Information School News

Last week Sheila Webber, with Bill Johnston of Strathclyde University, ran seminars on the Information Literate University , at the initial invitation of York University and Ryerson University in Canada. A one-day seminar (see photo) was tailored to the needs of York and Ryersons' librarians, and Ryerson University's acting Provost also sat in on the start of the session. This was followed by a day of consultation sessions with the Information Literacy committees of each university. A final seminar was held at the University of Waterloo, with participants from Guelph University, the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and IL leaders from McMaster University and Western Universities.

The Call for papers has recently appeared for the 6th Joint Sheffield Conference on Chemoinformatics .  This major international meeting, which is again being co-sponsored by the Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society and by  the Chemical Structure Association Trust, will be held at The Edge, University of Sheffield, 22nd-24th July 2013.

Third year PhD student Angharad Roberts recently gave a presentation about her research at the 32nd Charleston Conference on Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. The conference ran from 7-10 November and Angharad gave her presentation, 'Exploring Concepts of "Collection" in the Digital World' , on Saturday 10 November.

Dr Peter Bath has been appointed Deputy Chair of the University Research Ethics Committee (UREC) . Peter is currently the Senate representative for the Faculty of Social Sciences and has been on the UREC since 2007. The UREC reports to Senate and its tasks include promoting an awareness and understanding of research ethical issues throughout the University, advising on any ethical matters in research within the University. One of Peter's early roles as Deputy Chair is to look into the feasibility of an online system for the research ethics application process.

Our Centre for Information Literacy Research hosted a meeting in the virtual world, Second Life (SL), on 13th November. Clara O'Shea (Edinburgh University) led a presentation and discussion on the Manifesto for Teaching Online ( http://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/ ). The Manifesto  is a series of brief statements that attempt to capture what is generative and productive about online teaching and course design. It was produced by Jen Ross, Clara O’Shea, Sian Bayne and Hamish Macleod; members of the programme team on the MSc in E-learning at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Jen and Hamish were also present in SL to join in the discussion with the international group of participants who assembled for the event.

Jennifer Sigalet, (pictured, right) Campus Public Services Librarian at Okanagan College, British Columbia, Canada, visited the iSchoool as part of an information literacy study tour last week. Jennifer has been involved in some interesting initiatives, and she and her colleagues at Okanagan College received the 2011 Community and Technical College Libraries Innovation Achievement Award for the development and implementation of the CILRI (Course Integrated Library Research Instruction) programme. Jennifer joined with Dr Shahd Salha (graduate of the iSchool) and Bill Johnston (Honorary Research Fellow, Strathclyde University) in presenting a one-hour seminar on information literacy at the iSchool on 9th December, chaired by Sheila Webber .

Dr Stephen Pinfield will be speaking at the Research Libraries UK Conference 2012 , at St James' Park, Newcastle. The conference runs from Wed 14 to Fri 16 November , and Stephen will be speaking on Thu 15 November, on "Skills for the Library and Information Professional of the Future".

The Information School's Dr Farida Vis, along with two colleagues from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation, is featured in the Guardian Datablog today, discussing " How many fake Sandy pictures were really shared on social media? " The article includes a gallery of the 50 most tweeted Sandy images , both real and fake .

The iSchool congratulates Dr Iain Kewley, a student on the MSc in Health Informatics programme and Chief Clinical Information Officer for the Department of Health on the Isle of Man, on his recent appointment to the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Iain's award is in recognition of his work with St John Ambulance in the Isle of Man. Iain has been appointed as Knight Commander in the Order of St John. Further details about Iain's award can be found at: https://www.sja.org.uk/sja/counties/isle-of-man/latest-news/historic-change.aspx and at: http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/60119/notices/1574655/sort=newest Well done, Iain!

Despite the threat of superstorm Sandy , Dr Andrew Cox travelled to Baltimore at the end of October, to participate in the 75th Annual Meeting of ASIS&T , where he participated in a panel on social media and presented a paper for the Social Informatics symposium.

