In this short presentation I'll talk about why and how I've tried to incorporate mindfulness into my personal and professional life over the last few years, and the way that I've used technology I've used to achieve this.

Time is relative; there may be fifty-two weeks in the calendar year but in the Social Media Year there are hundreds of Weeks, each with their own hashtag. In October we saw National Libraries Week, Open Access Week, National Work Life Week, Dyslexia Awareness Week and International OCD Awareness Week to name a few. The subject of this post will be December’s Computer Science Education Week, specifically the Hour of Code during it.

Freshers’ Week is on the horizon, signalling the Autumn term will soon begin, and that some of us will shortly enter the busiest time of our working year. While we are planning how best to support our new and returning students, we should spare a thought for our own wellbeing. One way of grounding ourselves during this busy period is mindfulness. If our days are a chain of events, mindfulness encourages us to focus on one link at a time.

Juris-M is a variant of Zotero that adds support for legal writing. This workshop will cover:
1. Zotero + Juris-M: what they are and how they work
2. Getting Started: downloading and syncing Zotero + Juris-M
3. Adding items to your Juris-M Library
3.1. Downloading and importing records from Primo & Desktop
3.2. Using the Juris-M connector to capture web resources
3.3. Manually adding items from Lexis and Westlaw
4. Juris-M Library functionality: collections, notes, and more
5. Adding citations to word with Zotero plugin
6. Further support

It is not always easy to predict which emerging technologies will also be ephemeral; which will realise their potential and benefit our users, and which will perish. VR (Virtual Reality) technology may not have perished but neither has it greatly advanced in our sector yet. However, the following article proposes that growing expectation and developing infrastructure could lead to a surge in VR popularity over the coming years, bringing with it new opportunities to develop and promote our services. It will share examples from the University of Sussex where colleagues are already using this technology in ways that can be adopted by us all. test

Increasingly you may hear researchers, librarians and other information professionals talk about “text mining”. Although this is a process aligned with information retrieval, it is not always clear how we can support and engage with these related activities. The following post brings together a number of resources that show the value and benefits of text mining, and introduces two free tools to help you start exploring this growing area of work.

Last year Professor Kris Seeburn wrote that “the underlying technology of blockchains will most likely represent a second era of the internet” (2016). Whether or not this is hyperbole, there is certainly growing interest around the use of blockchain technology in research: Jisc Futurist Martin Hamilton (who will be speaking at the MmIT AGM in January) delivered an excellent webinar in October about blockchain in research & education. Last month Digital Science also published a report about the potential use of blockchain technology for scholarly communication and, as detailed in Information Today Europe, will be offering a grant of up to $30,000 for work in this area. However, the reach of blockchain technology may go far beyond research and have wider implications for librarians and information professionals across all sectors. The purpose of this post is therefore to provide a very brief introduction to blockchain technology for MmIT readers, showing where it may impact on the work that we all do, and bring together some useful links to help you find out more about this emerging technology.

Discovery is not a straightforward process, if it were some of us would be out of the job. However this should not excuse unpredictable tools and searches; some obstacles are reasonable to expect and some are not. How would a 110m hurdler feel if an extra barrier were added or if the first was moved 10ft forward? The answer is that we’d only know how they felt if we asked them or maybe observed their next race. The focus of this post is not intended to be UX though, but instead teaching, specifically how we talk to our users about fallible discovery services.

Makerspaces allow people to create and learn in a supportive environment and are growing in popularity. Hear how university libraries across the UK are creating different types of makerspace to support the hands-on learning of their wider academic communities. In particular learn how the University of Sussex Library addressed increasing pressure on space, resources and expenditure by successfully running two temporary ‘pop-up’ makerspaces. The session will finish with a quick hands-on maker project for attendees to undertake.

For many of us, technologies such as 360 photography and Virtual Reality may seem like extravagances: what real value can they add to our library services and at what cost? The following hands-on workshop will demonstrate some of the practical applications of these technologies at the University of Sussex - from enriching our presence on Google Maps with 3600 photography, to making inaccessible parts of the campus accessible through VR. This workshop will also give attendees the chance to try creating their own low cost spherical photography and VR using Google Cardboard.

From arts and craft through to computer hacking, makerspaces give participants the opportunity to create and learn with like-minded individuals in a supportive environment. Libraries are ideally placed to facilitate this type of inter-disciplinary extra-curricular learning, but with increasing pressure on space, resources and expenditure how can we all manage this? Hear how institutions across the UK are meeting these challenges by creating different types of makerspace to support the hands-on learning of their distinct academic communities. In particular, learn how the University of Sussex Library collaborated with colleagues in Technology Enhanced Learning to successfully run two temporary ‘pop-up’ makerspaces: the first led by local edtech leaders Makerclub and the second by a Sussex lecturer. This presentation intends to showcase different approaches being taken to create academic makerspaces and will include a case study on the innovative pop-up Library makerspace at Sussex, sharing our observations and lessons learned. The session aims to inspire others to join the maker movement and will show the different paths that can be followed to set up a makerspace. It will finish with a ten-minute craft-based maker project for attendees to undertake; demonstrating how straightforward building a makerspace, and creating within it, can be.

