Tag Archives: education

Wikipedia and Academic Libraries: Gathering best practices of professionals

IFLA welcomes Laurie Bridges (Oregon State University), Raymond Pun (Alder Graduate School of Education) and Roberto Arteaga (Pacific Lutheran University), three library professionals to talk about their book project to link Wikipedia and academic libraries.

 

Could you please introduce yourself?

My name is Laurie Bridges (she/her/hers), I am an Instruction and Outreach Librarian at Oregon State University and Associate Professor. I am currently teaching a 2-credit Honors class about Wikipedia and social justice, this is my second time teaching the class. I developed the curriculum and taught it for the first time in the Spring of 2019. I have co-hosted two Wikipedia editathons at my university. I work with a couple of faculty on my campus to help facilitate successful Wikipedia editing assignments (a history course and a writing course). I co-authored two articles in the Journal of Academic Librarianship:

I’m Raymond Pun (he/him/his), a librarian in the Alder Graduate School of Education in California, USA. I’ve organized and participated in Wikipedia-edit-ahons before. I’ve collaborated with teaching faculty in the sciences, women’s studies, and ethnic studies to create opportunities for students to learn about online sources, and the need to engage with online reference materials more critically.

I’m Roberto Arteaga (he/him). I’m an assistant professor and instruction and reference librarian at Pacific Lutheran University. I joined this project after having conversations with Laurie about Wikipedia in relation to library instruction and for-credit courses. I’m just beginning my Wikipedia journey, and I’m particularly interested in developing more pedagogical approaches to teaching with Wikipedia, both in library contexts and beyond.

Librarians collaborated with Wikipedians old and new to improve articles related to Multnomah County, Oregon.
Pdx.leecat – CC BY-SA 3.0

You are developing an open access book project on Wikimedia projects and academic libraries, how did this project get started? 

Laurie: As I was doing research for my courses and articles I used Merrilee Proffitt’s book, “Leveraging Wikipedia,” which is a great introduction for all libraries and librarians. However, it was missing what I really wanted, an in-depth look into academic libraries and librarians and how they’re using Wikipedia. I started chatting with Ray Pun about this, and from here the idea grew.

Ray: Yes, I agree with Laurie! For the events that I’ve organized with faculty, it was important to have students from underrepresented groups contribute to Wikipedia using library resources. Less than 15% of contributors to Wikipedia were women, based on a survey in 2015. In addition, there is under-representation of content on Wikipedia about women and other minority groups and their perspectives and experiences so that’s where I collaborated with academics to address these issues. Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites and it is very important to add and improve its content.

Laurie: And, around the time I was chatting with Ray about this, Roberto reached out to me, he was considering doing a Wikipedia project in one of his classes and wanted to chat. After our video conversation, in which Roberto asked thoughtful and thought-provoking questions, I started thinking he might be the perfect third to a possible editing team. I talked with Ray and we decided to invite Roberto to join us. I really enjoy working in groups of three.

Wikipedia training session in the framework of 1Lib1Ref with 9 librarians and information science professionals in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Jacquitoz – CC BY-SA 4.0

 

Could you tell us more about the subjects that will be addressed in this book and why?

Ray: Roberto and Laurie created a website covering the subjects in the book that would be of interest to many people. We hope the book covers case studies coming from theoretical and pedagogical approaches. We are looking for academic library workers to share how they utilize Wikipedia content to promote information literacy, collaboration or research.

Laurie: I have several librarian contacts in Spain, and I was aware that some interesting things were being done with Wikipedia in the Catalonia region. Then, serendipitously I received a grant to attend the Wikimedia + Education conference in San Sebastian, the Basque region in Spain. It was during the conference that I learned librarians in the Basque region are also doing some unique activities. And, during the conference, I really began to think about how librarians around the world are probably doing fascinating things with Wikipedia that are not shared widely, beyond the local region or country. I thought an open access online book might be the best way to collaborate and share information across borders and around the world.

 

Wikipedia workshop at the Faculty of Medicine on the Leios-Biscay campus in the Basque Country. Theklan – CC BY-SA 4.0

 

Black history month in Nigeria in partnership with AfroCROWD Kaizenify – CC BY-SA 4.0

 

According to you, what common goals are there between Wikimedia Foundation’s projects and academic libraries?