Two representatives of the School spoke at Internet Research 13 at the University of Salford, 18-21 October. Dr Andrew Cox participated in a panel discussion on "Weaving handicrafts into the Web: crafting cultures and online communities", while Dr Farida Vis presented on "What do data visualisations want?".

Dr Farida Vis is an invited speaker at The ‘Big Data’ Debate at The British Academy for the humanities and social sciences. Part of the 2012 ESRC Festival of Social Science, the debate will feature speakers discussing such topics as: What opportunities does 'Big Data' offer to the social sciences? What challenges are there, what skills, training and resources are needed? What are the wider implications for public scrutiny and debate?  The debate is chaired by Guardian commentator and former BBC Social Affairs Editor Polly Toynbee, and takes place on Monday 5th November.

Peter Willett attended the Internet Librarian International 2012 conference in Olympia, where he received the Jason Farradane Award on behalf of the School's Chemoinformatics Research Group (Val Gillet, John Holliday and Peter Willett). Next week he will be visiting the USA to give talks on "Introduction to chemoinformatics" at Fordham University and "Fusing database rankings in similarity-based virtual screening" at Rutgers University.

Dr Andrew Cox is one of the panelists (together with Jutta Haider, Isto Huvila, Helena Francke and Hazel Hall) for a session Transformation or Continuity? The Impact of Social Media on Information: Implications for Theory and Practice at the American Society for Information Science and Technology annual meeting in Baltimore, USA, this week.

Anneli Sarkanen, who graduated from the School's MA Librarianship programme in 2005, is the winner of the 2012 Special Libraries Association Europe/LMD Conference Award . The award recognizes outstanding achievement in the information profession amongst those living and working in Europe.  Anneli works as Information Officer at Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP, and  is an active member of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL), and currently serves as Vice-Chair of their PR & Promotions Committee. Anneli was recommended for the award by a former colleague, who described her as  ‘an excellent ambassador for the information profession in London and the UK’.

With three new academic appointments this year, the School now has a larger complement of staff than at any previous point in its history. Dr Jorge Martins originally joined the School as a doctoral researcher in 2008, and now joins us as a member of academic staff. With a background in e-learning research, knowledge and information management and information systems, Jorge will be teaching on a range of courses, including his own Information Architecture module for our new undergraduate Informatics degrees. Dr Stephen Pinfield joins us from his Chief Information Officer post at the University of Nottingham. Stephen has a particular interest in scholarly communication futures and library and information strategy, and research and teaching experience in a wide range of subjects, including digital library development, project management, systems implementations in organisations, scholarly communications, publishing, and research data management. Dr Farida Vis   was previous...

Dr Farida Vis is an invited speaker at Emerce eDay , October 25 th , 2012 Van Nelle fabriek Rotterdam, where she will talk about her work on The Guardian newspaper’s Reading the Riots project and her forthcoming book, Researching Social Media , written with computer scientist Mike Thelwall.

The Information School's Chemoinformatics Research Group has been awarded the 2012 UKeiG Jason Farradane Award , in recognition of its outstanding 40 year contribution to the information field. The prize is awarded to the three current members of the group,  Professor Val Gillet , Dr John Holliday and Professor Peter Willett . The judges recognised the Group's status as one of the world's leading centres of chemoinformatics research, a major contributor to the field of information science, and an exemplar in raising the profile of the information profession. The School has a long association with the Farradane prize. Its second recipient was long time member of staff Professor Mike Lynch in 1980.

An international panel talks about information literacy associations on 21st November at the first event to be jointly sponsored by the Sheffield iSchool Centre for Information Literacy Research and the the Association of College and Research Libraries Virtual World Interest Group .   When: Sunday 21 October 2012 noon SL time, 2012 (which is 8pm UK time, see http://tinyurl.com/9h2j3pe for times elsewhere)   Where: Farradane Centre, Infolit iSchool, in the virtual world Second Life, http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/91/34/22 You need a Second Life avatar and the SL browser installed on your computer to attend. All welcome!   Panellists:   Sheila Webber (Sheila Yoshikawa in SL), Senior Lecturer, Information School, University of Sheffield – UK (British IL Associations)   Ewa Rozkosz – Saba Pearl in SL (Polish IL Association)   Elvira Saurina (Mariae Habana in SL) -, Sistema de Bibliotecas. Pontificia Universidad Catoli...