Within our different roles as information professionals, we are all expected to handle larger and larger amounts of data, from the resources we manage to the analytics we collect. However as this data gets bigger it can become harder to analyse. Ham explains that this is often due to errors and inconsistencies in the collection and management of data (2013, p.233), not to mention the time involved in learning how to analyse all of this information, along with the analysis itself. The following guide hopes to address some of these issues by introducing readers to OpenRefine (formerly Google Refine), an open source piece of software that can help to remove some of the errors and inconsistencies in datasets, in a timely manner, without expert knowledge being required.

Makerspaces are continuing to grow in popularity, not just with discerning hobbyists and hackers but also within the education sector; blog posts and articles can already be found describing makerspaces in schools, colleges, universities and beyond. Although there are undoubtedly challenges in providing these spaces, the case-studies that have been reported provide practical examples of the ways in which institutions are addressing issues of funding, resources and space to create their own academic makerspaces. This feature will highlight some of these approaches.

What is the smallest building block we can use to create the information literate student? Is it possible to deliver meaningful instruction in six second bursts? The proposed workshop will explore these questions, arguing that it is achievable using Vine.

Building on the 2015 article (and successful conference workshop) for Multimedia Information & Technology, this practical session for LILAC 2016 will introduce delegates to Vine. Vine is a freely available app that allows the creation of six second videos that can be shared through Twitter, Facebook, and other channels.

The workshop will begin by presenting a case-study from the University of Sussex Library, demonstrating how we have used Vine to communicate and promote our teaching in an innovative way. It will explain how we have continued to develop our use of Vine at Sussex, moving from simply promoting library training sessions to delivering essential search skills via innovative six second screencasts. These micro-tutorials take a new approach to disseminating vital information to users, sacrificing depth for breadth with this particular channel. For example, our Vine about using the tabs on the Library Search discovery tool teaches one vital skill and the video has looped over 1,200 times. The 25 Vines that we have created to date have looped over 16,000 times in total. Although it is not possible to deliver complex support in this manner, this quick-fire approach to sharing information can complement and re-inforce other teaching practices.

Attendees will be shown how to use Vine in a variety of ways; from a tool for the basic promotion of events to the advanced creation of short screencasts. The presentation itself will also use the Vine website as an engaging presentation platform, demonstrating to attendees how it can be used creatively in the classroom. We will share our experiences of what has worked well when making Vines and what has not, helping delegates to avoid some of the pitfalls we have encountered ourselves. Attendees will then be given the opportunity (and support) to create Vines of their own. The workshop will finish with a screening of the Vines that participants have been able to create in the session.

The word Makerspace is a general term for a place where people get together to make things, create things and
learn together. Antony Groves presents a look at a recent university library experiment hosting a pop-up makerspace. Working with local edtech leaders MakerClub and colleagues the library organised a two-hour workshop which offered the opportunity for students and staff to explore emerging technologies.

The following chapter will reflect on the i2c2 2014 workshop titled “How would Theresa May respond if all available copies of a book she urgently needed were out on loan? Exploring the use of PDA to deliver first class and super quick customer service in an academic library”.

The intent of the workshop was to re-purpose web design tools such as personas and scenarios to explore the ways in which PDA can positively disrupt some of the Library’s most traditional values and processes in supporting different types of Library user.

In this chapter we will introduce the PDA model used at the University of Sussex and explain how it has been implemented to meet our users’ needs. In addition to discussing the benefits and challenges of using PDA as an innovative tool for collection development (both at Sussex and at the different institutions of workshop participants), the chapter will also discuss the relative merits and limitations of using personas and scenarios as tools for designing effective user-centred services. The chapter will give practical guidance on how personas can be used in a workshop situation to explore the potential of services such as PDA (giving examples from the i2c2 session), along with what we found to be the pros and cons of taking such an approach.

Building on the article published in the MmIT journal earlier in the year, this practical workshop will introduce delegates to Vine, a freely available app that allows the creation of six second videos.
The workshop will begin by presenting a case-study on the use of Vine at the University of Sussex Library, demonstrating how we have used the mobile service to engage with students to instruct, promote and communicate our services in a new and exciting way.
Following this, attendees will be shown how to use Vine and be given the opportunity (and support) to create Vines of their own.

The following long paper will report on a user-centered case study of e-book usage at the University of Sussex and the wider implications for IL practitioners. It will be based upon last year’s article by Groves (2014) and build upon the ‘work in progress’ poster presented at LILAC 2014.

