Information School News

Professor of Information Services Management Stephen Pinfield has just published a new book,  Achieving Global Open Access - The Need for Scientific, Epistemic and Participatory Openness. The book explores some of the key conditions that are necessary to deliver global Open Access (OA) that is effective and equitable. It is aimed at academics and students engaged in the fields of Library and Information Science, OA or publishing. It can be read online here , and a print version will be published in the coming weeks.

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...

Professor Stephen Pinfield, Dr Simon Wakeling and Professor Peter Willet have had a blog published on the major global publisher blog 'Scholarly Kitchen', summaring a recent article published from the Open-Access Mega-Journals project . You can read the blog post here. The blog discusses article commenting and community reviewing in the context of OAMJs. Scholarly Kitchen, established by the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), is a moderated and independent blog helping to fulfil SSP's mission to 'advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking.'

This year I was fortunate enough to receive an Information School bursary to attend LILAC 2019, the information literacy conference, which was held at the University of Nottingham from the 24th to 26th April. As a distance learneing student who is also the sole information professional at a small academic museum library, work can be a bit insular, so I applied for the bursary to connect with the wider information community and learn more about information literacy. I was excited by the rich programme of sessions and the promise of a dynamic set of keynote speakers. I had also heard from previous colleagues how great the conference is for networking and sharing ideas in friendly environment so I was thrilled when I found out I was on my way to LILAC19. I was slightly nervous to attend my first library conference but I needn’t have worried. From the moment I stepped off of the tram at the University of Nottingham, concerned about finding my way to the conference venue, fellow attende...

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 .

The ‘Mapping the future of academic libraries’ report commissioned by SCONUL was published on 8 December following a conference in London to discuss its findings. The report was produced by a team from the School: Stephen Pinfield, Andrew Cox and Sophie Rutter. Read the report here The report identifies a complex set of interrelated trends impacting on libraries the significance of which is often in the way they combine. In particular, it identifies five nexuses of trends bringing transformational change: 1. ‘Datafied’ scholarship: research increasingly underpinned by large datasets and digital artefacts, involving open, networked, algorithmically-driven systems 2. Connected learning: new pedagogies supported by technology-enabled flexible learning 3. Service-oriented libraries: libraries shifting their strategic emphasis from collections to services 4. Blurred identities: boundaries between professional groups and services b...

My name is Emily Nunn and I am just starting my third year as a PhD student in the Information School. Over the summer, I completed a one-month placement at the British Library, conducting a piece of research for them on open access to scholarly research outside academia. Financial support for the placement was part of my PhD funding from the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH), who provide great opportunities for research students to undertake placements with external organisations. I found the placement through social media (which is why I would recommend that PhD students give Twitter a try). Torsten Reimer, the Head of Research Services at the British Library, contacted me after seeing information about my doctoral research, and we worked out a placement that would be beneficial to both of us. The British Library are currently working on exciting new projects to develop their support for open access. As a national library, they have a responsibility to pro...