Photos courtesy of iSchool PGR student Ana Guedes Rosa The School would like to thank all the organisers, bakers and customers of the iSchool's Coffee Morning, part of the national "World's Biggest Coffee Morning". The School was delighted to raise £390 for Macmillan Cancer Care.

The iSchool uses a range of Web 2.0 tools in teaching: examples are two new resources to hep our librarianship students keep up-to-date; a Netvibes page http://www.netvibes.com/sheilawebber#Library_and_Information_updates and a Scoop-it page http://www.scoop.it/t/updates-for-librarianship/

JISC funds the White Rose Consortium of academic libraries and the Sheffield iSchool to develop Research Data Management (RDM) learning materials for LIS professionals JISC have funded the White Rose Consortium of the libraries of the universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York and the Sheffield iSchool to develop learning materials about Research Data Management tailored for the needs of LIS professionals. The project, RDMRose, will develop learning materials to be made available as Open Educational Resources for individual professionals to study as CPD and for other LIS educators to reuse, as well as for use in courses at Sheffield. Learning materials should begin to be available from January 2013. RDM refers to “the organisation of data, from its entry to the research cycle through to the dissemination and archiving of valuable results” [1] . The need for universities to put in place support for Research Data Management has been driven by the data deluge and research fund...

Sheila Webber and Dr Eva Hornung both presented at the Special Interest Group Phenomenography conference "Phenomenography and Variation Theory — New Challenges" held in Jönköping, Sweden, in August.

On Saturday 22 nd Sep, Alex Peng is presenting two new projects to public visitors in the Festival of the Mind, which will be held in the Sheffield Spiegeltent.  These two interdisciplinary projects (i.e. one focuses on developing and evaluating an e-learning system to train teachers and let them provide better support to disable young people, and the other aims to develop a mobile app to support the unmet needs of cancer survivors) are the results of Alex’s participation in the Sheffield Crucible programme ( http://www.shef.ac.uk/ faculty/science/training-and- development/sheffield-crucible ), and involve other colleagues from the Department of Human Communication Sciences, Academic Unit of Clinical Oncology, Department of Sociological Studies, and School of English. Further details can be found at: http://festivalofthemind.group.shef.ac.uk/a-box-of-ideas/

Lihong Zhou (Nick) f ormer MSc and PhD student in the our School and now Prof. in the Information School of Wuhan University, was awarded,  in collaboration with Miguel Nunes,  a   National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Project entitled "Inter-organisational tacit knowledge sharing in hospitals through the processes of patient transfer and referral", with the project permission no. 71203165 and in a total of 210,000 RMB (approximately £21,000).   This is a significant grant in China both in terms of funding total and prestige.   The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) is the most important and prestigious scientific research grant funding body in the country and is extremely competitive (i.e. in   2011 there were 170,792 applicants and only 34,779 (20%) were approved).   Congratulations to Nick who is much missed in the IS Research Group.

Tom Poulter, a PhD student in the Health Informatics Research Group, is presenting work from his PhD at the Medical Informatics in Europe (MIE2012) conference this week in Pisa, Italy. He is giving a talk on his paper, entitled 'The Use and Usability of EPR systems in Oncology', co-authored with Peter Bath, and is also presenting their poster on 'Onco-Alerts to support Acute Oncology Services'. Further details on the conference can be found at: the MIE 2012 conference web-site.