Roberto: I would say that just like the Wikimedia Foundation, libraries, in general, are committed to facilitating access to information to their communities. While libraries are often bound by contracts with publishers that prevent from fully opening up resources to everyone, librarians are now, more than ever, beginning to advocate for more content to become more widely available and reduce the content kept behind paywalls.

Ray: Agreed! It is especially important, particularly now during the pandemic. As it has been reported, COVID-19’s Wikipedia page has been one of the most visited sites. Creating more works under open access (OA) will certainly help.

 

Can you tell us more about the open access model and why you choose it? 

Ray: Early in our planning stages, we went with an open access model because we felt that OA would give us and our contributors the flexibility to share their work with colleagues. We envisioned some of our chapters to be multilingual and wanted to enable access to such content. Wikipedia itself is open and for us, it was important to follow that approach.

Laurie: Wikipedia is radically open. Not only do you see the article, but you see the “talk” tab where the conversation is happening, you see the history tab, and you can see contributors’ history over time. One of the reasons Wikipedia is so popular is because it’s available for free, to everyone, anywhere (Of course, there’s censorship, but that’s another story.) Therefore, we felt it was important to have a book that is open and free to librarians.

 

Finally, what would be your recommendations for libraries wishing to develop Wiki projects?

Laurie: I can answer this question because I just co-authored an article about Wikipedia in libraries for educational use (you can see the post print here). I recommend reaching out and connecting with others, because there is a wealth of knowledge and people are eager to share their successes and failures. Many librarians start with the #1lib1ref campaign, which is low-stakes and easy to get involved with – you just need to add one citation to Wikipedia.

Another popular activity is editathons, happening everywhere in the world. I think the most popular topic for librarian editathons is Art + Feminism. It’s important to note that in-person editathons have been cancelled for the foreseeable future, but there are many remote editathons taking place. In the US and Canada, faculty members can run classes through the WikiEdu dashboard, and librarians can connect with professors who are using the dashboard and offer their expertise. For librarians outside of the US, you can connect with the Wikimedia Education team to find resources in your area.

How can anyone interested find out more?

You can find more information here: https://sites.google.com/view/globalwikipedia/

 

Open Education Week 2020

This week, IFLA celebrates Open Education Week 2020 alongside many other educational and cultural stakeholders.

What is Open Education?

Open Education is a global movement that aims to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge to citizens around the world through open educational resources, tools and best practices.

But what does ‘open’ mean? It refers to resources which are in the public domain or which were created with an open license to allow them to be shared and reused for free by others around the world.

Why is this important?

Every individual in the world has a right to access to education and knowledge. These in turn are key to global development.

Providing access to education through resources and tools means giving everyone the opportunity to learn and develop.

It is also an opportunity to conceive of education as a lever to fight against poverty in the world (SDG1), to allow access to better jobs (SDG8), and to reduce inequalities between men and women (SDG5), and between countries (SDG10).

Latest update

UNESCO adopted a recommendation in November 2019 on Open Educational Resources (OER), promoting the development of five strategic objectives:

  • Building the capacity of stakeholders to create access, use, adapt and redistribute OER;
  • Developing supportive policy;
  • Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER;
  • Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER;
  • Facilitating international cooperation.

IFLA has been involved in this process for many years, and welcomes this work, which in particular stresses the importance of the role of librarians in the creation of educational content and the place of access to these resources.

How can libraries support this global objective?

Clarify the status of your resource:

If your library creates educational content, it is crucial to be transparent about how your audience can use it (e.g. sharing, reusing, modifying). It is therefore important to carefully choose the licence you wish to use (see creative commons licences) or specify it with public domain mark.

The slightest doubt about the possibility of use can discourage public sharing.

Enhance your resources via your institutional channels

Does your library have (open) educational resources to share? Feel free to highlight them on your website or through your social networks to reach out teachers or educational networks.

Share these resources via an external site

There are also sites that promote free educational resources in several languages, such as the Open Education Week site.

Education: our Greatest Renewable Resource

Think of a renewable resource.

