Credo Digital Award for Information Literacy 2015

Photo: 2014  winner Georgina Dimmock with judges and Credo representatives.

The Information Literacy awards are presented annually at the Librarians Information Literacy Annual Conference (LILAC). They have come to be regarded as the most prestigious and coveted accolades within the field for UK-based practitioners and researchers.

The Credo Digital Award for Information Literacy was established in 2012. Its purpose is to reward the best new high impact digital resource which develops and enhances information literacy skills. It has built up a solid reputation and is regarded as a benchmark award in the IL field. Heather Blaine Wiegand, Director of Marketing Services at Credo explains:

At Credo we feel passionately about the work that libraries, librarians and other information professionals are doing to promote Information Literacy and information skills. We want to support those efforts and saw this award as an opportunity to recognize those who are doing great work and to encourage and inspire others.

Each year there is a wonderfully eclectic mix of nominated resources. Recent shortlisted nominees have included innovative online courses, quirky new apps, snappy open educational resources (OERs) and high impact themed portals and hubs. The most recent winner was Georgina Dimmock (University of Northampton) who was instrumental in developing SkillsHub, a high quality repository of OERs for use by schools, students, researchers and the community at large.

So what does it actually mean to win the award? In 2013, the award was presented to the Open University Library for its impressive Digital and information literacy (DIL) framework & Being Digital site. The team have no doubts about the benefits and kudos which winning the award brings:

Winning the Credo Award enabled us to put ‘Being Digital’ firmly on the map.  It helped us to promote ‘Being Digital’ and gain the respect of colleagues both within the OU and also in the wider HE Community. As a result, take-up of ‘Being Digital’ has been good. Winning the Credo Award also encouraged us to successfully apply for two other awards. (Katharine Reedy, team member).

The award is judged by a small panel of national experts and is open to all sectors – we are particularly delighted to receive nominations from outside the HE sector. Nominations can be for a group or individual. The main stipulation is that the resource is currently or will soon be made open access.

Whilst previous winners agree that the main advantage of winning is widespread recognition, there is also a £500 cash prize and an additional £500 is given to a charity of the winner’s choice.

The nomination process is very straightforward. For details see the Credo Reference Digital Award for Information Literacy 2015 web page.

Once again, Credo and LILAC look forward to rewarding the superb and innovative work in this field and eagerly await your nominations. But don’t leave it too late. The closing date on Friday 27th February 2015 is fast approaching. The shortlisted nominees will be named on the LILAC web site in early March. Good luck one and all!

Author: Nigel Morgan, Credo Digital Award for Information Literacy, morgannj@cardiff.ac.uk

Credo Reference Digital Award for Information Literacy 2015 

Closing date: Friday 27th February 2015.

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