Peter Bath is a keynote speaker at the 4 th International Conference “Well-being in the Information Society (WIS 2012), which is being held this week in Turku, Finland.  The theme for the conference is " Exploring the Abyss of Inequalities" and Peter's keynote talk is entitled " The Information Society and an Ageing Society: how information can support health and well-being in later life." Further details can be found at: WIS 2012 conference web-site  

iSchool alumnus Chris Rhodes (who works in the Statistical Resource Unit, House of Commons Library, London) is presenting at the IFLA World Library and Information Conference in Helsinki, Findland, today. Together with Maria Cotera and David Percival, he will be talking on: Inspiring future leaders: empowering New Professionals in the UK . Their paper on thieir exciting initiative is at http://conference.ifla.org/sites/default/files/files/papers/wlic2012/95-zubeldia-en.pdf His photo was taken yesterday by Sheila Webber , who is also attending the IFLA conference as a member of the IFLA Information Literacy Section committee .

Dr Jesús Lau, who studied in the iSchool for his doctorate (awarded 1988) has just been presented with a Special Libraries Association SLA John Cotton Dana Award. Earlier in the year he was recipient of the librarian of the year award in Mexico. Dr Lau is Director, Research Center on University Documentation, Universidad Veracruzana.

 This year Microsoft invited the iSchools to send a representative to their annual conference for university researchers (mostly in computer science), the Faculty summit, at their HQ at Redmond nr Seattle, WA. Andrew Cox drew the lucky straw, because there was a strong social media strand to the event this year. There were two full days of talks on latest developments including on social media and crowdsourcing, see http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/facultysummit2012-071612.aspx There was also a “Future of social experiences” Social media workshop attended by most of the iSchool delegates.

Miguel Nunes, as a panel member on behalf of the University of East London (UEL) , took part in two different Quality Assurance (QA) events at the Financial Training & Management Services (FTMS) College , Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. These events   held on 18th and 19th June 2012 included the Validation of a new programme (BSc (Hons) Computer Networks) and the Collaborative Review  of the partnership between UEL and FTMS that involves 3 established undergraduate programmes and 2 master programmes.

Miguel Nunes visited the Faculty of Information Management of the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in Shah Alam, Malaysia, on the 20th of June 2012 invited by Professor Sohaimi Zakaria.  During the visit, Miguel gave a seminar on "Research Issues in the Study of Knowledge Management in Organisations: moving away from obsolete dichotomies".  The interaction with both staff and students was very rich and rewarding and laid the seed for the creation of more closer academic links between UiTM and Sheffield in the future.

Prof Jianfang Wang from the Department of Information Analysis, National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences, visited our School on the 29th June 2012.  Prof Wang also gave a research seminar on “Tailored Bibliometrics Analysis: in support of evidence-based S&T policy decision making”.  This talk aimed at  explaining how evidence-based S&T policy decision-making in China uses evidence from scientific output analysed through bibliometrics.  Prof Wang illustrated how to take advantage of bibliometric analysis to get reasonable evidence on current trends and patterns of current research and publication. This talk focused on professional and research practice of the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Rachel Bickley and Sheila Corrall's paper on student perceptions of staff in the Information Commons has been chosen for the American Library Association's Reference Research Review for 2011, which highlights 20 studies selected for their importance to the practice of reference. The paper was based on Rachel's 2010 MA Librarianship dissertation project and published in Reference Services Review, 39 (2), 223-243. The annotated bibliography is available at  http://connect.ala.org/node/180163 .

Val Gillet and Peter Willett were two of the speakers at the 3rd Strasbourg Summer School in Chemoinformatics , speaking on " / In silico / approaches to toxicity prediction" and "Chemoinformatics: the first half-century"

The best papers from the 15th International Symposium for Health Information Management Research (ISHIMR 2011) have been published in a special edition of the Health Informatics Journal, edited by Peter Bath, Barbara Sen and their colleagues in Zurich, Dimitri Raptis and Tobias Mettler. The papers were selected on the basis of the reviews by two members of the Programme Committee. The conference took place at the University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland in September 2011. The special issue can be accessed at: http://jhi.sagepub.com/content/current The special issues includes papers from two PhD students in the Health Informatics Research Group, Tomislav Dimitrovski and Thomas Poulter. It is expected that an announcement will be made soon about the next ISHIMR conference (to be held in 2013).

