Information School News

On the 28th of November I had the opportunity to attend the CILIP briefing on ‘Skills for the future academic library’ through a bursary from the Information School and CILIP. The event saw library practitioners and researchers present their findings and experiences of academic libraries, with a focus on what skills and developments they foresaw as particularly important for the future. The day began with Stephen Pinfield’s presentation on the 2017 SCONUL report on ​ ‘ Mapping the Future of Academic Libraries ’ ​ by Stephen Pinfield, Andrew Cox and Sophie Rutter. This presentation introduced the concept of expanding our understanding of skills beyond traditional hard and soft skills, adding ethics and values, mindsets, and contextual knowledge as useful types of skills for LIS professionals to  consider. Values and mindsets As the professional landscape changes, LIS professionals require not only different skills, but changes in mindsets. Regina Everitt from the Unive...

CILIP’s Library and Information Research Group awards a student prize each year for an outstanding research-based project on any topic in the general area of library and information science (LIS). Submissions for the prize are typically a postgraduate dissertation or a final year undergraduate project, with each LIS department being allowed to nominate one piece of student work. The Information School’s nomination for this year’s prize was the MSc dissertation by Lynsey Taylor (nee Shenton), entitled “Perceptions of journal prestige in library and information science: a comparative analysis”. Her study involved a survey of academics in UK LIS departments to identify the journals that they thought were most valuable for their teaching and research activities. A comparison of the results with those of an analogous survey conducted previously in the USA showed some significant differences between the UK and USA perceptions of value; and an analysis of submissions to the Research ...