, with strong opportunities in research, innovation, enterprise and employer and community engagement.
He wants the University to play a key role in re-connecting with local communities and creating economic and social value and believes that intense local engagement -social responsiveness – leads to academic excellence and international recognition.
He joined Salford from the University of Cape Town where he was Deputy Vice-Chancellor for six years. He has a career that has spanned both political change and transformation in South Africa and new directions in archaeology over the past four decades. He has written extensively on South African history, culture and higher education policy.
Born in Guildford, Professor Hall holds dual British and South African citizenship. He moved to South Africa in 1974 after undertaking undergraduate and post-graduate studies in archaeology at the University of Cambridge.
Openness is an essential quality of knowledge, and drives the knowledge economy. Closure, whether through the misuse of copyright and patent legislation, rent-seeking or proprietary controls, restricts innovation and is alien to the essential qualities of the university and similar institutions. What would a fully open-access university, structured around an open access repository for publications, resources and data sets, look like?
Keynote 3 - Ross Todd
Dr Ross J Todd is associate professor in the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is Director of the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL), at Rutgers University. CISSL fosters the transformative role of school libraries in 21st century schools, their integral role in the learning fabric of schools, and their role in ongoing school improvement and reform. His primary teaching and research interests focus on adolescent information seeking and use. The research includes: understanding how children learn and build new knowledge from information; how school librarians and classroom teachers can more effectively empower student learning; and how the development of information and critical literacies through guided inquiry and constructivist learning approaches lead to deep knowledge and deep understanding.
Set within an emerging healthy debate as to what constitutes evidence-based practice in school libraries, this paper first examines the problematic of information literacy as a key professional practice in school libraries. Second, framed by a holistic model of evidence-based practice for school libraries proposed by Todd (2009) which centers on evidence-for-practice, evidence-in-practice and evidence-of-practice, it outlines an inquiry-based approach to information literacy development in Australian schools, funded through the Australian Government Quality Teacher Program in 2008-10. The approach, based on Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process as a research-developed and validated instructional framework to enable the information-to-knowledge journey of learners was implemented in 12 schools involving 34 teachers, 18 teacher librarian and 935 student participants. The essence of this project was to engage teacher/teacher librarian teams to develop, implement, measure and evaluate curriculum units, underpinned by a range of instructional interventions to develop a range of information, technical and critical literacies, and employ a range of strategies to track the development of student’s knowledge and information capabilities, and to reflect on the learning outcomes and learning process. The paper will outline key outcomes and insights of this professional journey.
Keynote 4 - Hazel Hall
Hazel Hall is Director of the Centre for Social Informatics in the Institute for Informatics and Digital Innovation at Edinburgh Napier University, UK.
She is also seconded two days a week to lead the implementation of the UK Library and Information Science Research Coalition. Professor Hall is currently Principal Investigator on two librarianship projects: (1) the Research into Librarianship Impact Evaluation Study (RiLIES) , a study sponsored by the UK Library and Information Science Research Coalition and (2) the Developing Research Excellence and Methods (DREaM) project, which is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is also an Associate Consultant at TFPL. She worked full-time for the company on research and consulting projects in London on an industrial secondment grant awarded by the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2006.
Professor Hall was recently named as the winner of the Dow Jones SLA Europe Information Professional Award 2011.
In an environment where resources are few, research funders are expected to focus on projects that demonstrate value for money. Thus in the context of service provision proposed research projects should actively contribute to the building of an evidence base that both supports decision-making, and is actively deployed in practice. This paper explores strategies for researchers to maximise the impact of librarianship research projects. It takes into account a range of factors, for example those related to: initial project conception and implementation; the nature of research output and its dissemination; researcher profiles; and target practitioner audiences. The presentation will draw on preliminary results from the Research into Librarianship Impact Evaluation Study (RiLIES), a study sponsored by the UK Library and Information Science Research Coalition.