Library and Heritage Collections

Marketing Information Literacy Training

Rachel SmithCommunications and Marketing Of� cer r.l.smith@durham.ac.uk @missrachelsmith

Background

In 2012/13, Durham University Library has been trying out a new approach to information literacy training driven by student feedback.The recent increase in student fees has prompted us to refocus our information literacy training offer to better meet the needs of our undergraduates.

Previously, information literacy training for undergraduates has been organised by the Library’s Academic Support team in conjunction with academic departments, which has relied on engaged teaching staff allowing time within their schedules. Although we have a strong programme of traditional information skills sessions, with over 350 hours of teaching offered to over 6700 students in 2011/12, National Student Survey results have shown that � nal year students are unaware of the full range of resources available. Many students have also commented that they wished they had known how to make the best use of our electronic collections sooner.

This year, our Did you know? promotional campaign has aimed to raise awareness of the Library’s online resources. By launching a new programme of information skills sessions which all students can book a place on, we can ensure we’re providing an equal opportunity to all students.

Initial Survey

We decided to launch a survey for one month from November to December 2012 to � nd out what our students wanted from the Did you know? training programme. We publicised this via digital channels - through the Library website, our VLE, email and social media. Around 70 people responded to our survey.

Here were the main conclusions we drew from the data:

Most of the students answering the survey already used online resources regularly

Most days

A few times a week

A few times a month

Infrequently

Never

How often do you use the Library’s online resources at the moment?

Students were interested in learning how to use a wide range of resources. The most popular suggestions were:

■ Bibliographic and full-text databases ■ E-journals and e-journal articles ■ Statistical resources ■ Google Scholar ■ Library catalogue advanced features

When asked how long they would prefer sessions to last for,

65% students said they would prefer sessions of under 1.5 hours.

Almost 30% of those remaining said they didn’t mind how long the session was and that the length of the session should depend on the subjects covered.Begi

nner

Intermediat

e

Advanced

Most people wanted training to be offered at a beginner to intermediate

level.

What level of training would you require?

Planning the programme

Based on the results from our initial survey, we decided to:

■ Offer a range of sessions, covering a variety of subjects and resources, and incorporating some of the most popular options in our survey. ■ Offer sessions aimed at beginners. Where appropriate, the

trainer would move on to demonstrate some of the advanced features of the resources. ■ Offer short sessions of up to 1 hour. ■ As we already have an information skills programme open to

all research students, we chose to limit the training sessions offered to undergraduates and taught postgraduates.

We decided to offer four different sessions at the Bill Bryson Library in Durham city and Queen’s Campus Library, in Stockton. Each session was led by a member of the Academic Support team. We decided to trial the sessions as early as possible, in February and March 2013.

Students were able to book a place online through the University’s training course booking system, which is increasingly being used for student training (as well as staff development). Booking was available from late January 2013.

VLE

Training sessions

These were the information skills sessions we offered as part of the Did you know? programme:

Google Scholar:Get more out of Google

Introduction to... E-journals and databases

Going beyond the academic literature: Newspapers and news resources

Finding images for your presentations and assignments: Image databases

Publicity and promotion

In mid-January 2013, our online resources campaign was launched. As soon as the � rst course was available for students to book onto, we began to promote the sessions.

We used a range of communications

methods:

Posters

In the LibraryIn colleges and departments

Digital displays

In the LibraryIn colleges and departments

Library website

Widgets

News storyLinks

Quick polls

Emails

To departments

All student email newsletters

College President’s emails

Facebook

Twitter

In person

Student Users Forums

SSCCs

Board of Studies

Results

Bill Bryson LibraryAt the Bill Bryson Library, all sessions had a number of bookings and went ahead. The � rst two sessions, Google Scholar and E-journals and databases, had good attendance, with around 7 students attending (of the 11 that had booked a place). The � nal two sessions, News resources and Image databases, fell in the last week of the Epiphany term and only one or two students came, despite a healthy number of bookings. However, the students who attended the News and Image databases courses were enthusiastic about the course content and all booked follow up appointments with the Liaison Librarian leading the session.

Queen’s Campus LibraryAt Queen’s Campus, bookings for all sessions were low, with only one or two bookings on each course. Due to low demand, we decided to cancel all of the Queen’s Campus Library sessions the day before the courses were due to run.

Students attending the Did you know? training

sessions said:

‘Very clear presentation and helpful insights’

‘I’ve never used the library search for journals before, and

since the lesson I have looked up a lot of papers and articles’

‘The presenter delivered the session excellently and answered

my questions ef� ciently.’

Initial evaluationSome of the main issues with the sessions were:

a) Timing - We need to ensure we avoid assignment deadlinesb) Unpredictable attendance - Around 50% of students didn’t attend the session they had bookedc) What’s in it for me? - We need to develop ways of better communicating what students are going to get out of a session to encourage them to attend.

Next steps ■ We have decided to offer a second set of the same sessions in

June 2013, after the end of the University examination period. ■ We will open these up to all students and staff. ■ When promoting the sessions to students, we will target our

second year students and taught postgraduates about to begin dissertations. ■ We’re looking into offering an additional session on referencing,

following feedback from Queen’s Campus students.