Beyond the library walls - establishing an information literacy programme for a dispersed user group
Jinfo Blog

By Paul Verlander

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The Information Services of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the UK government agency responsible for health and safety at work, has always endeavoured to educate its users. The HSE employs some 4,100 staff dispersed across a network of 32 offices from a broad range of scientific and technical disciplines, as well as inspectors, policy makers and administrators. With such a large and diverse usergroup it is little surprise that most efforts at user education have been demand-led. Staff of the service regularly provided support to users on sourcing appropriate information and using our online resources. Similarly, library induction sessions have always been available for staff. However, such an approach tended only to cater for active users of the service and, given that efforts were based largely within the library, catered only for those staff based within our main headquarters.

A concern for the service, then, was not only capturing new users within headquarters, but also providing better support to staff based in the field. It was clear from benchmarking ourselves against similar organisations, such as the National Health Service (NHS), and from conducting awareness sessions with our existing users, that a more proactive approach to educating users could deliver benefits. We felt we could help our employees work more efficiency and also improve our profile and relevance to staff not already making use of our services.

In October 2005 the service began a user-education programme designed to address the challenge of raising levels of information literacy across the organisation. To date, some 150 staff from 8 locations and differing disciplines have attended a one-day Essential Information Skills course provided by the Unit. Below is an account of our experiences.

Defining scope and objectives

'Because more and more people are in touch with systems of organised knowledge (as for instance intranets or the Internet) in work as well as everyday life, skills in finding, judging and sorting information are as crucial as reading and writing.' [1]

This is certainly the case in HSE where all staff have access to Internet Explorer on their desktop and use the organisational intranet as the prime means of receiving and disseminating information. We therefore decided that a first priority was a general course to promote more efficient use of the Internet as a tool to support work activity. We call it the Essential Information Skills programme.

As those of us engaged in information work know, the Internet can be an invaluable resource in the workplace. If use is not guided, however, it can also be an immensely frustrating and a voracious devourer of valuable work time. A second, equally important, priority was a coordinated effort to provide better training on using the library database and navigating our intranet portal. For staff not based in our headquarters these are the primary means of accessing our services. Summer 2005 was an opportune time to provide such training, as we had just launched a new OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) system with an improved user interface and additional search features. The two elements of our Essential Information Skills programme were relevant to a majority of staff in the organisation regardless of discipline.

Recapturing the Internet

Writing a training programme on a resource such as OPAC was relatively straightforward. Developing an Internet search skills training course was a more challenging prospect. Too often people view the Internet as an IT application and therefore the domain of IT professionals. Equally, whilst online searching is a core part of our work, librarians are often associated more with books than surfing. We wanted to present Essential Information Skills as more than just another IT course.

Rather than just outlining the mechanics of using the Internet, the course encouraged users to engage in the kind of activities that are bread and butter to the information specialist, such as devising search terms and critically evaluating web pages. For example the sessions explored identifying search terms, demonstrated the scope of searches and outlined how understanding domain names can give additional information on content and quality of a web site. Developing an understanding of the web's limitations was as important an aim as illustrating its benefits. Paradoxically, unlike other IT-training courses, ours was designed to encourage people to spend less time on the Internet by working more efficiently.

A significant proportion of the session was spent on Google. Given that many people use Google as a first point of call for online searching, it was important to encourage users to think critically about how it works. We wanted them to understand that they can be overwhelmed by the results of a simple keyword search. The Google session focussed on retrieving manageable numbers of better-quality and more relevant results, for example, by using multiple search terms, domain-specific searching and searching for PDF documents. Time was also spent on alternative search engines, such as directory-based search engines, e.g., Yahoo! <http://uk.yahoo.com>, meta search engines, e.g., ixquick <http://www.ixquick.com>, and specific search resources, such as Kellysearch <http://www.kellysearch.co.uk> for company information.

Given the importance of evaluating websites for quality, a significant proportion of the course was also devoted to looking at subject gateways as a means of identifying high-quality content. Resources that may be familiar to information professionals, such as BIOME <http://www.biome.ac.uk> for health related resources and PSIgate <http://www.psigate.ac.uk> for scientific information, tend to be some of the web's best-kept secrets.

Who you know is important is as what you know

'Information literacy is one of the key skills we all need, too often the concentration is on the technology and not on the content or effective use of the information provided.' [2].

Few information professionals would disagree with the above quote, but persuading the rest of the organisation to buy in to a training programme that would take up time and space was a major challenge. It was not enough to merely develop a training programme, advertise it and wait in the library for the punters to arrive from our diverse and disparate user group. We decided that the greatest benefit would be in targeting distinct groups from different disciplines in their own workplaces.

We got our 'foot in the door' by targeting the owners of induction programmes for trainee inspectors who were to be based in the field. Getting noticed wasn't hard, as the trainers were grateful for ways to enrich their programmes. Once they saw our presentations were useful, they considered us 'part of the furniture' at other events. Pitching the services we offered to new starters was a useful marketing and education activity. Muscling our way into these induction sessions gave us access to most of the staff in the wider organisation charged with learning and development activities. The opportunity to pitch to this group was arguably as important as presenting to the inductees.

