I remember causing a certain amount of audible eye-rolling among colleagues a few years back with my use of the verb, ‘to membership.’  I didn’t make it up, and I must have acquired it while reading something sociolinguistic, but I am embarrassed to say that I no longer know where. As you can probably guess, it means to assign someone to a certain group (with the added implication that you will use your own schemata regarding that group in order to interpret what it is that that person says.)  I mention it because yesterday I found myself being membershipped in the most unusual way.

 I was at a cross-disciplinary presentation on the theme of how academics need to make more effort to ensure that their work has more social ‘impact’ (a key term in the way that those set above us would like to judge and assess us this time around, but more of that another time). A representative of a lobbying organisation was arguing that academics should (guess what?) make more use of lobbying organisations. Not only that, he was saying, but they should make much more effort to use Web2.0 affordances, social networking sites, blogs and twitter.

 During discussion afterwards, someone said that this was quite simply to misunderstand the nature of our endeavours. ‘Look around this room,’ he said, ‘How many people here “blog?” (And there was something about the way he said that last word that brought to mind activities that I’m sure we would all want to insist were best left behind with adolescence.) Well, there were about forty people in the room, ranging from PhD students to professors, from all across the university’s varied faculties and schools. Without thinking too much about it, I raised my hand. As I felt the silence closing in, the same voice from behind me, said, “Well, there’s always one, isn’t there!”  And he didn’t say it in a nice way. Afterwards, two people came up to ask me about my blog, and so I found myself membershipped as the man who knows about blogging. As H.G. Wells almost wrote, in the world of the digitally deprived, the one-fingered typist is king. 

But really what it made me think was how easy it is to fixate on how far one has to go, while constantly devaluing how far one has come. I may be too old to get out of that pattern, but I pass the warning on to those flexible enough to respond to it. Be pleased with your achievements. No need to show off, but don’t do yourself down.

 As coincidence would have it, I was at another (and thematically related) cross-disciplinary presentation this lunchtime, this time by a corridor-colleague, Drew Whitworth. He has led a team drawn from the School of Education and the University Library in the production of what they call resources for postgraduates and researchers in media and information literacy. You can find them at: http://madigitaltechnologies.wordpress.com/infoliteracy/

 This is not a repeat of training materials in the specifics of literature searches or the like. It takes a broader view of what is involved by viewing information processing according to a ‘Six-Frame’ model:

• The content frame
• The competency frame
• The learning-to-learn frame
• The personal  relevance frame
• The social impact frame

 Feedback so far indicates that the resources take about 7-10 hours to work through, and there are tasks to help a person go into the frames in depth and pull things together. If it sounds interesting, take a look and let us know how you get on. Drew is certainly keen for feedback on the resources and I would also like to know what you make of them. 

Oh, much as I’d love to visit with you some more, my lovelies, there are ethics forms to screen and other such joyful tasks before I can get on to the real fun of preparing tomorrow’s classes.

 Best,

 Julian