List of examples of good practice in information-handling training
Thirteen examples have been collated from the following nine institutions:
- Cardiff (2)
- Glasgow Caledonian
- LondonSchool of Economics
- Loughborough (3)
- Newcastle
- Nottingham (2)
- Oxford
- Southampton
- York
July 2010
1.CardiffUniversity (i)
Please give a brief outline and focus of the provision.
Staff workshop to introduce techniques and resources to maximise the visibility of publications and track citations.It explores key sources of citation data, open access publishing, using CardiffUniversity's Institutional Repository (ORCA), measuring citation impact and finding citations to researcher’s own work. The sessions include a presentation and then the opportunity to search databases to track own citation impact.
What is the rationale for doing this? How does it fit with institutional strategy? What are the main features of the provision?
The rationale of this staff workshop is to explain the drivers, in particular the proposed REF requirements, behind increased need for citation and impact factor analysis; to explore the benefits and routes to Open Access publishing; and to equip authors with the skills to find their own bibliometric data using Library and web databases.
The proposals for the REF indicate that, at least for the science and technology (STEM) disciplines, bibliometric indicators such as citation counts may be required. There is also an increased interest from the academic community in using data such as H-Index, citation counts and impact factors to select journals for publishing in and to track and promote their research impact. The workshop is part of the University’s Staff Development Programme and the Research Staff Career Development Skills Programme organised by the Human Resources division.
There are 5 main themes to the session:
1. Explaining the drivers for the increased requirement for citation analysis.
2. Promoting consistency in the form of the author’s name and the University name.
3. Selecting a journal for publication using, for example, impact factor analysis.
4. Making work visible through Open Access publishing .
5. Finding citations, H-index, impact factors and other bibliometric data.
What are the aims and expected outcomes?
To equip research staff with greater understanding of the availability and use of bibliometric data and of issues surrounding Open Access publication.
Are there any pre-requisites for engagement, eg levels of skill, years of experience, essential pre-activities? How many participate in each 'activity'?
The session is open to all research staff, with a maximum of 25 per session.In addition to the programmes coordinated by Human Resources, in response to invitations, the session has also been tailored to and presented within individual academic Schools.
What resources are required to 'deliver' the practice? Who delivers it? Is training required?
Presentation and workshop are delivered by the Senior Consultant, Research Support in the Library. The workshop requires an individual computer for each participant who follows a self-paced learning workbook.
How do you monitor effectiveness? Who do you seek feedback from? Do you have benchmarks?
End of workshop feedback is obtained from attendees.
What are the challenges? How do you overcome/manage them?
Numbers attending the centrally organised sessions have been fairly low. Where sessions have been organised specifically for individual academic Schools, however, attendance has been far higher
2.CardiffUniversity (ii)
Please give a brief outline and focus of the provision.
Information literacy workshops for the research student community at CardiffUniversity are embedded into the central Graduate Centre’s Research Students Skills Development Programme to ensure a one-stop shop for postgraduate training.
Audience: Postgraduate researchers
Relationship to JSS: Research management
What is the rationale for doing this? How does it fit with institutional strategy? What are the main features of the provision?
The Research Students Skills Development Programme (RSSDP), co-ordinated by the Graduate Centre and GraduateSchools and described elsewhere in this Database of Practice ( draws together the generic training across and within subject areas, to meet the training needs identified by the JSS. All generic library training for postgraduate researchers is included within the programme. This close integration was noted as an example of good practice by the RIN report “Mind the Skills Gap: Information-handling training for researchers” (2008, p. 28).
Through close working between the Graduate Centre and Library staff, the information literacy contributions to the programme have increased significantly over the years. By 2009/10, students can now develop their information literacy through any of the following workshops, led by library staff:
- Finding information for research (tailored to each GraduateSchool)
- Accessing and understanding archives
- Developing systematic literature searches
- Intelligent web searching for research
- Keeping your research up-to-date (tailored to the Graduate Schools)
- Identifying and writing high quality papers: appraisal techniques and checklists
- Managing your references using EndNote
- Managing your references using EndNote: advanced techniques
Information Services staff also run a wide range of IT workshops in the programme. Other information literacy skills, such as patent searching, managing research data and rapid reading, are led by other experts in the University.
What are the aims and expected outcomes?