Becky Broadley, who graduated from our MA Librarianship in 2010, worked with current head of School Prof Peter Willett to produce a paper based on her dissertation. The resulting work, entitled "Effective public library outreach to homeless people," has won first prize at Emerald's Outstanding Paper Awards 2012. Congratulations to Becky and Peter!

Dr Farida Vis, who joins the School as a research fellow this September, was part of a team awarded First Prize for ‘Data Visualisation and Storytelling (National/International)' at the inaugural Data Journalism Awards . The team's project analysed rumours spreading across Twitter during the 2011 London riots, presented as an interactive front end at the Guardian's Reading the Riots site. The rumours were a mixture of the true, such as the fire at the Miss Selfridge store in Manchester, and the (sadly?) untrue, such as the supposed release of tigers from London Zoo.

Prof Sheila Corrall and PhD student Angharad Roberts are in Croatia this week for the biennial Libraries In the Digital Age conference at the University of Zadar, to present a plenary paper on Information Resource Development and “Collection” in the Digital Age, which draws on recent work by Sheila and Angharad’s doctoral research to explore new definitions of collection development for the network world. Angharad will also participate in a PhD Forum sponsored by ASIST and Sheila will present a poster on her collaborative study with colleagues at Charles Sturt University, Australia, which is investigating bibliometric and research data services in academic libraries.

Prof Sheila Corrall is contributing two sessions to the SCONUL Annual Conference 2012 in Liverpool today and tomorrow. This afternoon she has been invited to speak on the Balanced Scorecard Approach to Evaluation, as a follow-up to her keynote address on the same topic at a previous SCONUL event in March. Tomorrow she will be leading a workshop on Continuity and Change in the Mission of Academic and Research Libraries as part of the SCONUL Fringe Programme.

Dina (Nordiana Shah) is presenting a paper "Factors influencing academics use of microblogging tools in teaching and learning" @ eLearning2.0 at Brunel University - slideshow of the day .

We are delighted to announce that we have been able to secure significant funding from the Faculty of Social Sciences, the University’s Alumni Grants Scheme and our own annual budget to improve a number of teaching rooms, meeting spaces and shared areas around the School.  We hope that improvements will be a welcome upgrade to the facilities available to all our continuing students of the School as well as staff and visitors.  This considerable six-figure financial investment will be the biggest since the School moved into Regent Court in 1993. During Summer 2012 we will be undertaking a works programme to carry out the proposed improvements which will be as follows: Creation of a brand new shared common space and new groupwork/interview rooms for all students (UG, PGT, PGR) and staff Upgrades to the Professor Tom Wilson Teaching Laboratory Creation of a new ‘Digital Media Suite’ in RC-324 for teaching and research Creation of a new staff meeting room in RC-231 (c...

Prof Sheila Corrall travelled to London on Monday to participate in a discussion day organised by Research Libraries UK (RLUK) on the Roles of Libraries in Research Data Management. She spoke on the skills needed by librarians and whether libraries and library/information schools were ready to meet the new demands. Sheffield's Director of Library Services, Martin Lewis (a member of the iSchool's Advisory Panel), also spoke at the event on his experiences of library staff working with other RDM actors in the institution.

The national MmIT conference was hosted in Sheffield yesterday. You can follow a lot of the action on Twitter . More informal commentary on the event ... on Michelle's library stuff , Lady Pen's treasure trove and Sensible shoes . Further news will follow on the MmIT blog . Special thanks go to students who got involved in helping to organise the conference John Bottomley Linda Kemp Jen Smith Simon Wakeling & also to the following students who did a marvellous job helping out on the day: Michelle Bond Nancy Broadfoot Sarah Cole (Official photographer) Penelope Dunn Adoree Hatton Anna Richards Leanne Wain

Congratulations to Ruth Jenkins, student on our MA Librarianship degree, who has been announced as one of the five winners of the SLA Europe Early Career Conference Award (ECCA) 2012 . Ruth is studying with us following a graduate traineeship at the Bodleian Social Science Library at the University of Oxford. Ruth has also worked as a library assistant in a public library and Devon School Library Service. Ruth is co-sponsored by the Business and Finance Division.

