Information School News

Congratulations to our Head of School, Prof Briony Birdi, for receiving an Honorary Fellowship from the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) - their highest accolade! Professor Birdi is a leading academic and researcher in the field of library and information science and a thought-leader in the fields of reader development and Diversity, Equality and Inclusion in libraries. Speaking about the award, she said: "I've learned so much about libraries. And from such fantastic and committed colleagues as I've met through my various committees and groups that I've been involved in in with CILIP. Being able to bring this learning into my teaching, developing new programme a new decolonizing framework all sounds very grand but actually it's just me learning from everyone else. [...] honestly, I'm just delighted. Absolutely delighted to have this. So thank you very, very much." Also awarded were Joseph Coelho and Alison Wheeler. Find ...

We are pleased to announce the results of a recent project on international student employability, funded by JISC and led by members of the Information School and the Careers Service, including Dr. Xin Zhao, Dr. Andrew Cox, Ms Yiyun Ling, Dr Yuzhen Zhu, and Ms Yingzi Shen. This report offers insights from Chinese employers and alumni regarding international student employability. It also provides practical recommendations for enhancing the employability of international Chinese students in the UK. The report has been distributed to members of the University of Sheffield International Employability Working Group. In June 2023, the Information School successfully organised a follow-up career event to share these findings and support students. If you are not part of the working group, you can access the full report here . The PIE news has also featured the project on their website . We encourage students and staff members responsible for enhancing student employability skills to leverage ...

A very warm welcome to the Information School, the leading school of its kind in the UK, and your new academic home! We are delighted that you have chosen to join us here in Sheffield. As part of our mission to provide world-quality university education in information, we aim to inspire and help our students to pursue their highest ambitions for their academic and professional careers. This is an exciting new start for you, and I hope that you settle quickly into student life here on campus, and in the city of Sheffield. Your time here will pass so quickly, and you will be challenged in many ways, but we hope it will also be rewarding and extremely enjoyable. Your Student Handbook is full of useful information about the opportunities available to you during your time here, and the support you will find to help you to have the best possible experience.  This is an exciting time to join the school. In 2023 we were ranked Number One in the World for Library and Information Management...

Seventeen of the CILIP 125 List of the next generation of leaders are Information School alumni or students. CILIP members and colleagues were asked to nominate individuals within the profession to “recognise and honour a new generation of librarians, information and knowledge management professionals who drive positive change, make a difference and have an impact across all sectors.” CILIP Honorary Fellow Sheila Webber, leader of the iSchool's Library and Information Services Management programmes: "It's fantastic to see so many of our former students on this list of passionate and talented individuals. It's also great to have two of our current students already recognised for their drive and contribution!" Arved Werner Kirschbaum said:"I felt incredibly honoured and also very happy to be named as one of the CILIP 125, because it felt like a confirmation of the path I have chosen for myself: to become a librarian and devote my life to making a positive diff...

 Academic research normally goes through a peer review stage before it appears in a journal or book. This usually involves an editor selecting two or more scholars from the field that have relevant expertise and asking them to assess the submission. These reviewers then make comments about various aspects of the submission as well as giving an overall recommendation, such as: accept, ask for minor revisions and then accept, ask for major revisions and then reevaluate, or reject. The purposes of this exercise include filtering out flawed studies or papers with little value and helping the authors to improve their work by correcting errors or suggesting additional perspectives to consider. In an ideal world, every paper that passes peer review is error-free, clear and makes a valuable contribution to academic knowledge. In practice, however, there is no absolute truth and so reviewers must make judgements about the extent to which each work is high enough quality to be published. In ...

  Current student Maria shares her experience of this year's CILIP Conference in Birmingham I was one of the five fortunate students of Information School to receive a student bursary for attending the CILIP Conference in Birmingham. Participating in such an event was a unique experience for me because it was an opportunity for librarians to come together and discuss the future of librarianship. Specifically, the main topics of the conference concentrated on how the world of libraries changes underlying the important role of leadership, management, wellbeing, and AI. This was my first time attending an academic conference, so I experienced it as something challenging with enthusiasm. Initially, I felt a bit out of place, but soon after I met the other participants and my team from the University of Sheffield, I started to feel more comfortable. Also, this feeling got away when I started to participate in parallel sessions and help at the Information School exhibition stand. This al...

