The Framework Five - Creation and Communications

Information users should also consider themselves information creators, reusing and re-purposing discovered content in different formats. Learners should understand how their discipline’s processes produce, reproduce and disseminate scholarly material. Learners consider their contribution to the body of knowledge through their original work and discipline’s scholarly conversation community of practice.

Personal
During lockdown, I have been creating quizzes, which is almost as enjoyable as taking part in them. This requires research, such as the one where I was finding photos of worldwide landmarks during lockdown. Some were easy such as musicians in films and TV, films based on video games and place names in song titles: that's what Wikipedia is made for! However the more difficult ones were anniversaries in 2021 (Ian Holm would have been 90 next year 😢), songs for our times (such as Don't Stand So Close to Me, Ghost Town, You Can't Touch This, It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) and my personal favourite Que Sera Sera) and technology predicted by fiction (did you know the author William Gibson invented the word cyberspace?). It was all about how to find the information and then repurposing it into quiz questions. It was easier to search for the information in a way than searching as part of my work as there was a lot out there, but it was more difficult to find accurate sources and use the right search terms. Plus the process and structure of the content was set by me, so there was more scope to work with. I tried to theme the quizzes, such as Cambridge, doing three quizzes per week: one wordy quiz such as missing vowels, one general knowledge with questions and one picture quiz. I've had to revise some of the quizzes to make them fit; the technology predicted by fiction was going to be questions, but it had to change to alternate letters removed as I couldn't make the information I'd found into questions, without them being incredibly difficult anyway.

Finally, sending them proved more difficult as I used Word documents initially, but my edition of Word wasn't compatible with everyone's, so I changed it to PDFs, which has been working fine. I generated enough interest that instead of only my brother sending them to his work colleagues, which is where it started; I got exasperated by them using the ones from The Sun and the Daily Mail; it branched out to family and friends, and now the most applicable ones are going out to my A&H librarian colleagues. I've been broadening the audience through word of mouth. Getting such great feedback, making sure I'm pitching the questions at the right level and choosing appropriate subjects and fun themes has given me such a great confidence boost at this difficult time and has been giving me a welcome distraction. I'm going to do some book-themed questions next, just for my colleagues, or maybe even library-themed, if I can...

Professional
I wrote a series of articles for CILIP Update magazine, before the mass exodus; now I barely know anyone who suscribes anymore. I did it that way as it was a quick turnaround from submission to publication: ebook information can go out of date very quickly, plus I avoided the saga outlined in the Nature article. The articles were repurposed from my PG dissertation for my librarianship degree. I was told not to let all that research go to waste. I suppose my perspective was unique at the time, focusing on the industry and the librarian perspective, not the student experience. The magazine is less formal than academic journals, so I tried to make them entertaining, comparing choosing the right ebook model and platform to dating for instance. The structure and processes were set by the editor and the publication's house style, so working under such restrictions made the writing much simpler. The managing editor and I worked out the length of the articles, the timetable of when each would be published and I found free to use, creative commons images, then worked with the editor to choose the best image for the piece to fit the page. Everyone I worked with was a woman incidentally, apart from the images guy, so I was surprised to read Chawla's article on underrepresentation of women in peer review, but less surprised about the underrepresentation of non-Westerners.

Once I realised how locked down the articles were, only readable through the magazine to subscribers; I thought they'd also go on the website and as blog posts; I made them open access by checking with the editor who let me put them on my LinkedIn page. If you're interested, here they are: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahburton3/. The whole process showed me how naive and inexperienced I am, leaving me feeling a little lacking in self esteem. But after the publication there was a lot of great feedback and interest. I was asked to do some presentations at a conference and various meetings. I repurposed the articles into presentations for a formal conference in London and for library peers. There was a lot of repurposing into different formats and for different audiences going on! From dissertation, to articles, to presentations. Although it was a few years ago, the presentation is sadly still applicable as it covers the broad strokes:

 

Ebook presentation from Sarah Burton

P. S. Thank you for highlighting that Claire Sewell's book is accessible as an ebook, I will certainly read the whole of it and not just one chapter.

The Framework Five - Managing Information

Learners engage with relevant information in their disciplines, develop workflows and strategically handle many information formats, demonstrating identification, collection and collation. When creating and using information, learners will understand value and ethics. Learners should appropriately attribute, citing their sources and develop practical skills to manage their range and variety.

Personal
I collect Beatrix Potter figures; it's a tradition started by my Granny who gave me a figurine as a present when I was young knowing I loved the books. After she died, my family has continued to give them to me as presents. I have more than 70 now and when it became difficult for my family to keep track of the ones I have, I started to create a list. When I learned my cousin had an accident where some of hers fell off her shelf and got damaged, I thought for insurance purposes I should document them. So I took two photos of each figure: one of the figure itself and one of the bottom where the maker's mark is stamped. Then I input the information into an Excel spreadsheet. When I was given a published collector's guide, I used it to identify the stamps, the variations in age and style and how much each figure is worth. It was also useful to work out which figures I didn't have already and which I would like. I looked at the pictures to see which I prefer and made a wish list. However that guide book quickly became out of date and a new one wasn't published. So I discovered a more recent list which has updated prices for the figures on the internet. So the Excel spreadsheet holds all the information on the figures I have, plus the ones I still need, their age, make, stamp and of course value. I have put it on the cloud as well for insurance purposes in case I lose the hard copy on my computer. It has been very successful for myself, my family has appreciated it as well because they know how much they should pay and it has meant I have been receiving far more figures!

Professional
Like many librarians, I use bibliographic software such as Mendeley or Zotero. I prefer Zotero as it was what I used during my library degree and I taught it during my time at Cambridge Judge Business School in 1-2-1s with students, during live demos in lecture theatres and small group teaching at Homerton College. We always made sure to emphasise that students should get familiar with the software and set it up as early as possible because it would be too late when it came to writing the first essay or assignment. The best work flow is to save everything you look at as you're doing your readings, your research and your searches. Creating folders for subjects, courses or assignments helps organise the sources better and it's easier to find what you need. I also used a Word document alongside it, typing or copying and pasting useful quotes, making sure to add the page numbers with them. This meant I had readymade citations and bibliographies when it came to writing my essays and projects. At Cambridge Judge Business School, we also had a team account and we saved interesting articles, books and electronic resources into it, such as for our Harry Potter themed teaching sessions.

It was as successful as it could be depending on the limitations of the software; it's good practice to check Zotero once you save the item that it had saved properly and make any edits to the information to make sure it was correct, had all the information that was needed and there weren't any weird errors or capitalisation. It also doesn't always recognise the item type, so you save it as a webpage and make the changes yourself manually. Then, when it came to adding the citations and bibliographies from Zotero into Word, they would be accurate. It has been very useful both personally and professionally for me, the teams I worked with and for the students.

In reading this all for thing four and writing this piece, it has made me realise I am equally at home managing information professionally and personally, in all aspects of my life. My examples demonstrate how I have worked with everyone in my life in a professional context and at home. Managing information in an ethical way comes naturally to me as I am a perfectionist, wanting to have all the information possible to hand, giving credit where it's due and needing to know where the information has come from. I feel this part of information literacy is where I'm strongest.