An American Humanities' academic has just written a piece praising our island, Infolit iSchool , in Second Life: you can find it here: http://educatinglotus.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/the-university-of-sheffield-uk-infolit-ischool/ . She says "I applaud Sheila Webber (Sheila Yoshikawa in SL), Information Studies faculty member and Director of the Centre for Information Literacy Research, for creating a wonderfully vibrant student learning space, one that uses Inquiry Based Learning." On the right you see another complimentary message, just sent by Sarah Chauncey, Director of Information Resources and Learning Technologies for Rockland BOCES and doctoral student at Syracuse University.

Sheffield iSchool has a strong presence again at the Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference taking place in Glasgow on 11-13 April. Yesterday, Prof Sheila Corrall delivered a paper on Webscale Discovery and Information Literacy with John Dove, President of Credo Reference. Today, Sheila will lead a workshop on Exploring Good Practice for Research Supervisors in Information Literacy Development with Ruth Stubbings of Loughborough University, while Pam McKinney and Barbara Sen present a paper on Reflection for Learning: Understanding the Value of Reflective Writing for Information Literacy Development. In addition, Munirah Abdulhadi is presenting a poster on Collaborative Social Tagging and Information Literacy, based on her PhD research supervised by Barbara and Dr Paul Clough.

Bookings are still being taken for the MMIT national conference, which is taking place in Sheffield University on the 17th April. Staff and students from the School have been actively involved in setting up and running the conference. Programme and booking details Alumni of the iSchool can still apply for a free place, thanks to the School's generosity in funding two free places. OCLC are also funding two free places for current LIS students at any Information Department in the UK. To apply send 100 words explaining how the conference would improve your employability to a.m.cox@sheffield.ac.uk

Peter Stordy successfully passed his PhD viva in January. His thesis explored Information School undergraduates' and academics' perceptions of Internet literacy.

Twenty postgraduate students visited the Sheffield Archive for a behind the scenes tour given by Archivist, Kirsten Smith. Original materials were made available for students including the 1296 Market Charter.

Today 10 librarians from the University of Stockhom, Sweden, visited Sheffield University. As well as learning more about the work of the library, with a programme organised by Lyn Parker, three of the librarians participated in the Masters level class Information Literacy Research , which is led by Sheila Webber . Here Lina, Per and Andreas from Stockholm University Library are pictured together with visiting speaker Bill Johnston (Honorary Research Fellow, Strathclyde University) and students taking the Information Literacy Research class.

Val Gillet is presenting a paper on "Multiobjective design of drug-like molecules" at a workshop on multi-disciplinary integration and optimisation in science and engineering at University College London on April 2nd.

Val Gillet, Sonny Gan and Jorge Valencia, members of the Chemoinformatics Research Group, are all presenting at the Spring 2012 American Chemical Society Meeting in San Diego, March 25-29th. Val is presenting an oral paper on "De novo design of synthetically accessible molecules". Sonny and Jorge are presenting posters on "Identification of alternative druggable targets for prion diseases" and "A Lanczos-based approach to the spectral clustering of chemical data", respectively.

On 1-2 March, Prof Sheila Corrall participated in a strategy colloquium organised by the CONUL consortium of Irish research libraries in Athlone, where she delivered a keynote presentation on library support for learning and teaching. On 9 March, Prof Sheila Corrall delivered a keynote presentation on the use of balanced scorecards and strategy maps prior to participation in a SCONUL workshop for university librarians on performance measurement in Leeds.

