Information School News

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 ...

Congratulations to Dr Andrew Cox: Information Manager of 2021 CILIP Special Interest Groups, the Knowledge and Information Management Group (K&IM) and the UK e-information Group (UKeiG), are delighted to announce that the winner of their prestigious Information Manager of the Year Award, 2021 is Dr Andrew Cox, Senior Lecturer, Information School, Sheffield University. The award will be presented at the  Knowledge & Information Management virtual Awards evening  on Wednesday 10 th  November starting at  5. 30 pm.  Please join us for this free event as we celebrate all the K&IM Award winners for 2021.   Book to attend the awards  here .   The Information Manager of the Year Award is presented to professionals who have raised awareness of, and made a significant contribution to, the value and impact of knowledge and information management in the workplace and across the LIS sector.   The judging pan...

 Dr Andrew Cox at the RLUK Digital Shift Forum - Watch on Demand Dr Andrew Cox spoke at the RLUK Digital Shift Forum recently. The talk, entitled The academic library and artificial intelligence: some possible futures – Andrew Cox, Senior Lecturer, Information School, University of Sheffield is available to watch online.  The term ‘artificial intelligence’ has many meanings, past and present. In its current guise, it has many potential applications in HE. An important aspect of this is the increasing use of data science techniques, such as machine learning, in research across all disciplines: from digital humanities, computational social science through to more obvious applications in the sciences. As data science skills are increasingly in demand in many sectors of the economy so there is an employability driver for it being taught in many disciplines. There are a number of ways academic libraries are already and could in the future be involved in supporting this activity: s...

There is already a vast literature on ethics of Artificial Intelligence, but little (to our knowledge) specifically designed for information professionals as such. To fill this gap Andrew Cox has produced a collection of eight ethics scenarios about Artificial Intelligence (AI) relevant to those working in our sector: Ethics Scenarios Of Artificial Intelligence For Information And Knowledge Management And Library Professionals , DOI: https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.15147411.v1 It builds on his recent report, The impact of AI, machine learning, automation and robotics on the information professions: A report for CILIP https://www.cilip.org.uk/general/custom.asp?page=researchreport This collection is designed to enable information professionals to: 1) better understand AI and the roles they might play 2) think through some of the ethical issues 3) weigh up how existing codes of professional ethics apply, as well as their own personal stance. The document follows the CILIP ...

Launch of Major SCONUL Research Report on the Use of University Library Space Dr Andrew Cox On 5th July 120 representatives of UK and Irish university libraries gathered online for the launch of the report “ Drivers for the Usage of SCONUL Member Libraries ” written by Andrew Cox and Melanie Benson Marshall. The report presents an analysis of what has been driving the growing use of university libraries in the last decade and also reflects on the potential impact of COVID. SCONUL, The Society of College, National and University Libraries , represents all university libraries in the UK and Ireland, irrespective of mission group, as well as national libraries and many libraries with collections of national significance. The report was launched as part of SCONUL’s Libraries after lockdown project. Dr Andrew Cox Senior lecturer Digital Societies Research Group orcid.org/0000-0002-2587-245X

Senior Information School Lecturer Dr Andrew Cox has recently authored a CILIP-funded research report, which aims to help information professionals to understand how AI, machine learning, process automation and robotics are either already impacting the daily work of healthcare information professionals or likely to do so in the near future. The report, sponsored by Health Education England, can be found here .

We are inviting those working in academic libraries to participate in a survey about the role of the university library in mental health and well-being. https://limesurvey.shef.ac.uk/ limesurvey/index.php/159686? lang=en The questionnaire asks about the services your library provides to support mental health and well-being, the philosophy behind them and how success of these services is measured. It also asks about the impact of COVID. We estimate it takes 15 minutes to complete. This follows up on a similar survey conducted in the first months of the pandemic (the results of which were published in this paper: Cox, A. and Brewster, L. Library support for student mental health and well-being in the UK: Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 46 (6)  https://doi.org/10.1016/j. acalib.2020.102256 .) The survey will be open until 12th April. Some of the results of the 2021 survey will be posted on the Information School's blog ( http://info...