Was the first image that came to your mind of wind turbines in the distance, glittering solar panels, or a great, churning waterfall? You certainly wouldn’t be wrong. We often look to our natural environment for resources that drive our ways of life and fuel our future. But what if we look more inward?

What if we look to people?

Education is humanity’s greatest renewable resource, according to the United Nations Education Science and Culture Organisation (UNESCO).  The UN has marked 24 January as the International Day of Education in order to re-affirm its importance in creating both human well-being and sustainable development.

This is captured in the theme for the International Day of Education 2020: Learning for people, planet, prosperity, and peace.

If education is a valuable resource for the well-being of our planet and its inhabitants, we look to teachers, schools, libraries, information specialists and memory institutions as the infrastructure needed to access it.

A Goldmine of Information

Education and learning go beyond the classroom. Education is both formal and informal, from early childhood to post-doctorate, at all stages of life and for all people.

Libraries are “education for all” institutions, built through their strong, fundamental belief in universal and equitable access to information.

IFLA’s core values include:

  •  The belief that people, communities and organisations need universal and equitable access to information, ideas and works of imagination for their social, educational, cultural, democratic and economic well-being
  • The conviction that delivery of high-quality library and information services helps guarantee that access

To extend this metaphor even further: libraries are mines of information, and the library professional is the guide to help one discover gold.

Learning to be a Global Citizen

Global Citizenship is an identity born through education, story and knowledge sharing, cultural expressions, mutual respect and solidarity.

IFLA believes that freedom of expression, access to information, preservation and access to cultural heritage, and information literacy are central in developing societies where people can identify as global citizens. This is reflected in our vision of a strong and united library field powering literate, informed and participative societies.

If global citizenship is identity based on a connection to humanity that transcends borders, then the access to that humanity, through education and access to information, is paramount.

Growing global citizens means providing the resources, opportunities and platforms for education, and empowering individuals to use them to take action for people, planet, prosperity and peace.  As a provider of these resources, opportunities and platforms, libraries are a rich vein in which to cultivate our most valuable renewable resource.

 We invite our members to think about how they can grow their potential as providers of information, education and lifelong learning. 

For more, take a look at IFLA’s Brief on Open Educational Resources.  It underlines the role that librarians can play in creating, curating and ensuring access to these materials, and key issues surrounding Open Educational Resources.

School Libraries Deliver on the Rights of the Child

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the signature of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

While this was not the first international agreement to focus on the specific needs of children, it is the most high-profile, and has put the idea of children’s rights firmly on the political agenda in many countries.

It makes it clear that children are in a specific situation, and have specific needs. It includes a much fuller section on education for example, than the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

It also underlines how other freedoms, such as freedom of access to information, with a view to helping children today become active and empowered adults in future.

This specific situation, arguably, merits a specific type of support. This is what school libraries provide. Indeed, the 30th anniversary year of the Convention is also the 20th anniversary year of IFLA’s School Library Manifesto.

This focuses on how school libraries ‘provide information and ideas that are fundamental to functioning successfully in today’s information and knowledge-based society’, and ‘equip students with life-long learning skills and develops the imagination, enabling them to live as responsible citizens.

In doing so, it provides a useful overview of how school libraries deliver on the rights of the child. This blog looks at the key links between these two documents. With it, we hope, school library advocates will be able to use references to the Convention to strengthen their arguments!

 

The Right of Access to Information: Article 13 of the Convention stresses that the rights included in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the right to freedom of expression, including freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds – also apply to children.

The School Library Manifesto has a similar focus on free access, underlining that ‘access to services and collections should be based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms, and should not be subject to any form of ideological, political or religious censorship, or to commercial pressures’.

 

The Right to Relevant Content: Article 17 includes provisions on the right of children to access relevant content, especially that ‘aimed at the promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health’.

It sets out an obligation on signatories to encourage the production and dissemination of books and materials focused on children, as well as international cooperation to accelerate this.

School libraries clearly here play a major complementary role in ensuring that this production actually ends up in front of children, especially given that there are relatively few parents who can afford to buy all of the books that children need to read to develop a high level of literacy.

The School Library manifesto is clear about this role, noting that ‘library staff support the use of books and other information sources, ranging from the fictional to the documentary, from print to electronic, both on-site and remote’.

