Legal Research Skills – Life-long Learning?

The Enquiring Minds Project at Staffordshire University: Integrating Information Literacy into the Curriculum and Assessment

Alison Pope, Keith Puttick and Geoff Walton

Abstract

Alison Pope, Keith Puttick and Geoff Walton have been involved in the information literacy aspects of a project to help students improve their research skills and they report on this and the wider current debates on information literacy with an emphasis throughout on legal research skills.

Keywords

• Information literacy;
• academic law libraries;
• legal research

Alison Pope is Library and Information Services Manager and supports the Schools of Law and Business at Staffordshire University Law School. As a Learning and Teaching Fellow at the University 2005-2009, Alison was involved in integrating information literacy into the University's Learning and Teaching strategy. She has since been working on initiatives to integrate information literacy elements into law and other university programmes and projects such as Enquiring Minds (EMs). She was co-editor (with Geoff Walton) of Information Literacy: Recognising the Need (Oxford: Chandos, 2006) and other IL work. With Geoff Walton she is co-editing Information Literacy: Infiltrating the Curriculum, Challenging Minds (Oxford: Chandos, forthcoming later in 2010).

Keith Puttick lectures in employment, social welfare law and family welfare aspects of migration at SULS. He is a co-author of Employment Rights; Civil Appeals (ed. Sir Michael Burton: Foreword Lord Woolf); Butterworths Family Law/SFLS (ed. John Fotheringham); and The Challenge of Asylum to Legal Systems (ed. Prakash Shah).

Geoff Walton is Academic Skills Tutor Librarian and Research Informed Teaching (RiT) Project Co-ordinator at Staffordshire University. His specific subject responsibilities are for Psychology and Sport & Exercise Science. He recently completed a PhD which analysed the development of a blended approach (a mix of face-to-face and online pedagogical methods) for delivering information literacy to first year undergraduates. Geoff is co-author (with Mark Hepworth) of Teaching Information Literacy for Inquiry-based Learning. He is also winner of the award - SLA Europe information Professional 2010.