The Welsh Information Literacy Project
This is a new project led by WHELF in partnership with public libraries,
schools and further education. The aim is to raise the profile of information
literacy in Wales and work towards a national framework. We plan to promote
the understanding and development of information literacy in all education
sectors, in the workplace, the home and the wider community.
The rationale for undertaking this project is to raise awareness that information
literacy is a key skill in the 21st century, one which can contribute towards
the vision and goals set out in One Wales: A progressive agenda for the
government of Wales:
“Unlocking the potential of Wales’s people is vital to our prosperity.
We will equip people with the skills they need, at all levels, to enable
them to make the best possible contribution to the economy and their communities,
and to fulfil their individual potential.
Our vision is of a society in which learning throughout life is the norm,
where the people of Wales are actively engaged in acquiring new knowledge
and skills from childhood to old age.”
This new project will aim to provide practical evidence of good practice
in Wales by developing case studies, which can be used to highlight work
across all sectors. It will also begin the process of mapping information
literacy across the curriculum by developing a framework which can be used
in conjunction with existing skills frameworks in Wales.
For more information on the project visit the WHELF
blog where you can also read more
about the conference at Gregynog which kick-started the project.
WHELF e-book service
WHELF coordinates a collaborative e-books scheme with OCLC. NetLibrary provides
85,000 Welsh students and National Library users with access to over 600
e-book titles in a broad range of subjects including law, political science,
art, business, economics and management and history. An article by Jeremy
Atkinson and Paul Riley in the latest edition of SCONUL Focus gives the
background to the project and its development to date: Building
on collaboration: the WHELF e-book deal A recent E-books Exchange of
Experience Day took place at UWIC. You will find more information and presentations
on the
WHELF blog.
Joint procurement
Wales is the first country in the UK to jointly procure online news services
for public and academic libraries. This joint procurement is co-ordinated
by the National Library of Wales on behalf of Welsh libraries and helps
reduce costs and deliver value for money. Libraries for Life: Delivering
a Modern Library Service for Wales 2008-11 represents a major investment
by the Welsh Assembly Government in a strategic development programme to
improve library and information services in Wales. WHELF is represented
on the advisory group for Libraries for Life, together with associated project
boards.
WHELF Copyright Group
A new collaborative group has been set up to share experience and expertise
across Wales.
WHELF Special Collections Group
A new group was launched in April, also to share expertise across higher
education institutions in Wales.
Videoconferences with Welsh authors
WHELF worked with the Welsh Video Network to put on a series of events
with authors across Wales.. Using videoconferencing we were able to link
schools with FE and HE for an audience with Bethan Gwanas on 4 November,
Mererid Hopwood on 18 November and Rachel Trezise on 9 December 2008. One
of our events had the honour of being the 2008th event during the 2008 National
Year of Reading in Wales. Alison Walker (WVN) and Sue Mace (WHELF) were
invited to the Assembly to meet Jane Hutt, Minister for Children, Education,
Lifelong Learning and Skills. Photos on Flickr
CROESO
is a scheme which permits any of the 85,000 students on a higher education
course in Wales (including those in franchised course in FE
Colleges) to use any other HE library for reference purposes. Many libraries
are also open to the public for consultation.
The WALIA co-operative scheme was developed by WHELF to offer researchers
in HE institutions in Wales the chance to use and borrow from the library
collections of other Wales HE institutions. It has now been supersed by
the SCONUL Access scheme. SCONUL
Access is a co-operative venture between most of the higher education
libraries of the UK and Ireland. It enables staff, research students, full
time postgraduates and part-time, distance learning and placement students
to borrow material from other libraries.
The HELP (Higher Education in Libraries Partnership) project in
2004 confirmed the need for WHELF to take a leadership role in driving forward
the collaboration agenda. Links to the detailed reports and summary can
be found here.
Welsh Repository Network
With the advent of the Welsh
Repository Network, Wales becomes the first country in the UK where
all higher education institutions have established online repositories.
The formal
launch took place at the National Library of Wales on 19 February 2009.
Developed under the auspices of WHELF, the Welsh Repository Network is made
up of 12 individual university research repositories. Dr Michael Hopkins,
Director of Information Services at Aberystwyth University, said: “The
repositories allow universities to archive and protect the intellectual
output of their institutions, but also make available cutting-edge research
to the world.”
Information Services at Aberystwyth University has now been awarded £260k
by the JISC to support the Welsh Repository Network Enhancement Project
as part of their national Repositories Programme. Aberystwyth University
will act as the lead partner in the newly funded scheme which will involve
collaboration with all other Welsh Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)
and the National Library of Wales. The project will run from 1 April 2009
to 31 March 2011.