By embedding the information literacy workshops into a central programme, the importance of these skills to the researcher is emphasised, and their relevance in the JSS addressed.
The single RSSDP simplifies for the student the process of identifying and booking appropriate training. The bookings for the library workshops are administered centrally by the training officer in the Graduate Centre or by the GraduateSchools and standard student feedback sheets are produced. For the Library, this removes the costs and administration of publicising workshops, managing bookings and collating feedback.
Are there any pre-requisites for engagement, eg levels of skill, years of experience, essential pre-activities? How many participate in each 'activity'?
In each workshop description, any prerequisite workshops or skills required are stated as well as the year(s) of study in which it is most appropriate to attend. Some workshops also have essential pre-work prior to attendance.
What resources are required to 'deliver' the practice? Who delivers it? Is training required?
Most of the library workshops are delivered to the Graduate Centre without charge. Where the tutor is entirely grant-funded, a charge is made to the Graduate Centre for Roberts money.
The workshops are led by library staff who have developed expertise within these areas. Fifteen members of library staff contributed to the programme in 2009/10. Involving such a large number of staff has the advantages of spreading the teaching load; encouraging the development of expertise in a wider range of staff which will then impact the service offered to the academic Schools they serve; and potentially enable last minute changes of tutor in emergencies. The teaching materials are stored and updated in a Blackboard module for library staff to again ensure consistency and sharing.
Although all generic skills training is co-ordinated by the Graduate Centre with the Graduate Schools, Cardiff’s strategy is that skills that are specific to a subject or academic School are coordinated and delivered within that School or research group. The Library extracts a list of newly registered research students from central records and subject librarians are informed of students in the latest intake. Subject librarians contact each new student to arrange one-to-one sessions to discuss specific information needs or group sessions embedded in the School’s induction programme.
How do you monitor effectiveness? Who do you seek feedback from? Do you have benchmarks?
End-of-workshop feedback is always collected and is compiled by the Graduate Centre. The Graduate Centre also co-ordinates the longer-term evaluation and feedback from supervisors, as noted in the case study ( The Library staff reflect on the teaching, on attendance and on the feedback and adapt the workshop content, title or description each year as appropriate.
What are the benefits and how are they measured? Why is it worth doing this over everything else you could do? How is it valued by allstakeholders?
As noted, all stakeholders benefit from having all generic training opportunities listed in a single brochure and on a single website.
What are the challenges? How do you overcome/manage them?
How do you see this provision developing? How is this linked to overall objectives, long term vision etc.?
The Library and Graduate Centre continue to explore user needs and new content, across the breadth of information literacy and to facilitate the integration of new tools and new ways of working to ensure the researchers’ effectiveness. For example, in 2010/11 we will introduce a new workshop on the use of Web 2.0 for collaboration and networking.
Information literacy workshops for research staff at CardiffUniversity are similarly embedded into the central Research Staff Career Development Skills Programme and general Staff Development programme to ensure integration with other training in the University.
3.GlasgowCaledonianUniversity
Please give a brief outline and focus of the provision.
We provide a series of 3 consecutive workshops for new PhD students and for university staff who are embarking on a PhD. The 3 workshops cover an introduction to literature reviews (1), sources and searching tips for effective use of electronic resources and strategies for keeping up-to-date (2) and managing your citations using Refworks (3).
All sessions are interactive and last for 2.5-3 hours. They are deliberately informal and use a mix of presentation and activities to encourage participation. An aspect of the workshops is to help create a community of scholars so we include activities in which the participants work together. The workshops are facilitated by 2 subject librarians, and in one of them with an academic colleague also.
The first workshop is seminar-based. We interview an experienced researcher about their approach to literature reviews, to contextualise the literature review within the PhD process, and to provide best advice on how to go about it. The second workshop addresses the next step of identifying information sources and resource discovery tools to support research. It is a hand-on session in a computer lab which combines a presentation on searching techniques with a hands-on session for participants. The third workshop is a lab-based session on using Refworks to manage references and bibliographies.
What is the rationale for doing this? How does it fit with institutional strategy? What are the main features of the provision?
The workshops are included in a series offered by the Caledonian Graduate Centre. The Graduate Centre was created in 2004 andaims to be a social and intellectual hub for research students, supervisors and researchers. The Centre works in partnership with the academic schools, the professoriate and professional support departments.
