Legal Research

Australian Innovation

I am really looking forward to a trip to Australia in September for ALIA as well as side trips to some major cities and Tasmania before heading to New Zealand.

After previous trips and ever since I discovered Inside a Dog I've watched some great innovations taking place in Australian libaries. The latest is this one:

The State Library of Victoria has just launched a new information literacy and resources site for secondary students and teachers.

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/ergo

The site includes:

- easy to follow guides to research, essay writing and study skills
- over 500 digitised resources from the State Library's collections
- worked examples available at point of need, illustrating bias in primary sources, how to
understand an essay question and much more
- video interviews with prominent authors, historians and artists including Helen Garner and
Nobel Laureate, Peter Doherty
- teacher and student resources with a focus on critical literacy and thinking processes

For information about professional development programs, email ergo@slv.vic.gov.au

Some good feedback from teachers, such as:

"This site is fantastic - I have taught across many areas and in many different contexts and see uses for this site in all of them! Thanks for creating a humanities based resouce that is skills rich not just content driven. I admire all the work that has gone into this. Congratulations!"

And if you don't recall Inside a Dog:
This is a website for young people about books. Here you can:

read and write reviews
meet our online author-in-residence
win stuff
preview upcoming titles
read interviews with authors
keep up to date with all the latest bookish news
listen to podcasts and audio Chapter Ones
talk about books on the forum

Inside a Dog has had over 650,000 visits by the end of March 2008. Cool. It's some great State Library innovation.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on April 22, 2008 (boomark / email).