Indeed, they do more than just provide access. As the Manifesto sets out, they help children access materials in a way that ‘complement[s] and enrich[es] textbooks, teaching materials and methodologies’.

 

The Right to Education: Articles 28 and 29 of the Convention set out the right to education, on the basis of equal opportunity. It covers the right to primary, secondary and tertiary education, as well as vocational information and guidance. It also underlines the importance of international cooperation to facilitate access to scientific and technical knowledge, as well as universal literacy.

The Convention makes it clear that education should promote ‘the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential’, and of ‘respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms’.

 

Again, this intersects strongly with the roles of school libraries as set out in the Manifesto, including:

  • ‘working with students, teachers, administrators and parents to achieve the mission of the school’;
  • ‘supporting and enhancing educational goals as outlined in the school’s mission and curriculum’; and
  • ‘proclaiming the concept that intellectual freedom and access to information are essential to effective and responsible citizenship and participation in a democracy’.

 

The Right to Culture: Finally, Article 31 stresses that children have a right to rest and leisure, and to ‘participate freely in cultural life and the arts’. Signatories should ‘encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity’.

School libraries provide an excellent means of achieving this, as key venues for accessing and engaging with culture, and developing creativity. As the Manifesto sets out, school libraries ‘provide access to local, regional, national and global resources and opportunities that expose learners to diverse ideas, experiences and opinions’, and ‘offering opportunities for experiences in creating and using information for knowledge, understanding, imagination and enjoyment’.

 

Clearly these are primarily legal texts, and only have an effect when they are followed up with laws and resources at the national and local levels.

What is clear, however, is that when school libraries are able to operate along the lines envisaged in the School Library Manifesto, they can make a real contribution to realising the goals of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Helping Teachers Help All Learners: Libraries and Minority Languages

Through providing materials, developing information literacy skills, offering a space for study, and acting as a gateway to lifelong learning opportunities, libraries are a key part of the education infrastructure.

The service libraries provide is universal, but there are cases where they can be particularly important, for example for speakers of minority languages.

For World Teachers Day, this blog looks – on the basis of IFLA’s submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues – at how libraries help teachers deliver this right for people who risk missing out otherwise.

Providing the Raw Materials for Learning

The right of children to access information to support them in their development is made explicit in Article 17 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child:

‘States Parties recognize the important function performed by the mass media and shall ensure that the child has access to information and material from a diversity of national and international sources, especially those aimed at the promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health’.

This may not always be easy when children have a first language other than the one that dominates where they live. Educational publishers will tend to focus on the main market for works, and curricula can also be concentrated on one language and culture, at the expense of others.

Yet without access to information in their own language, learners can suffer disadvantage, with poorer results leading to fewer opportunities in life. There is a need for additional effort to create, translate, or otherwise get access to materials.

Libraries are well placed to do this. At the local level, public libraries look to ensure that their collections match the make-up of their community, with many having sections in non-majority languages. National libraries can help support this through organising exchanges with counterparts in other countries, or even developing central libraries for different language groups.

Thanks to this work, learners are able to develop their literacy and find information in their own language, helping teachers achieve their goals.

Complementing the Work of Schools

The work of libraries is not necessarily limited to providing materials – they are more than just a storehouse or supplier of books.

The strength of libraries in providing space, and additional – often informal or non-formal – opportunities to learn can also be turned to supporting the progress of non-majority language learners. In this, they complement the work of teachers.

Sometimes, this is a case of simply reproducing traditional library activities such as story-times in minority languages, as happens in Slovakia with Hungarian-speakers.

In other cases, libraries develop structured programmes for reading development, as Helsinki libraries are doing for Russian-speakers.

Elsewhere, they host workshops and lessons for the benefit of all ages, or kit out mobile libraries to help children, for example in refugee camps, to continue their education.

These projects do not need to be organised by libraries alone, but it is clear that their mission – and the space they can often offer – makes libraries a logical platform for such initiatives.

 

While of course teachers themselves are at the heart of successful education, their work is made far easier when they have the support of effective libraries, especially when it comes to working with minority language speakers.

