The CILIP Information Literacy Group are delighted to announce the funding of two very exciting, ground-breaking and innovative projects that will show how information is vitally important for citizenship and the workplace.
“We believe that these projects will make a real difference to how we give young people the tools to become informed citizens and work colleagues the skills to exploit the digital economy” (Dr Geoff Walton, Northumbria University and CILIP ILG).
Learning, lending, liberty? Can school libraries be engines for youth citizenship?
The first research project, “Learning, lending, liberty? Can school libraries be engines for youth citizenship?”, will explore the role of school libraries in the wider school environment, including citizenship education.
The project will identify how Scottish school libraries support young people’s political participation in two major political events – the Scottish Independence Referendum 2014 and the UK General Election 2015. The project will also explore the information and information literacy (IL) needs of young people outside the school environment, and identify how IL provision is vital in helping them become informed and meaningful participants in politics. Principle Investigator Lauren Smith (the University of Strathclyde) will work in partnership with Young Scot, a young people’s information charity; the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC); The Right Information, Scotland’s information literacy community of practice; and CILIPS.
Determining the value of information literacy for employers
“Determining the value of information literacy for employers”, the second of our projects, is led by Researchers from the Research Information Network (RIN) and the University of Manchester, who will work with the London Borough of Camden and the Greater Manchester Council for Voluntary Organisation (GMCVO).
Project lead Stephane Goldstein says the project aims to “to find out what information literacy is worth to employers and how it adds real value to businesses”. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the benefits of developing information literacy in the workplace and assess the return on investment (ROI) of such initiatives. The research will investigate the value that is added by employing and training individuals that have appropriate and relevant know-how, competencies and skills in the use and handling of information and data in the digital economy, whatever form that takes. The value might be financial, but it might also relate to other factors that are important to enterprises, such as enhanced efficiency or competitive advantage.
CILIP Information Literacy Group Research Bursaries
The CILIP Information Literacy Group provide funds of up to £10,000 for high quality research through an annual bursary scheme.
Research into the effectiveness of information literacy has been published fairly widely, but there are pockets of IL research that have either not taken place at all or have not reached beyond the academic domain. These areas include research in the third sector, various aspects of the workplace, citizenship, and more.
The IL Group would like to help to fill some of those gaps and, to do so, provides bursaries for a selection of imaginative proposals that have the potential for high impact beyond HE and librarianship.