Information School News

Peter Bath participated in a workshop on 'The Changing Data Landscape' at a conference for final year PhD students organised by the White Rose Doctoral Social Science Training Centre and the Economic and Social Research council (ESRC) and hosted by the University of Sheffield. Peter discussed his experience of using administrative data sets for research, harmonising data and record and data linkage. Also speaking in the workshop were Richard Rowe (Psychology) and Aki Tsuchiya (Economics / ScHARR); this led to a discussion on the opportunities and challenges of using existing data sources for research. The conference was held at Cutler's Hall, Sheffield on 24th April 2013. Further details of the conference can be found at the conference web-site .

The school hosted a Question Time style panel discussion on the theme "21st Century Challenges: What contribution for Information Science?" as part of our series of events marking our 50th anniversary. Panel members included Professors Peter Willett, Elaine Toms and Peter Bath and Professors Emeritus Tom Wilson and Bob Usherwood.  Questions touched on how information professionals could contribute to critiquing, resisting and building credible alternatives to the Government's agenda of cuts and privatisation; the nature of the LIS academic discipline in 20 years' time; and whether academia blazes the trail or analyses the results of information innovation. Jo Bates chaired the discussion which could have gone on significantly longer than we had time for!

Laura Williams, graduate of our MA Librarianship programme, has won the SLA Europe Early Career Conference Awards 2013 .  Laura, along with three other winners, will attend the SLA Conference & INFO-EXPO in San Diego in June. Laura is currently working in the media library at ITV as a Media Logistics Co-ordinator responsible for delivering programme content on tape across the organisation for broadcast.

CILIP's MmIT group conference is in Sheffield today... #mmit2013 Several iSchool staff and students have been involved in its organisation... particularly Jen Smith, and current/prospective student helpers: Ben, Despina, Emily, Janine, Penny and Taghreed. 9:30 - registration and morning coffee - Richard Roberts Foyer 10:00 – Introduction and welcome – Chris Sexton, University of Sheffield, Leo Appleton, MmIT - Richard Roberts Auditorium 10:15 -11:00 – Keynote presentation by Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services “Searching in the cloud” - Richard Roberts Auditorium 11:00 -11.50 – Parallel workshops sessions 1 ·         Gurdish Sandu & Adjoa Boateng (University of East London) “The UEL Library: Entering the Cloud” - Room A84 ·         Lise Robinson (OCLC) “Something good is going to happen” : an overview of developing a cloud based solution” - Room A85 ·    ...