Information School News

A number of members of the Information School are attending the iConference 2015 in California between 24 and 27 March 2015. Dr Jonathan Foster will be presenting a paper at the conference on 'Implementing e-Learning at a Vietnamese University: A Configurational Approach'.  He is also chairing a preliminary papers session entitled ' The Other Side of Social Media '. PhD student Paula Goodale is also attending the iConference and has been nominated for the 'Best Poster Award'.  Her 'Mapping Data Journeys: Design for an interactive web site' poster is based on research conducted as part of the Secret Life of a Weather Datum project and was produced with co-authors Dr Jo Bates of the Information School, also attending the iConference, and Yuwei Lin of the University of Creative Arts.  The winner will be announced on 26 March.

Dr Stephen Pinfield, Professor Peter Bath and PhD student Jennifer Salter have conducted research exploring the total cost of publication for universities in the era of open access. Their research has found that the total cost will rise in the short term, and they highlight the need to consider the total cost of publication (existing subscription costs, article processing charges plus the costs of administering them) to make sure that universities and academics gain the best value from their research publications. You can read more in Dr Pinfield's recent post on the LSE Impact Blog .

Today a number of iSchool academics are presenting at the the University of Sheffield Faculty of Social Sciences learning and teaching conference. The talks are: Pamela McKinney and Barbara Sen : Situational analysis of group work: student reflective assessment Paul Clough : Utilising MOLE for multiple choice assessments: a case study in the Information School Peter Stordy : Back to the future: reinventing exams Sheila Webber : Futurelearning! Reflections on teaching in the Future Learn Play MOOC Briony Birdi: Supporting isolated adults via the Six Books Challenge in Sheffield: developing student cultural awareness and community engagement

Congratulations to MA Librarianship student Maria Nagle , who has won a sponsored place at the UK's information literacy conference, LILAC http://www.lilacconference.com/WP/awards/student-sponsored-place-at-lilac

Congratulations to Professor Paul Clough, Dr Gialuca Demartini and Dr Farida Vis for their recent funding success in relation to the following projects. Paul Clough and Gianluca Demartini gained funding for an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (studentship) with the National Archives on 'Investigating entity-centric methods for information exploration and discovery in digital archives'. The aim of this research project is to investigate entity-centric methods for supporting users as they explore and navigate the UK Government Web Archive. This would allow users to explore the archive based on entities such as people, places, locations and events in addition to search and navigation based on the content itself. Forming an entity network structure over the Government Web Archive based on Linked Data would also allow connection with existing resources, such as DBPedia and Freebase. The network structure can also be used to create additional features, such as recommendati...

MA Librarianship student Lucy Woolhouse has been awarded a free place at the UK Serials Group Conference , which takes place in Glasgow in April. Congratulations to Lucy!

Pamela McKinney and Dr Stephen Pinfield provided a feature article ( Career support for LIS students ) for the popular monthly discussion group that takes place on Twitter, #uklibchat . The lively Twitter discussion took place on March 3rd: the hashtag is obviously #uklibchat, and their twitter stream is here https://twitter.com/uklibchat

MA Librarianship student Loukia Drosopoulou has won a full bursary from the Music Libraries Trust to attend the IAML(UK and Irl) (The International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres) Annual Study Weekend (ASW). Loukia is already an active member of IAML, as she is Book Reviews editor of its journal Brio and a member of its Conference Committee.

Congratulations to Paula Goodale who has been nominated for the 'Best Poster Award' at the 2015 iConference. The iConference is an international gathering of scholars and researchers concerned with critical information issues in contemporary society. The iConference is presented by the iSchools organisation , and hosted each year by a different member school. The 2015 host is the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine.  The theme for the 2015 conference is Create-Collaborate-Celebrate.  The Information School at the University of Sheffield was the first UK school to join the iSchools organisation. Paula Goodale's poster is entitled 'Mapping Data Journeys: Design for an interactive web site'.  It is based on research conducted as part of the Secret Life of a Weather Datum project and was produced with co-authors Dr Jo Bates of the Information School and Yuwei Lin of the University of Creative Arts. The w...

Research led by Dr Alex Peng of the Information School has found that major cities in the UK are falling behind their international counterparts in terms of their use of smart technologies. UK cities such as London are not as advanced as leading international smart cities, such as San Francisco, Barcelona and Amsterdam, because of a lack of citizen engagement with new smart technologies.  Smart and sustainable cities are essentially built by utilising a set of advanced information and communication technologies, such as broadband networks, wireless sensors, cloud services and mobile apps, to generate radical new ‘smart’ services and facilities within a metropolitan area. A parking space sensor in London used as part of the city's smart parking service A recent report by the UK’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills valued the smart cities industry at more than $400 billion globally by 2020, with the UK expected to receive a 10 per cent share. The research team, ...

The Information School’s MSc Data Science programme aims to give students the chance to enhance their analysis skills by working on real data sets.  As part of a recent assignment, students have analysed data sets on crimes which have been reported to the UK police. One assignment, conducted by Rebecca Thorpe, investigated burglaries in the South Yorkshire region and specifically examined where burglaries occur in the Sheffield area, also looking for associations with other variables.  Using boxplots, time series, line charts and Holt-Winters forecasting, this assignment found that the mean number of monthly burglaries in South Yorkshire was higher in 2012 than in 2011 or 2013.  Using Holt-Winters forecasting, the assignment predicted that burglaries would decrease in South Yorkshire over the next three years.  Focusing upon burglaries in Sheffield, it was found that instances were highly concentrated in the eastern areas of the city and there was some correlation...

Research on digital cultural heritage materials by Professor Paul Clough and Paula Goodale from the Information School is included in 'Cultural Heritage Information: Access and management' , a new book published by Facet Publishing. Their chapter is written in collaboration with Mark Hall and Mark Stevenson and focuses on the Personalised Access To cultural Heritage Spaces (PATHS) project which was funded as part of the European Commission's FP7 programme.  Their chapter discusses how information access to digital cultural heritage collections can be supported and also explores techniques that allow people to use and explore the information in these collections.  These include recommendations and visualisations which are key functions of the PATHS system.