Information School News

The SLA Annual Conference, Arabian Gulf Chapter, takes place in Bahrain on 3rd-5th April. Dr Ana Vasconcelos will deliver a keynote speech entitled 'Dilemmas in Knowledge Management'.

Today, 26th March, at the LILAC (information literacy) conference in Manchester, Professor Sheila Corrall delivered a paper on Developing Information Literacy Strategies and Plans (co-authored with Lyn Parker and Helen Dobson) and Sheila Webber facilitated a workshop on Writing articles for publication . Sheila Webber will be giving a further talk at the same conference on 27th March, on Reviewing the research literature (co-authored with Bill Johnston, Strathclyde University).

Prof Peter Willett presented a paper entitled "A bibliometric analysis of chemoinformatics" at the 233rd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago, on Sunday 25th March.

The week commencing 23rd April (Week 9) is Careers Week here at the Department of Information Studies. Events will be of interest to both postgraduate and undergraduate students: Tuesday 24th April RC204, 10-12.00 " ePortfolio: Designing an extended WebCT CV that could be seen by prospective employers " with Peter Stordy. This session is suitable to both PGT and UG. RC204, 12-14.00 “ Marketing yourself effectively ” with Lawraine from Sue Hill Recruitment and Linda from University of Sheffield Careers Service RECRUITMENT AGENCY VISIT: TFPL Wednesday 25th April RECRUITMENT AGENCY VISIT: Sue Hill Thursday 26th April RC204, 12-13.30 “ Why you should think about doing a PhD... ” led by Professor Steve Whittaker and with presentations by current research students. Nibbles served. RC204, 13.30-14.00 “ How to get that First Job ” by Francis from Infomatch RECRUITMENT AGENCY VISIT: Sue Hill Friday 27th April RECRUITMENT AGENCY VISIT: Infomatch Interested? You'll find sign-up form...

Head of Department Prof Sheila Corrall chairs the British Association for Information and Library Education and Research Committee in Manchester, on Thursday 22 March.

Dr Andrew Cox is giving a talk at the Shock of the social conference at the Said Business School, University of Oxford, on 22nd March 2007. The presentation, The use of blogs in inquiry based learning , is coauthored with Sheila Webber, Dr Philippa Levy and Peter Stordy, and draws on experience of teaching team and student blogging in our new core undergraduate module Inquiry in Information Management .

The Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield, is holding a free half-day event on 30 March 2007, on information literacy research , featuring speakers from The Department plus a visiting speaker: Dr Christine Bruce, Associate Professor, Faculty of Information Technology, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. The Programme consists of: Introduction ( Professor Sheila Corrall, University of Sheffield); Guest keynote: Information literacy: models from research (Dr Christine Bruce); Information Literacy research in the Department of Information Studies, and the UK research agenda ( Sheila Webber and Nigel Ford); Conceptions of information literacy of UK Chemistry and English academics ( Sheila Webber , University of Sheffield, and Bill Johnston, University of Strathclyde); Mining of search activity data to support information literac y (Professor Nigel Ford and Dr Andrew Madden , University of Sheffield ). There will be opportunities for questions and discus...

Professor Steve Whittaker is one of the invited participants to the HCI 2020 forum, funded by Microsoft Research and being held 15th-16th March 2007 in Sanlucar La Mayor, Spain. "By bringing together the world's leading thinkers on this topic we hope to discuss, debate and define a new agenda for HCI [Human Computer Interaction] in the 21st century – one that puts human values at its core."

Professor Peter Willett gives a paper tomorrow, A Bibliometric Analysis of Chemoinformatics , at the Molecular Graphics Modelling Society Silver Jubilee Meeting being held on 13 March, 2007, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Boon, S., Johnston, B. and Webber, S. (2007) "A phenomenographic study of English faculty's conceptions of information literacy." Journal of documentation , 63 (2), 204-228. Mansourian, Y. and Madden, A. D. (2007). "Methodological approaches in web search research." The electronic library , 25 (1), 90-101.

On Friday 9th March we a holding a day school for our MSc Health Informatics course, a distance learning programme.

Phussadee Dokphrom will give a research seminar on this topic at 1.30pm in room 204, Regent Court on Thursday 15th March. Her presentation will report on a study that aims to explore the information literacy perceptions of academic staff, students and librarians, their opinions regarding the information literacy skills students should possess, and the extent of information literacy education. The study will employ a case study approach and be carried out at the Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University, Thailand. This presentation outlines the methodology, and reports on findings from pilot interviews and focus groups.

Maryam Nazari , a research student in this Department, was recipient of a World Universities Network grant to support a visit to Penn State University for data collection purposes. She is giving a talk on her experience, Perceptions of GIS and GI in an online educational context in the USA, at a WUN e-seminar on March 7th as part of the Global GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Academy

We announce a series of talks associated with the Memoir Marie Curie grant held jointly between ICOSS (Informatics Collaboratory of the Social Sciences) and the Department of Information Studies. The grant is associated with the development of computational tools for the creation and sharing of digital memories. Dr. Jens Brockmeier , a visiting Fellow for the project, will give a series of talks on multi- and interdisciplinary issues of memory research. All talks are held in ICOSS (219 Portobello Street, Sheffield) starting at 13.00. All welcome. March 21, 2007: Locating oneself: Autobiographical remembering and narrative identity construction April 19, 2007: Remembering Confucius: Autobiographical memory as cultural practice May 17, 2007: Cultural memory: New spaces of remembering and forgetting.