Dr Brenda van Wyk presented a paper at a conference in Mombasa, Kenya from 22 April to 26 April 2024. The theme of the 2024 SCECSAL conference was: “Re-Imagining Library and Information Services in the Digital Era”.

Dr Brenda van Wyk and her MIT student, Edmont Pasipamire presented a research paper titled: “Knowledge and Perceptions of eResearch Skills and Practices of Information Specialists at a Higher Education Institution in South Africa”. The paper will shortly be published in the conference proceedings.

The conference offered network opportunities with researchers, schools, and information services management from African countries and their representatives. Insightful presentations and panels covered a range of topics from OER, Openness and open data, Information Ethics, IP and copyright, among others. Membership to SCECSAL includes the following countries: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Congo Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Dr Brenda van Wyk published a chapter in the 2024 Rowman & Littlefield publication titled:  Teaching Digital Storytelling: Inspiring Voices through Online Narratives, edited by Dr Sheila Marie Aird and Prof Thomas P. Mackey.

This book presents the stories of educators who through digital storytelling inspire students from diverse communities to construct their empowering digital narratives. Educators from a wide range of disciplines present innovative case studies of teaching digital storytelling through the lens of personal narratives, metaliteracy, and information literacy. In this book, the theory and practice of digital storytelling with metaliteracy and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education explores how to inspire learners to share their original digital narratives. It offers the opportunity to explore and address issues of race, class, and gender to give voice to these issues as part of the storytelling process. It investigates the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in writing and producing original digital narratives.

Her chapter titled:” Digital Storytelling and Cognitive Justice in Academic Information Services in South Africa – A Story Waiting to be Discovered” is the result of a Departmental research project research project findings on Metaliteracy. This chapter reports on the potential benefits that the use of digital storytelling (DST) holds to improve undergraduate students’ adjustment to tertiary studies. Designed and communicated with this goal in mind it could improve multiple literacies, and increase parity in active participation towards ultimately having the level of self-directedness and self-determination that they require to succeed in their tertiary studies and beyond.