Friday, May 31, 2013

London Libraries Learning Research Reading Group meets on 5th June

The London Libraries Learning Research Reading Group is next meeting on 5th June - this is a face to face meeting (not virtual ;-) at the LSE in London, UK. They will be discussing Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment. More info at http://lllrrg.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/june-meeting/

Monday, May 13, 2013

TeachMeets: discussion on 21st May


The next online journal club will take place at 8pm UK time (see here for times elsewhere in the world) on Tuesday 21st May here on this blog, as a discussion in blog comments.

The topic will be TeachMeets - originating in the schools sector, a TeachMeet is an ‘unconference’, organised by teachers for teachers. The TeachMeet has been adapted into the LibTeachMeet, with the first Library TeachMeet taking place in Cambridge in 2010. 

The role of librarian as teacher has gained increasing prominence over the last few years, with a range of conferences, resources and networks appearing to support this. Many librarians do gain some kind of teaching qualification, but this formal education can be complemented by informal sharing of ideas through events such as TeachMeets. 

The following article gives the background and provides the starting point for our discussion:
Chapter: Tumelty, N., Kuhn, I., & Birkwood, K. (2012). TeachMeet: Librarians, learning from each other. In P. Godwin & J. Parker (Eds.),Information,Literacy Beyond Library 2.0 (pp. 191-201).  London: Facet Publishing.  http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/244069

As well as running a LibTeachMeet in Newcastle (ToonLibTeachmeet), I’ve recently been attending some teachers’ teachmeets to gain inspiration. My blog post about this could provide some ideas for discussion: 


Whether you’ve been involved in organising or participating in a LibTeachMeet, or are simply interested in the concept, join in our discussion. 

Questions
  • What do you think of the concept?
  • In what way are TeachMeets for librarians different?
  • What techniques did you find successful? What didn’t work?
  • Why do you think there haven’t been more LibTeachMeets?
  • How could you see TeachMeets changing? What would you like to see?
  • How else could librarians support each other in their roles as teachers?
Further Links