This year’s theme at the Aberystwyth LibTeachMeet was ‘Information Literacy in the Age of Fake
News’ a challenging issue facing libraries and their readers. The CILIP
Information Literacy Group kindly sponsored the event.
Librarians and information professionals working in higher
and further education were amongst the attendees and it was apparent that we
all faced similar issues in student engagement, especially when promoting
information literacy. Customer Services and Academic Engagement Managers, Nia
Ellis and Elizabeth Kensler opened this year’s TeachMeet. Nia and Elizabeth
reiterated that fake news posed a considerable threat to information literacy
and they hoped that this TeachMeet would inspire some innovative ways to combat
it.
We began with ‘The One Armed Bandit of News’ icebreaker,
where I put our attendee’s fake news detection skills to the test. Loosely
based on a certain long running satirical news show, two humorous headlines
were shown and it was up to the attendees to decide on which they thought was
the ‘real’ headline. The icebreaker proved that even as information
professionals it can be somewhat difficult to sift fact from fiction.
The first talk of day was An
Alternate History of Alternative Facts presented by myself. I spoke about
the different types of fake news and discussed a few downright sinister
examples from history, explaining that fake news is by no means a recent
phenomenon. Our next speakers were Dr
Amy Staniforth and Simon French of Aberystwyth University with Facts Matter: Truth, Memory and Metadata.
Simon and Amy examined the “librarians’ agenda” when providing accurate
information and metadata. The talk inspired a rather heated, but good natured
debate about the ethics of censorship in libraries.
Next up, Julie Archer and Tom Francis of Aberystwyth
University presented a historical case study of Professor Herman Ethè, a
shameful episode in Aberystwyth's history. Tom an acquisitions librarian, who has also written
a play about the ill-fated professor, gave a detailed account of the larger
than life character who found himself at odds with the local townsfolk. Julie,
Records Manager and Archivist delved deep into the Aberystwyth University
archives to show the wave of anti-German hysteria, which had taken hold of the
town following an intense propaganda campaign in the First World War. Our first external speaker of the day was
Catherine Finch, who had joined us from Cardiff Metropolitan University. In DuChamp’s Bicycle: teaching students about
keywords in searching, Catherine demonstrated an effective exercise she
uses to get students to think about keywords in relation to searching on the
internet.
Our second external speaker was Jacinta Jolly of NPTC Group
of Colleges. Jacinta kicked off the after-lunch talks with a perspective from further
education, reviewing critical literacy teaching. Jacinta discussed the
perennial issue of student engagement with initiatives and demonstrated some
effective strategies to encourage students to take part. She finished her talk
with a fun ‘kahoot!’ critical thinking quiz, which motivated some friendly
competition amongst the attendees. Finally, Joy Cadwallader subject librarian
at Aberystwyth University presented Embedding
in the curriculum: first steps in fake news. Joy discussed some future
ideas for teaching fake news including using musical clues, the choice of the
Fleet Foxes rounded off the day nicely!
There was plenty of commentary and photos shared on twitter
thanks to our own dedicated hashtag #AberLTM17. I would like to thank the CILIP Group for
kindly sponsoring this year’s TeachMeet and our attendees who had travelled
from the length and breadth of Wales. I would also like to thank our
speakers who delivered excellent, thought provoking presentations.
Keep your eyes peeled for Aber LibTeachMeet 2018!
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