The project team will investigate the potential of a collaborative, centrally
managed model to accelerate the development and uptake of repository services
by Welsh HEIs and will investigate the potential for a mediated deposit
bureau to facilitate the increased population of newly established repositories
with appropriate academic research outputs. Another project strand will
work on the creation of a Welsh Thesis Harvesting Service in collaboration
with the National Library of Wales, developing an earlier pilot programme
known as Repository Bridge.
WRN ran a repositories strand at the 2009 Gregynog Colloquium, and once
more it proved a useful forum for the exchange of ideas and inspiration.
All of the Gregynog Repository Stream presentations are now available to
view via the Aberystwyth institutional repository CADAIR. A post linking
to each individual presentation is now available via the WRN
blog
Digitisation
WHELF
Digitisation Strategy
WHELF's Action Plan for 2009-11 includes the aim 'support further digitisation
projects'. This aim's first objective is to 'agree a digitisation strategy
for WHELF'. In October 2008, WHELF members considered a preparatory paper
by Jeremy Atkinson and Andrew Green on the creation of a strategy . This
draft strategy has been written on the basis of that paper and the subsequent
discussion. It carries forward some assumptions already made, for example
that a WHELF strategy on digitisation is more appropriate, for the time
being at least, than a more comprehensive, all-Wales strategy.
Welsh
Newspapers and Magazines Online
In April the Welsh Assembly Government announced its SCIF grant of £2m
to the National Library for a project entitled ‘Welsh Newspapers and
Magazines Online’. This is a three-year project to digitise a high
proportion of all out-of-copyright Welsh newspapers and publish the resulting
text online for all to search, browse and reuse for free. WHELF supported
the bid to SCIF (the Strategic Capital Investment Fund).
Welsh
Journals Online
Working in partnership with members of WHELF, the National Library of Wales
is currently undertaking a project funded by JISC, the Library, and the
Welsh Assembly Government, to digitise a substantial part of its holdings
of 20th-century journals relating to Wales. Due for completion in June 2009,
this is the Library's first venture in the mass digitisation of printed
material. The material ranges from academic and scholarly journals to current
affairs and popular magazines, reflecting all aspects of Welsh life. Welsh
language publications make up 40% of the content. The project is the first
stage of what the Library hopes will be a major programme to digitise its
entire print holdings relating to Wales, and will provide an invaluable
resource to anyone interested in an aspect of Welsh life. Digitisation is
one of WHELF's current strategic priorities, and work is underway to develop
a digitisation strategy for Wales.
Welsh
Ballads - completing the British Ballads Network
The Welsh Ballads project will fill the final gap in the network of digitised
collections of printed ballads around Britain. Cardiff University with the
National Library of Wales and Bangor and Lampeter University libraries hold
the main Welsh printed ballads collections (in both Welsh and English).
A total of 5,000 ballads will be digitised, from the earliest 18th Century
ballads to the final few published in the 20th Century. In total this will
produce around 20,000 pages of digitised text images (all out of copyright).
A website portal will be developed from a pilot which already exists at
Cardiff. This will provide a gateway and an academic resource for access
and study of the ballad in Wales, Britain, and in its international context,
and will link to the catalogue and ballad images.
Continuing Professional Development
Gregynog Colloquium 2010
Every year WHELF and HEWIT organise a residential colloquium at Gregynog
Hall, the University of Wales conference centre, for library and IT staff
to discuss recent developments and to exchange experiences. A successful
feature of the Colloquium is the opportunity for new (and not-so-new) professionals
to give a presentation based on their own experience. The Colloquium also
includes a two day Repositories Stream as part of the programme. Please
visit the Colloquium website at: http://www.gregynog.ac.uk/HEWIT
for the programme and presentations.
Welsh Collaboration in Action: A Joint Event for Librarians Supporting
HE in FE
Libraries have an important role to play in supporting higher education
in further education, so each year WHELF organises an event for staff to
enable participants to share experiences, get up to date on recent developments
and develop individual and shared programmes of action for the future. This
year's event will be held on 29 June at UWIC. The theme will be the student
experience.
Welsh
Libraries Conference 2010
WHELF has organised a half-day seminar at the annual Welsh Libraries Conference
in May 2010 which will explore the theme of service survival through innovation.
The speakers are Phil Sykes, University Librarian at the University of Liverpool
and Andrew Green, Librarian of the National Library of Wales. This is part
of an excellent two-day programme.
WHELF Study Tour to Dublin - 12 to 14 November 2008
With sponsorship from CyMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries Wales, 16 WHELF
members were able to travel to Ireland to visit a number of higher education
libraries in Dublin. This was a very useful and worthwhile trip. It was
particularly productive to visit some very different HEIs and their libraries
in such a short space of time. For those planning new library buildings,
it was also invaluable to see iconic buildings like the Berkeley Library
in Trinity College Dublin and more recent new buildings like Dublin City
University. The photos of the various libraries we visited are available
on Flickr
Journal articles from WHELF
Links to journal articles from WHELF
