Dear All 

 

The Petitions Committee of the Scottish Parliament met yesterday,
Wednesday 21st December, and I attended with Christine Irving and Chris
Milne. In the end the petition attracted 710 signatures in total; 415
were from Scotland, 186 from England, 31 from Wales and the rest from
other parts of the world. I would like to take this opportunity to thank
all those who signed. It strengthened our hand greatly. I made a short
opening presentation in which I drew attention to the worldwide interest
in the petition. 

We then answered questions for about half an hour and it was clear that
the committee members were genuinely interested in the issue and had
given it some thought. These included:

*	What research  and development  activity is taking place
*	Should information literacy be implicit or explicit in the
curriculum
*	Do librarians feel undervalued and are they just trying the
raise their image
*	Who will take responsibility for information literacy within the
curriculum

 

After the questions there was some discussion about how to progress the
issue and it was decided to put it out for comment to relevant trade
unions, Universities Scotland, and relevant specialist bodies such as
Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) and The Scottish Qualifications
Agency (SQA). It has to be said that Christine and I are in contact with
many of these bodies already but a letter under the banner of the
Scottish Parliament will carry a lot more weight than we can. The
collated responses will come back to the Petitions Committee for further
consideration. 

Depending on progress we shall write something for CILIP Update in the
New Year. 

Our petition was preceded by one from two school girls of about eleven
whose barnstorming performance on the subject of excessive packaging of
supermarket products brought the house down. It's true what they say,
never follow a children or a dog act!

 

Best wishes to all for Christmas and 2006

 

John 

 

Dr. John Crawford,

Library Research Officer,

Glasgow Caledonian University,

Room 302, (3rd floor)

6 Rose Street,

Glasgow,


G3 6RB


Tel: 0141-273-1248


Email [log in to unmask] ac.uk