Information School News

In November 2024, the University hosted the annual CILIP Prison Libraries Group Training Day. This was organised by CILIP’s Prison Libraries Group alongside Dr Jayne Finlay, Lecturer in Librarianship at the Information School. Three students from the Information School received bursaries to attend the event and have reflected on their experiences below. Rebecca Breinholt, MA Librarianship I’m interested in the work of prison libraries but know very little about how they actually operate so I was incredibly grateful to be given a student bursary to attend the CILIP Prison Libraries Group Training Day. Excited but a bit unsure of myself when I showed up, I quickly discovered how kind, dedicated, and knowledgeable the people engaged in this work proved to be. We heard from professionals on a range of topics including literacy and creativity, helping prisoners access legal information, neurodiversity, family projects, as well as a report on the results of a large study of UK prison librar...

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...

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

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...

Are you thinking about a degree in Library and Information Studies? Do you want to know more about the different options out there, and about potential funding opportunities? CILIP East are pleased to present "Applying to Library School", which will take place from 6pm – 7.30pm on Tuesday, 8th December via Zoom. Come along and hear Prof. Stephen Pinfield from Sheffield University, and recent graduates from a range of university LIS departments speak. We will be covering full-time, part-time and distance learning options, and there will be plenty of opportunities to ask questions during the evening. Programme: 6.00-6.05pm : Housekeeping 6.05-6.35pm : Programme director talk 6.35-6.55pm : Q and A 6.55-7.00pm: Break 7.00-7.20pm: Student Experiences 7.20-7.30: Questions and close There is a small fee to attend the event which will in part cover costs associated with the event. Any profit made on this event will contribute to the CILIP East Small Grants Fund. CILIP members £3 + VA...

Blog: My Year as a Librarianship Student By Bethan Morgan Bethan studied our Librarianship MA Whilst being in the midst of impending deadlines and the dread of job applications, I thought it would be a good opportunity to reflect on my year as an MA Librarianship student and a student ambassador for the Information School. Although it is fair to say that certain events (aka a global pandemic) have meant that my experience has been far from normal, it has nevertheless been a highly enjoyable and rewarding year.  I have to say that I was slightly perplexed to be given a box of lego during the first session of ‘Information Organisation’ in Semester 1. However, it very quickly became entirely natural to start arranging the bricks into different categories on a table in the library (probably resulting in a few strange looks). I think this best sums up what I liked most about the course, which is the range of teaching methods and assignments within each module. For example, for ‘Informat...

Blog: My Year as a Librarianship Student By Fernando Bravo  Fernando studied Librianship in 2019/20 Hello everyone, I am writing this text for prospective students interested in the University of Sheffield Information School. I’m a mature and international student who planned to study the MA Librarianship a long time ago after working some years in University, Public and National Libraries. The time here has been challenging, the overall course is one of the best in the world and with a very good reputation between the librarian community, certified for one of the most important professional associations in the world. U.K library information association: CILIP . During the course I have had the opportunity to assist activities related to my field, for instance, a Reference Training Session in the British Library in London, a session in Manchester with new professionals , also in Sheffield I visited the headquarters of the Children Library Service and the children book award , as w...

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, 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...

Two weeks on from #CILIPconf2019 has allowed me plenty of time to reflect on what I learnt over the two whirlwind days. Firstly, if you ever have the opportunity to go… GO! It is friendly and gives you a real taste of a variety of sectors of the profession and creates an atmosphere that is sure to inspire information professionals to go out and make a difference. One of the stand out things I have taken away from the conference was its focus on equality and diversity and that librarianship is overwhelming white… 97% of information professionals in the UK identify as white which is not representative of our society which is 88% (CILIP, 2019).  In her keynote speech, Hong-Anh Nguyen (@DeweyDecibelle) used a quotation from Ed Yong: “I knew that I care about equality so I deluded myself into thinking that I wasn’t part of the problem.  I assumed that my passive concern would be enough.  Passive concern never is.” This struck a chord with me – equality is important to me –...