 Despite their many benefits, many of us intrinsically know that social media platforms are not entirely a force for good for human beings and our interactions. Use of social media is often linked with poor mental health, particularly in young people, and the kind of comparison it encourages between peoples’ lives can easily make one feel inferior, and exacerbate existing divides in society. And yet the advantages to these services are such that we continue to engage, perhaps trying to limit our own usage or engage with social media in ways that we deem to be the least damaging. “These platforms have been designed to extract value from our interactions”, says Dr Niall Docherty, Lecturer in Data, AI and Society at the University of Sheffield Information School. “They’re capitalist platforms with an economic incentive at their heart, yet somehow the users have to navigate the pressures and extremes put upon them just by using their own wits.” Dr Docherty’s forthcoming book, ‘ Healthy...

Librarianship student Lottie shares her thoughts about this year's CILIP conference. This year I was lucky enough to receive an iSchool bursary to attend the 2023 CILIP conference in Birmingham . The annual CILIP conference is the UK’s leading event for library and information professionals and felt like a good first conference for a new professional to visit given the breadth of topics explored and job diversity of the delegates attending. I was also curious about the theme of this year’s event which centred around issues of leadership, emerging talent and wellbeing. Day one conference timetable and my badge! This was my first conference post-pandemic and my first event in the library and information professional sphere. I was apprehensive about attending as an MA student but once I arrived and began chatting to fellow delegates, any anxiety I had about my professional status was quickly dissipated. In fact, I would go as far as to say that these informal connections that were for...

The Health, Safety and Workplace Regulations 1992 state that “Sufficient toilet and washing facilities should be provided to allow everyone at work to use them without unreasonable delay”. Yet people who work on the move - like delivery drivers, care workers and tradespeople - often struggle to access the necessary facilities. The Hand Hygiene at Work project , led by Dr Sophie Rutter from the Information School alongside Dr Lauren White from the Sheffield Methods Institute, is looking at this issue and what can be done to address it. There has been a recognised decline in provision of publicly accessible toilets. The project found that this particularly affects workers who are on the move. Seeking out access to toilets often costs workers valuable time as well as money, when factoring in things like extra petrol costs for travelling out of their route to find these facilities. This disproportionately affects those who might urgently need to access facilities such as those who are me...

“We know that people with disabilities experience a lot of inequities in both their health outcomes and the quality of the healthcare that they receive”, says Dr Denis Newman-Griffis, Lecturer in Data Science at the Information School and co-author of ‘ A roadmap to reduce information inequities in disability with digital health and natural language processing ’, a paper published in PLOS Digital Health. This narrative paper is co-authored by Dr Max Hurwitz, Dr Gina McKernan, Dr Amy Houtrow and Dr Brad Dicianno, with whom Dr Newman-Griffis worked during their post-doctoral research in biomedical informatics at the Department of Physical Medicine Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh. It looks at what the sources and causes of this disparity in care experienced by people with disabilities are. Previous research shows that similar disparities are prevalent across race, class, gender and geographical lines as well, but little work has been done specifically in the area of disabil...

Current student Yuki attended the LILAC Conference - the Information Literacy Conference - in April and shares her thoughts below! I attended LILAC this year as a MA Librarianship student at the Information School. Attending the conference was an incredible opportunity to meet other library professionals from across the world and learn about information literacy from a variety of perspectives. Each day of the conference I had the pleasure of representing the iSchool at our sponsor booth setup. It was enjoyable to chat to prospective students about the programme, as well as make connections with past alumni who came up to the table to share about their experiences. I felt encouraged meeting alumni who were employed in a variety of roles after their time at the iSchool.  Within the conference sessions themselves I enjoyed seeing information literacy principles put into real-world application. I got to take my learning beyond the classroom and gain insight into current IL trends, cha...