To deliver effective skills teaching and support, an accurate understanding of user behaviour is vital. If user behaviour is not understood, appropriate content cannot be included in the sessions being delivered or the support being offered. Instead of the traditional ways of describing usage based on access counts (Nicholas et al. 2010), the data collected from this study allowed the concept of ‘usage’ to be re-framed qualitatively, putting the emphasis on the user instead of the e-book. This has led to new insights and improved support by identifying the issues that students are facing and enabling staff to address them. Central to this is the creation of the ‘empowered user’, moving beyond the quantitative ‘power user’ (Ahmad and Brogan, 2012) who views e-books for a certain amount of time.

The paper argues that the ‘empowered user’ is a student who is able to:
•Find and access the e-books that they need (through their online reading list or by using a resource discovery tool).
•Search within an e-book using inbuilt functionality (which actually means that ‘successful’ use of an e-book could take little time at all).
•Evaluate the information (making notes within the e-book if appropriate).
•Make use of the information for seminars or coursework.

Building on this, the paper will argue that it is up to us to help create these empowered users by equipping them with appropriate e-books skills; skills that align with a broader IL framework. The research takes a unique approach, assessing e-book usage through the analysis of student citations and student interviews. Reporting of this methodology will appeal to LILAC delegates who attend regularly and wish to hear about a new way of measuring e-book usage that focuses on the user. This is something that all librarians would benefit from discovering at their own institutions and learning about this new methodology will allow them to do so.

Attendees can expect to hear about the key findings of the research including the extent to which students are using e-books in their work; how students are finding e-books and the impact of this on teaching IL skills; and the spectrum of usage uncovered through student interviews. Drawing from this, an IL based e-book strategy will be presented for consideration which focuses on equipping users with the skills to find, evaluate and use e-books effectively.

Consequently the session will show attendees how they can move beyond download counts in an effort to help their students use e-books more effectively; by equipping them with the appropriate IL skills through library teaching and support.

References:
Ahmad, P. and Brogan, M. 2012. Scholarly Use of E-Books in a Virtual Academic Environment: A Case Study. Australian Academic & Research Libraries 43(3), pp.189-213

Groves, A. 2014. What’s the use?: analysing students citations to provide new insights into e-book usage. Insights 27(2), pp.198-204.

Nicholas, D. et al. 2010. E-textbook use, information seeking behaviour and its impact: Case study business and management. Journal of Information Science 36(2), pp.263-280.

There are a number of blog posts recommending Vine to librarians, featuring some excellent examples of how the app is being used by libraries. Despite this, Vine remains an under-used tool. One reason for this may be the absence of a clear guide on how to use Vine. The following article intends to address this issue by equipping practitioners with a short guide to creating Vines. It will begin by introducing Vine, explaining what it is and why it should be considered when promoting certain aspects of the Library. This will be followed by a five-step guide to creating Vines on Android devices and iPhones.

This article reports on a small-scale user-focused piece of research carried out at the University of Sussex. In an attempt to better understand the impact of e-books on student outputs, citation analysis was performed on coursework to identify the e-books that had been used. Of the students surveyed, 11.6% cited an e-book in their work and, for this particular group, EBL was found to be the most popular collection. However, cross reference with the Library discovery tool and Google revealed that e-books available from the web were cited more than those from library collections. Interviews uncovered a spectrum of usage, leading to the conclusion that a comprehensive e-book strategy is required that makes students aware of their benefits, equips them with the skills needed for effective use and increases the number of e-books available.

To deliver effective information literacy teaching, an accurate understanding of user behaviour is vital. The increasing availability and use of e-books will impact upon student information seeking behaviour. We need to understand the extent of this if we wish to include the most appropriate content in the teaching that we deliver.

This poster will show the findings of a recent piece of research at the University of Sussex that has taken an innovative approach to exploring user behaviour. The research considers the establishment of a more sophisticated measure of e-book usage that will inform information literacy teaching by focusing on user behaviour. Specifically this involves measuring e-book usage based on a new methodology concerning citation analysis and qualitative interviews instead of solely gathering data relating to traditional access counts such as full-text download.

By analysing e-book citations in student coursework it has been possible to get a more complete picture of the e-books being used by our students, not just those that are held by the library. In addition, interviewing students directly has helped to uncover the ways in which students are searching for and interacting with e-books. This allows us to see exactly how students are using e-books and their reasons for doing so, as opposed to simply relying on our interpretations of the usage data that we collect. This poster will share our findings.

Gathering information about these various aspects of user behaviour will help to identify gaps in practice and enable us to improve the information seeking and evaluation skills of our users. Furthermore it will help us to understand the barriers that our students face in accessing e-books and by highlighting these we can work towards making our collections as discoverable as possible, in addition to equipping our students with the skills needed to discover them.