Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal June 2005 Volume 3 (3)

CILIPS Conference

Bridging the gap

School liaison schemes in universities help pupils handle the transition between guided study and university. The UC&R(S) slot looked at such schemes at Glasgow University and the University of Abertay.

A liaison scheme has been in place in one form or another at Glasgow since 2002, said Moira Sinclair. At first this involved a reference only library card, and tours by Subject Librarians. Now, it is run by the Enquiry Service and a school visit template has been established offering pupils a very practical experience of what to expect from the university library.

All Enquiry staff are trained to conduct a school tour, and pupils also have a dedicated Acoustiguide audio tour to use, adapted from the undergraduates' version. They can use the library at any time following an initial organised visit with a teacher or librarian.

The success of the scheme has relied much on building bridges – finding out what they were actually doing with senior pupils in school libraries. Seminars for school librarians were given in 2002. "We needed to learn from them," said Liz Hamilton. "Then we developed web pages for schools providing them with information, with special pages for teachers, on what was available at Glasgow. We also produced promotional posters and information leaflets."

School pupil visits have risen: from 152 pupils from 23 schools in 2000, to 491 pupils from 32 schools in 2004.

The next step is to monitor the effect of the service: at the moment there is no hard evidence about whether the library visit had input into a pupil's choice of university.

Chris Milne, from the University of Abertay, described how its school liaison programme grew out of an information literacy framework. The focus started with the Menzieshill project: pupils from a school with retention problems were given the opportunity to experience working in a university library. Pupils are given full access to the library and enrolled as associate students.

Many students at Abertay are still the first people from their family to go into HE. The university has a history of vocational courses growing out of industry in the area, and there is 80% recruitment from Tayside/N Fife.

"We want to raise the aspirations of potential students." Said Chris. People drop out because they are on the wrong course and 90% don't come back. So our programme also helps them 'try before they buy'. We help to build the confidence that university is for them, and build up their skills."

The scheme has allowed the university to adapt its information literacy programmes to fit students' needs better. An interesting discovery was that whilst ICT levels were grossly underestimated by the university, there was a need for information literacy sessions to start earlier in schools.

Information Scotland Vol. 3 (3) June 2005

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