The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference is a major conference (with 2,500 participants last year) taking place in the virtual world, Second Life. Sheila Webber and PhD student Ridvan Ata were 2 of the 3 judges deciding which of the 40 poster exhibits should be nominated for the three "best poster" awards. Additionally: - Sheila and Ridvan are giving a presentation at the conference on Teaching and learning in Second Life as Part of a Blended Approach:reflections and lessons learnt , on 16th March at 11am SL time (6pm UK time, see http://tinyurl.com/7y7yjxf for times elsewhere). The location is http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/CAVE/225/220/25t - Sheila and Marshall Dozier (Edinburgh University) have an exhibit on Running a Journal Club in Second Life . As part of this they have an example journal club session also on Friday 16th March, 1pm SL time (which is Pacific time; 8pm UK time; see see http://tinyurl.com/7ulvad2 for times elsewhere). This is ...

Drs. Andrew Cox and Ana Vasconcelos will be delivering keynote addresses at the SLA-AGC Conference in Manama, Bahrain, 12-14th March. Further details can be found at http://www.slaagc2012.org/index.php/agenda-a-speakers/keynote-speakers

Professor Philippa Levy has been appointed Deputy Chief Executive (Academic) of the Higher Education Academy , a national body for enhancing learning and teaching throughout UK higher education. In this role Phil will draw on her previous experience as Director of a national Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, as well as on her leadership of other learning and teaching development initiatives for higher education and on her research expertise in a range of areas of higher education development. She will be stepping down as Head of School at the end of May 2012 in order to take up her new role on secondment from the University of Sheffield.

Two free conference places for alumni of iSchool (Department of Information Studies) @ MmIT 2012 Through the generosity of iSchool, MmIT can offer alumni of the Department a free place at this year’s conference, in Sheffield, on 17th April 2012. To apply write a c100 word statement of how you think attending the conference will enhance your employability. Phil Levy, head of School will adjudicate on entries. Further details of the conference are below. MmIT National Conference, 17th April 2012, University of Sheffield Reduced budgets? Increased impact! Increasing LIS impact with new technologies Conference web site: http://tinyurl.com/5taclmc Conference timings 9.00 Registration and coffee 9.45 Opening remarks: Leo Appleton (Chair of MmIT group); Professor Phillippa Levy (iSchool, Sheffield) – welcome to Sheffield 10.00 Plenary 1 10.45 Interactive voting 11.00 Coffee 11.30 Workshops 12.30 Lunch 13.30 Six five-minute talks 14.15 Workshops 15.15 Coffee 15.45 Plenary 2 16.30 Q&A sessi...

Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry is one of the word's leading chemistry journals, covering all organic aspects of chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, natural product chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, macromolecular chemistry, theoretical chemistry and catalysis. It has recently celebrated its tenth anniversary (see http://blogs.rsc.org/ob/2012/02/02/countdown-to-obc-10th-anniversary-continues/), and the fourth most cited article in the journal's history is a paper from the Sheffield iSchool: "Comparison of topological descriptors for similarity-based virtual screening using multiple bioactive reference structures" by Jérôme Hert, Peter Willett, David J. Wilton, Pierre Acklin, Kamal Azzaoui, Edgar Jacoby and Ansgar Schuffenhauer, and published in Volume 2 (2004) pp. 3256-3266.

Last week Head of School Professor Philippa Levy attended iConference 2012 , the annual conference of the international iSchools group of which the Sheffield iSchool is a member. With the overall theme of Culture:Design:Society, and a great mix of papers, workshops, alternative events and posters, the conference was a testament to the intellectual vibrancy and range of current research in our interdisciplinary field. iConference 2013 will be hosted by the College of Information, University of North Texas.

Dr Eva Hornung 's PhD was chosen, by the editor of Journal of Documentation , as a Highly Commended Award winner of the 2011 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards. Eva (shown (left) with her PhD viva examiners), who gained her doctorate from the Information School last year, was the only winner from a British university out of the three in the Information Science category. Her dissertation was on “The current state and perceptions of one-person librarians in Ireland of continuing professional development” and her supervisor was Sheila Webber. There is more information on the awards at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/research/awards/odra.htm

We are investing in a strategic appointment designed to enhance and expand our research and teaching in Information Management or Information Systems and related areas. Closing date: 16th January 2012 Please see www.shef.ac.uk/is/about/jobs for full details.