Information School News

  A new UK-led project will help tell the stories of British and other immigrant sailors in the American Civil War in ways never before possible. The “ Civil War Bluejackets ” Project —so named because of the distinctive uniform worn by U.S. Civil War sailors—is a collaboration between historians at the Northumbria University and information and data scientists at t he University of Sh effield and the University of Koblenz-Landau . Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council , the project launches on 6 September 2022 with a call for citizen volunteers to help transcribe tens of thousands of Civil War “Muster Rolls”, documents that were carried on board U.S. ships and which capture the personal details of the c .118,000 men who fought on water for the Union between 1861 and 1865. The project team are making use of the online Zooniverse platform to share tens of thousands of these Muster Rolls, and are asking the public to help in revealing their contents. Princi...

Last month University of Sheffield’s Information School was privileged to be the first University in the UK to host the prestigious iConference. Held at the end of March in Sheffield, in collaboration with Northumbria University, the iConference was attended by over 400 delegates from around the world and across the library and information field. This year’s theme focused on ‘Transforming Digital Worlds’ with keynote sessions from eminent figures in the information world including: Dr Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC Research), Dr Susan Dumais, (Microsoft Research) and Professor Luciano Floridi, (Oxford Internet Institute). “The keynotes were real highlights of the iConference”, says Professor Gillet, Conference Chair and Professor of Chemoinformatics at the Information School. “We had three well-known figures in the field summarising their work and giving their perspectives on different aspects of the information field. The iSchools organisation often talks about the triad of in...

We invite contributions for iConference 2018, which will take place March 25-28, 2018 at the University of Sheffield. The iConference is presented by the iSchools organisation, a worldwide consortium of information schools dedicated to advancing the information field, and preparing students to meet the information challenges of the 21st Century. Affiliation with the iSchools is not a prerequisite of participation; and we encourage all information scholars and practitioners to take part in this, the thirteenth iSchools conference and the first to be held in the UK. The theme is “Transforming Digital Worlds” and the aim is to bring together thinkers and leaders from academia, industry and not-for-profit organisations, to discuss emerging challenges and potential solutions for information and data management in our rapidly changing world. The conference is being jointly organised by the iSchools at the University of Sheffield and Northumbria University and will include not only peer-re...

Last week, members of the Information School attended the 2017 iConference in Wuhan, China. One of our PhD students, Wasim Ahmed, gives his highlights below, along with some of his photos from the trip. --- My highlights from my trip included me presenting a poster on my pilot study from my PhD, and which received good interest from delegates, particularly concerning the methodology that was used. A number of very useful connections were made from across the world, and there was a lot of interest in the 2018 edition of the iConference which will take place in Sheffield  hosted in collaboration with Northumbria University.   I also enjoyed visiting the Yellow Crane Tower, Hubei Provincial Museum, the East Lake, Wuhan, and the Yangtze River. Wuhan is a beautiful city, and the people are very friendly. I read online that the people in Wuhan are unusually nice, and I have to say that this is very true and I felt very welcome in the city. I...