Start small but grab opportunities

It was important not to lose momentum after having had the opportunity to pitch our training programme at such events. By arranging follow up meetings, sending persistent emails and engaging in phone conversations with training managers, we established a network for releasing new information. In autumn 2005, a new data management system was rolled out across the area office network. As such, temporary IT training suites were installed in some offices to deliver training. The induction events had found us a willing ally in one of the regional training managers who was then able to help us to hijack these training suites to deliver our first raft of instruction in the northeast region. In October and November 2005, we delivered two days of training in each of the Sheffield, Newcastle and Leeds offices to groups of 10 to 12. In each session, we spent the morning on Internet search skills and the afternoon looking at the library OPAC and the information services portal.

Generating further interest; anecdotes are everything

The initial feedback from these sessions was overwhelmingly positive; comments such as, "I should have gone on a course like this years ago," and, "This will save me and HSE lots of time," were not uncommon. Other comments on feedback forms included: "One of the most practical courses I have attended," and, "This should be compulsory for all staff." This success of the initial sessions presented us with a powerful argument for expanding the training.

Anecdotal feedback is the most powerful form of marketing when trying to promote user education. When other training managers read comments such as those above, they were quickly interested in our help. A key advantage of starting small in a specific area is it more logistically manageable to organise. It is also possible to build powerful momentum, as managers in other areas are keen to make sure that they are seen to offer the same opportunities to their staff. Following the initial series of events in the northeast we have since carried out the training in our Cardiff, Stoneleigh, Bootle and London offices to a range of staff, including scientists, policy makers, specialist inspectors, and health and safety awareness officers.

Make your sessions relevant

The majority of sessions carried out so far have been delivered by two people from our main library and our specialist search team. Whilst inevitably, this is more resource-intensive it has allowed greater interaction with delegates -- particularly important when dealing with mixed-ability groups. If, as has been the case, some delegates are at a lower skill level than others, having two trainers enables those delegates to receive additional help without disrupting the flow of the sessions.

A major advantage of targeting sessions at particular staff groups is that it is possible to tailor sessions to their research interests. Whilst preparing different example sets for different sessions is more time-intensive, showing staff how to find information that is directly relevant enhances the usefulness of the sessions and has been reflected in the positive feedback. For example, when demonstrating subject gateways to a group of toxicologists assessing risks of chemical exposure, we showed how they could access the TOXNET database <http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/> via the PSIgate gateway <http://www.psigate.ac.uk>. We demonstrated to staff engaged in the UK Government Energy Review how to use the 'Energy' directory of Yahoo! <http://uk.yahoo.com/> to find the BIOBIB <http://www.vt.tuwien.ac.at/Biobib/biobib.html> database of biofuels hosted by the Vienna University of Technology.

Delivering training in users' offices rather than centrally from a home base involves greater financial and time costs, but it has significant advantages. Staff tend to respond better when trained on familiar turf. The fact that we have been willing to engage outside of HQ has been another means of boosting the reputation and profile of our unit with the wider user group.

The real benefits of user education

Better information literacy is valuable for any organisation and a key means of demonstrating a library department's relevance. Another benefit of our user education programme, particularly when dealing with a geographically dispersed user group, is it presents a marketing opportunity for our other services. A group of trainees is a captive audience responsive to hearing about what you can do for them when they have learnt something useful from you. This is especially the case when you have shown them a skill, such as Internet search tactics, that a people are keen to develop but had not associated with the library service.

Since the start of our user education programme the number of enquiries have increased, as has demand for our specialist search service. The user education and increased awareness of the service that has followed has been one of the factors contributing to a 40% increase in specialist searches in the second half of the 2005/2006 financial year.

Where next?

So far we have trained staff in eight different locations. Following the success of our pilot in the autumn of 2005 we plan to put on training events for staff in each of HSE's regions throughout the course of 2006 and 2007. We have extended rollout of the training to staff engaged in policy work in our London headquarters and specialist scientific staff in our Bootle headquarters. We are also in the process of developing training sessions on other resources, including the range of subscription databases we subscribe to. So far as a unit we have derived significant benefits in terms of raising our profile and generating work. Developing an off-site user education programme for a large, diverse and dispersed staff group is undoubtedly labour- intensive and incurs travel costs. However, the results in terms of demonstrating your relevance to your organisation -- a paramount concern for all information services -- by helping staff work more efficiently clearly outweigh the time and effort.

References

[1] Andersen, J. (2006), THE PUBLIC SPHERE AND DISCURSIVE ACTIVITIES: INFORMATION LITERACY AS SOCIOPOLITICAL SKILLS. Journal of Documentation, vol.62, no.2, 213-228.

[2] Webb, J. and Powis, C. (2004), TEACHING INFORMATION SKILLS: THEORY AND PRACTICE. Facet Publishing.

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