The Informed Researcher at Huddersfield

Vitae, the UK organisation championing the personal, professional and career development of doctoral researchers and research staff in higher education, created a Researcher Development Framework (RDF) in 2010. This helps develop the behaviour and attributes of successful researchers.

As part of this, Vitae created a series of lenses through which to view the RDF, including an information literacy lens. This “Informed Researcher” lens and associated booklet (Bent et al, 2012) uses the SCONUL 7 pillars model (SCONUL, 2011) to map attributes of information literacy onto the existing RDF.

At the University of Huddersfield we have used The Informed Researcher as a basis to create our own information literacy framework for researchers, creating a framework that suits our local needs. We developed this in conjunction with our Research and Enterprise team. The framework is supported by a series of workshops and a range of online learning materials, including repurposed Reusable Learning Objects.

The workshops run throughout the academic year in a structured sequence, supported by the online materials. Workshops cover referencing and data management; search skills; research ethics; publishing; and more. One workshop also launches our “9 research things” (http://9researchthings.wordpress.com) which aims to improve the use of social media by our researchers. This then continues online throughout the academic year.

This paper will examine the approach taken by the University of Huddersfield in supporting the development of researchers’ information literacy using the adapted Informed Researcher framework; it will discuss how the workshops, online guides and 9 research things course were received by our researchers; and our future plans to embed this research support into our service.