Our workshops are for entry-level PhD students and lecturing staff and form part of a greater portfolio of workshops. The workshops are deliberately interactive and provide a mix of seminar presentation, hand-on practice, group work and discussion.
What are the aims and expected outcomes?
To give participants:
- an appreciation of, and reasons for doing a literature review
- insight on how to structure a literature review
- an understanding of information sources and resource discovery tools
- confidence to effectively search electronic databases
- information on current awareness and alerting services
- skills to effectively manage their references and create a bibliography using Refworks
Are there any pre-requisites for engagement, eg levels of skill, years of experience, essential pre-activities? How many participate in each 'activity'?
The workshops are intended for new students in the first 6 months of their PhD. We offer them sequentially, the rationale being that they take the participant through the process of the literature review from understanding what it is, how best to approach it, what information sources and tools are most useful to their research area and how to best manage their research output.
The workshops are limited to 20 participants.
How do you monitor effectiveness? Who do you seek feedback from? Do you have benchmarks?
We collect feedback on each workshop which covers overall strengths and weaknesses and suggestions for improvements. We consider changes to location, duration, activities and content based on this.
We have run the workshops now for 4 years and they have continuously developed over this time. We have a planning meeting prior to each workshop and make any minor changes based on developments within HE, on changes in information provision within the institution and more widely within the information landscape.
What are the benefits and how are they measured? Why is it worth doing this over everything else you could do? How is it valued by all stakeholders?
The intended benefits for participants is that they meet and form relationships with other PhD students, and from this become part of a community of scholars who can provide mutual support. The participants also meet key stakeholders within the library who can help them throughout their PhD.
From the library’s perspective, although the workshops involve a time commitment (currently we run the workshops twice in each semester) and are generic in nature, they provide an opportunity to engage with academic colleagues on the topics of literature reviews and on information literacy which is valuable on a professional level. Since the workshops are delivered by 2 librarians, are generally longer than an average subject-based session and are interactive in nature, there is an incentive to debate the structure and content and to make changes.
Feedback from participants is generally very positive. The Graduate Centre is keen to involve the library in their teaching and training portfolio.
What are the challenges? How do you overcome/manage them?
A key challenge is time constraints. Offering 2 half-day workshops per semester is demanding on top of all other subject-based provision given to undergraduate and postgraduate students. Having facilitated the workshops over 4 years, they are now reasonably finely-tuned so need less preparation time.
Another challenge is finding appropriate accommodation for the workshops. We work closely with the Graduate Centre in planning the workshops to minimise problems on the day.
How do you see this provision developing? How is this linked to overall objectives, long term vision etc.?
We will continue to offer the workshops. There are areas that require further development. For example perhaps bringing the library together with other stakeholders (e.g. supervisors) to consider the effectiveness of our current provision and ideas for future development.
The library is investing in and developing an institutional repository and is being more involved in the REF. We anticipate developments in our services to researchers generally and in the area of information literacy amongst staff and students.
Any other information to add?
4.LondonSchool of Economics
Please give a brief outline and focus of the provision.
MI512 Information Literacy: Tools for Research isa complete programme open to PhD students with six hands on workshops that develop students research skills incrementally. MI512 covers the basics of conducting library research from planning a literature search, improving internet searching skills, managing references and keeping up to date with new research. Theweeklyworkshops build on each other to achieve a series of learning objectives by the end of the term.
What is the rationale for doing this? How does it fit with institutional strategy? What are the main features of the provision?
To develop research skills of students enabling them to research effectively, to help PhD completion rates and to equip them with lifelong learning skills which will be of use to them in the wider world.
MI512 is a connected series of six two hour hands on workshops supported by Moodle. All students receive feedback on resources for their topic and are put in touch with their liaison librarian
What are the aims and expected outcomes?
Each separate workshop has its own learning outcomes. Overall the programme uses the SCONUL Seven Pillars model to enable researchers to understand their research needs, to find, search and evaluate resources and to organize results clearly.
Are there any pre-requisites for engagement, e.g. levels of skill, years of experience, essential pre-activities? How many participate in each 'activity'?
Those enrolled must be PhD students. There is no pre-requisite skills level.Class sizes so far have been a maximum of 28 students (with two trainers) Some class activities are broken down into smaller groups of 2-3.