Presented at LILAC 2009

1. Reach for Excellence:
Information Literacy supports
widening participation
Michelle Schneider
Information Literacy Officer

2. Skills@Library
Outline of today's session
 Background
 The workshop
 Looking to the future

3. Skills@Library
Background
The Reach for Excellence programme:
 Provides support to young people who are:
 Year 12 and 13 students from schools all over Yorkshire
 Have the academic potential for study at a leading research-led
university
 From disadvantaged backgrounds
 The programme offers:
 Subject specific taster sessions
 Impartial pre-entry guidance
 5 day residential summer school.
 Study skills workshops Where we fit in!

4. Skills@Library
How did the Library get involved?
 We were asked!
 What did they want?
 Research and referencing skills workshop
 What did we think?
 An opportunity to further our commitment to widening
participation
 A great way to introduce essential information literacy skills
 An opportunity to gauge current skills and knowledge of
students before they get to university
 What did we do?
 Design a 2 hr workshop that was full of activities,
discussions and even prizes!

5. Skills@Library
The First Workshop - 2007

6. Skills@Library
Team work!
 Librarian, Library Assistant, programme officer,
student support (real undergraduates)
Contents:
 Research skills
 Academic literature
 Where it comes from
 What to look for
 Evaluate it!
 Referencing
 Show your sources
 Avoid plagiarism!

7. Skills@Library
How were they researching now?
 Last time you researched a piece of college work:
Which resources did you use
to find information?
Wikipedia
Google
Google Scholar
Newspapers
Text books
Why did you use them?
Often the first thing that
comes up
Easy to use, quick, lots of
results
Academic
Current, up-to-date
Reliable

8. Skills@Library
Where does knowledge come from?
 Dr Arthur has carried out some
important research people around the
world would like to read. In which
order will his research appear in
these different types of publication?
 References in other books
 Encyclopedia
 News report
 Text books
 Journal article
Published last
Published first

9. Skills@Library
Evaluation criteria Score out of 10 & reason for mark
given
Accuracy
Authority
Objectivity
Coverage
Structure
Total marks out of 50:
Evaluating information on the web

10. Skills@Library
Referencing and plagiarism
 What is a reference for? - discussion
 Pub quiz – teams and prizes
Example question:
 During one of his regular lectures, your tutor refers to
the latest and still unpublished results of his
experiments. You decide to mention these results in
your essay for another course, do you have to cite it?
 Yes
 No

11. Skills@Library
Workshop 08/09

12. Skills@Library
How has the workshop changed?
 Ice breaker- What would they expect to find in a
university library?
 Books, Computers, Librarians- confusing, complex!
 Information that’s more reliable then the internet
 A chance to get out and about in the library
 “Find and seek”- given an adapted floor plan and 12
questions, instead of a tour.
 Really enjoyed by the students
 They got a sense of how an academic library runs
 Encouraged them to use their library cards after the session
as it was now less intimidating

13. Skills@Library
Did the students actually learn anything?
The library wasn’t as
daunting as I thought
Not all websites
are
reliable
Don’t always trust
Wikipedia!
How uni libraries work
Discovered Google Scholar EVALUATE!

14. Skills@Library
What did we learn?
 Don’t underestimate the value of giving students a
chance to actually explore the Library
 Snap-shot of pre-university students’ skills
 Knowledge gained used in staff development training
session: “Googling for a degree? Is the web changing
student study behaviour?”
 Experience and knowledge gained can be shared with
colleagues to inform the design of induction sessions for
new undergraduates
 It is beneficial to work in partnership with the
University to further our commitment to widening
participation

15. Skills@Library
The future
 Run the workshop again this year
 Evaluate the session and make changes for next year
 Think about running a second session with an
academic skills advisor covering academic writing
skills and referencing (including plagiarism)
 Share experiences with colleagues in the Library
 Meet with all involved in the Reach for Excellence
Programme and discuss long term plans