There are many great examples out there of this support at work, making a reality of the right of access to information for learning and personal development for all.

 

Read IFLA’s Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur

Libraries Transforming Education: Equity, Capability, Continuity

This year’s International Youth Day focuses on the need to transform education.

As the United Nations’ own website underlines, the combination of the crucial role of education in delivering other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the future role of young people themselves, makes this a vital area of work.

Libraries have always had a key part to play in supporting education, from simply making available the materials needed by students to more active provision of teaching.

They can also be at the heart of the transformation that will be necessary to make education truly universal, effective and meaningful for all. This blog suggests three ways in which they can make a unique contribution.

 

Equity: a key challenge faced by many schools is the unevenness of basic literacy skills among new entrants. It is clear that those children who have had more opportunity to read – and listen to others read – before starting formal education are in a better position to succeed.

Libraries have a long experience of promoting reading for pleasure from a young age, and indeed in the Netherlands are seen as part of the overall government offer of support for young families. In this way, they allow for early intervention, which helps stop children starting school at a disadvantage.

 

Capability: in addition to supporting basic literacy, libraries are very well placed to help young people develop the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed in an information-rich world. Many support media and information literacy classes, for example, giving youth the tools they need to take their own decisions and engage in civic life.

In other cases, libraries provide a space for learning how to use new technologies which may not be available in schools (for example in Kibera, Kenya), or to learn to code (as in rural regions of Romania). There are further great examples in the most recent newsletter from IFLA’s Section on Library Services for Children and Young Adults.

Such skills can be essential if young people are to go into the world with the knowledge and abilities they need to be independent.

 

Continuity: crucially, the support that libraries offer does not stop when school does. A key strength of the library field is that services are available for all, throughout their lives. Evidence from the United States suggests that about half of all 18-35 year olds have visited a public library in the last year, a larger share than any other age group.

Especially where compulsory education does not extend far beyond primary school, libraries can be essential as places for young people to keep contact with learning opportunities. As underlined in Katarina Popovic’s contribution to this year’s Development and Access to Information report, these are chances which are indispensable if we are to achieve the SDGs.

 

With the right support, libraries ready, in turn, to support the transformation of education necessary to ensure that everyone has the knowledge and skills they need.

 

See also our blogs for World Youth Skills Day 2019 on the importance of information skills for youth, for World Teachers Day 2018 looking at how libraries support teachers, and for World Youth Day 2018, focusing on libraries providing safe spaces for youth.   

 

What Makes Libraries Unique in Achieving… SDG 4

This is the first of a series of blogs for the 2019 High Level Political Forum, looking at the different SDGs in focus this year.

Sustainable Development Goal 4DA2I means being able to learn, grow and develop, wherever you are, whatever your age is the first of the SDGs to be explored this year. It focuses on ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.

For many libraries – not least school and university ones – it is the basis for all of their work, from story time to advanced information literacy. Libraries play a vital role, either within institutions, or in complement to them.

But how to explain this role to policy-makers and others?

Here are three ideas for arguments that you can use to show why libraries are unique in achieving SDG4:

1) Because literacy is a gateway to learning: reading a blog like this, it can be difficult to imagine what it’s like not to be literate. Without literacy, so many means of learning, earning, and accessing information are closed. Libraries have a very strong track record in this area, through supporting literacy (even from the youngest age) and encouraging a love of reading which has proven impacts on overall academic performance.

2) Because learning doesn’t stop when you leave school: while basic education is an essential step, everyone needs to keep on learning throughout their lives. Changes in the wider world may force them to find a new job or adapt to new technologies. Changes in their own lives mean that their needs and priorities change. Libraries provide a place where anyone, at any age, can learn for themselves, and often get involved in or access wider training opportunities.

3) Because spaces matter: the internet has opened up great new possibilities for people to access learning, with new content and applications developed all the time. Yet it is undeniable that people also benefit from having dedicated spaces and staff to help them develop new skills. Libraries are ideal spaces for this, given their historic focus on popular education, and their familiarity to communities.

For more see the chapter on SDG4 in the 2019 Development and Access to Information Report (DA2I) by Dr Katarina Popovic, Secretary-General of the International Council on Adult Education (ICAE).