Eleanor Johnston, Academic Skills Librarian at Staffordshire University, has written the following post about last month’s Teachmeet, which was sponsored by the CILIP Information Literacy Group.
On 20th November 2013, Staffordshire University hosted a Library Teachmeet in the Thompson Library, Stoke-on-Trent. Teachmeets are an opportunity for staff to share innovations, experience and knowledge and there were 23 ‘presenters’ and ‘enthusiastic audience members’ gathered from across the region. The event was held in the Alfred Bolton room, which has been recently refurbished and included a ‘thought wall’. This was a space in the room that had been specially painted and coated to enable anyone to record what they are interested in and what areas they have improved services in. There were lots of additions and it was great to record immediate feedback and suggestions!
First up speaking was Julie Adams, discussing Open Badges – provide a visual representation of skills, learning and interests to recognise formal or informal learning.
Then David Haden discussed Jurn.org – a Google custom search engine for open access Arts & Humanities journals. Paul Johnson then talked about ‘The Discovery Journey’ – using Summon and Koha, discussing results, relevance and the ‘Nature’ test. Then it was over to Dermot Ryan from Upton High School demonstrating how the library was using apps (all year 7 pupils have an ipad mini) and how working with a wide variety of ages, levels, socio-economic backgrounds and individual circumstances was a challenge. Finally, Phil Stolarczuk from Wolverhampton demo’ed their web pages, including signed videos, all available via Creative Commons.
The event was an extremely useful opportunity to meet library colleagues and discuss practice across sectors. The success of the day has led to a Staffordshire University project group already planning Teachmeets for the Spring and Summer terms in 2014. We will keep you posted and hope to see you sometime in the future!
You can find presentations, notes and photos on our libguides page: http://libguides.staffs.ac.uk/teachmeets