Research Information and Digital Literacies Coalition
The RIN is co-ordinating the development of the Research Information and Digital Literacies Coalition (RIDLs): a coalition of partners working together to promote the value of information and research data literacy for academic researchers; and to enable activities which help to advance this knowledge and skills. The idea is to bring together players from different constituencies and professional groups which each provide distinctive perspectives to this area. The medium of a coalition provides a means of working collectively to capitalise on these varied outlooks and thereby to provide a rounded and cohesive view on challenges to be addressed.
RIDLs was established in June 2012 under the chairmanship of Professor Pam Denicolo (Universities of Surrey and Reading). The coalition is being made possible through the provision of a grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which is has been secured for one year to establish a proof of concept – i.e. to ascertain whether the advancement of such a partnership represents a useful and viable proposition for the future. The funding will be used to support a programme of six broad activities:
- establishing RIDLs and endowing it with mechanisms which enable it to function as a collaborative venture – further details here;
- setting out, testing and disseminating criteria that can be used to describe and review training courses and other interventions in the area of information literacy – further details here;
- identifying and promoting good practice in information literacy training – further details here;
- supporting the use of the Researcher Development Framework and the Seven Pillars of Information Literacy as instruments for promoting the centrality of information literacy in a higher education setting – further details here;
- supporting small-scale project work to advance the evidence base in this area – further details here;
- developing links with relevant information literacy projects and initiatives in other countries, in order to share good practice and identify possible opportunities for international joint working – further details here.
The detailed programme (including expected outputs and outcomes), as set out in June 2012, along with the aims and objectives of the initiative, is attached below. Also attached is a one-page flyer which anyone is welcome to use for the purpose of disseminating information about RIDLs.
The partnership approach is crucially important; the different bodies that are associated with the initiative include library representative organisations (SCONUL, RLUK, CILIP and the Special Libaries Association), as well as BAILER, the British Library, the Digital Curation Centre, the Higher Education Academy, JISC, Jorum, the UK Council for Graduate Education and Vitae.
The proposed coalition builds on the work undertaken by RIN during 2009-2011 in the broad area of information literacy, details about which can be found on RIN’s former website here.
Updates will be posted on these pages as RIDLs develops. In the meantime, please contact [email protected] if you would like further information, or if you wish to become involved.
RIDLs aims, objectives and programme
3 July 2012