How will AI and robots change university life? Dr Andrew Cox How do you think university life will change because of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots? Photo by  Alex Knight  from  Pexels Might we see: An intelligent tutor that personalizes learning to your needs and monitors your activities rather than check your learning by exams…? A chatbot helping you in your group work…? An app helping you plan your day…? A friendly robot who you are teaching a new language…? A voice assistant advising staff about university regulations..? A robot scientist conducting hundreds of experiments a day in an entirely replicable way…? Software helping a lecturer plan their career…? A robot mentor advising senior staff about unconscious bias…? The library as a living, lifelong learning companion…? These are some of the things that are being imagined as the future of universities with AI and robots. Of course, this is exciting. But it is also in many ways frightening, in terms of priva...

Study on research data management in China Dr Andrew Cox The results of an international collaboration between Andrew Cox and Laura Sbaffi at the Information School and Yingshen Huang, from Peking University, have now been published in the prestigious Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (Early view). https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24413 The research, based on web site analysis, a survey and interviews, reveals that the support of research data management by Chinese university libraries remains in its infancy. The full reference is: Huang Y, Cox A & Sbaffi L (2020) Research data management policy and practice in Chinese university libraries. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24413

The results of our survey of how academic libraries are supporting student wellbeing, before and during COVID19 are now published. Dr Andrew Cox The paper "Library support for student mental health and well-being in the UK: before and during the COVID19 pandemic" is available via Journal of Academic Librarianship @ DOI . During the pandemic, the emphasis was on alleviating anxiety around accessing online content. The paper proposes a holistic model of library support for student mental health and well-being, with eight aspects: library services impact, well-being as a library service, detection, hosting, signposting, inherent library value, library as a good partner and library staff well-being. Data from the survey was shared in a blog post in June 

The role of the university library in student mental health - survey launched Mental Health Awareness Week In Mental Health Awareness Week, we are launching a survey of how academic libraries are supporting the mental health and well-being of students. University libraries have become increasingly interested in developing services to support student mental health and well-being. Often, these services are physically located in the library space, but in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, this has changed to offering digital support. We are interested in your university library’s response to the shift in demand and the accompanying changes in student concerns and anxieties that are affecting their mental health and well-being.  Our aim is to explore how university libraries understand student mental health and well-being and act to prevent poor mental health. To do this, we will map well-being related activity across the UK in two ways. First, we are interested in what your ...

Yingshen Huang, a visiting scholar from the University of Peking, along with Andrew Cox and Laura Sbaffi, presented their paper 'Research Data Management Policy and Practice in China' at the the 15th International Digital Curation Conference on the 17th February. The event, run in Dublin by the Digital Curation Centre in partnership with Digital Repository of Ireland, brought together the various stakeholders that play a role in ensuring digital objects are appropriately created, managed, preserved and shared. The conference - which consisted of workshops, a two day-long main conference and an unconference focussed on community - was held at Croke Park. Keynote Lecture 'Collecting and Curating the National Memory' by Dr Sandra Collins, Deputy Director of the National Library of Ireland. Keynote lecture 'The Internet of Things: Utopia or Dystopia?' by Francine Berman, Edward P Hamilton Distinguished Professor in Computer Science at Rensselaer...

Services for Student Well-Being in Academic Libraries: Three Challenges   Our Director of Research and Senior Lecturer, Dr Andrew Cox, has published a new article alongside Dr Liz Brewster at Lancaster University. There has been a wave of interest in UK academic libraries in developing services to support student well-being. This paper identifies three fundamental and interrelated issues that need to be addressed to make such initiatives effective and sustainable. Firstly, well-being has to be defined and the impacts of interventions must be measured in appropriate ways. Secondly, there is a need to identify the true nature of the underlying social problem around well-being. Thirdly, relevant approaches to the issue need to be located within the professional knowledge base of librarianship. To read the article, click here.

Yingshen Huang, from Peking University, China, who is working with Andrew Cox and Laura Sbaffi surveying Chinese universities about research data services, presented their joint work at  the CODATA 2019 Conference, held on 19-20 September in Beijing, China. The conference theme was: “Towards next-generation data-driven science: policies, practices and platforms.” Yingshen Huang presented the paper “Research data management in Chinese academic libraries”.

On 3rd July 2019, the Information School, University of Sheffield, hosted a one-day workshop that started a conversation between Global North and Global South practitioners, researchers and academics about open scholarship in a global context, with Africa as a focus for that discussion. We were also lucky enough to be hosting (courtesy University of Sheffield GCRF QR funding) participants in this debate from Rwanda, a country in the East and Central African region, which has an interesting socio-political context deriving from a checkered colonial past, internal conflict and genocide and language policies implemented to craft a modern political identity. In introducing the debate, the two convenors of the workshop, Pamela Abbott and Andrew Cox, both senior lecturers in the Information school, set out some markers as to why they were interested in this topic. For Pamela, her background as an ICT4D researcher working in African contexts with librarian communities of practice, and her own...

Last week the Information School was delighted to host two visitors from Mexico City, as part of the project "Place-making for sustainable development: Learning from Xochimilco", led by Dr Andrew Cox and Dr Jorge Martins. Gibrán Rivera González is an alumnus of the department and is now a lecturer at Instituto Politécnico Nacional. He has been working with Cooperatives in the city training them in business and IT skills. The other guest was Carlos Sumano Arias, one of the leaders of the Chinampayolo an agro-ecological cooperative. They are combining traditional agricultural knowledge with scientific knowledge to create a form of sustainable agriculture that promotes biodiversity. While in Sheffield Carlos and Gibrán took part in a joint seminar. They also visited a number of social enterprises working in the food industry in Sheffield.

You are cordially invited to a panel discussion exploring issues around traditional knowledge, identity and sustainability in the context of chinampas agriculture, as practised in Xochimilco, Mexico City. The Information School, Room RC204 – 10th July - 12:00-13.30 “The Heart of the chinampas” – Carlos Sumano Arias , Chinampayolo (https://www.facebook.com/chinampayolo/) “Developing collaboration between the university and cooperatives in Mexico City” - Gibrán Rivera González, Instituto Politécnico Nacional “Reclaiming traditional knowledge for cultural sustainability”- Andrew Cox and Jorge Martins, Information School, University of Sheffield More than a thousand years ago, in the navel of the moon "Mexico", in a paradise of crystal clear waters, full of fish, birds and axolotes, men created the chinampas to live and feed themselves. The navel of the moon has become one of the largest cities in the world where channels, rivers, springs and chinampas are being re...

The Information School initiated a strategy around Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) funding in 2018-2019 and appointed a member of academic staff (Pamela Abbott) as a GCRF lead to champion this stream of funding and raise awareness about its potential for the school as a whole. To achieve this end, three GCRF awareness-raising briefings were held in the school and faculty were encouraged to align some of their research ideas around this potentially lucrative and long-term funding scheme. Several members of staff subsequently joined the GCRF collaborative network in the university and some also joined the Digital Technologies, Data and Innovation (DDI) theme of Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID) to further engage with at least one theme relevant to the school and to GCRF – ICTs for Development (ICT4D). As a result of these initiatives, the school can now claim some success in the last two rounds of GCRF QR (Quality Research) pump-priming awards, having wo...

Andrew Cox and Jorge Martins were in Mexico City last week, working with Information School alumni, Gibran Rivera (of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional), on an exciting joint project to explore how knowledge can be shared in the context of cultural sustainability. The project investigates the creation of knowledge sharing experiences between eco-friendly social enterprises in Mexico and Sheffield. In one part of the trip Andrew and Jorge participated in a tree planting expedition, organised by Chinamapoylo, a co-op dedicated to sustainable food production in the unique environment of the chinampas, on the edge of Mexico City. The chinampas are a highly productive form of agricultural production based on strips of land reclaimed from the lake in a practice that has survived from pre-hispanic times. They are now under threat from pollution, mass tourism and urban encroachment by the megalopolis of Mexico City. The ahuejote trees (a kind of willow) they were participating in ...

Andrew Cox and Stephen Pinfield presented two pieces of recent work at the RLUK conference on the 22nd of March. RLUK is the organisation for research libraries in Britain and Ireland. The conference draws a large international audience from research libraries around the world. The conference presentation explored services to support research data management, based on an international survey of librarians. The workshop was for delegates to reflect on the potential meaning of artificial intelligence for academic libraries. It was based on the paper: Cox, A.M. , Pinfield, S. and Rutter, S. (2018) The intelligent library: Thought leaders’ views on the likely impact of artificial intelligence on academic libraries. Library Hi Tech. ( open access version available here ) A video of Andrew and Stephen's talk can be viewed here .