Information School News

PhD student Ian Widdows shares his experiences of his internship with UKRI, engaging with the government on policy-making. Like all researchers, I want my research to make a difference.  When I first considered the possibility of writing a research proposal for a PhD, I was powerfully motivated by a desire to make things better.  My research is into secondary school performance measures in England - their effectiveness, effects and an exploration of alternative approaches. In part this comes from having spent 28 years working in secondary schools. During that time I formed some strong opinions about the way that schools are judged. I feel that things really need to change and I want my research to contribute to the debate.  Over the years, I have made many contacts already working in this field, including academics, data scientists, school and school trust leaders, consultants and senior representatives of teaching unions. I have been part of numerous working parties look...

Media: How TikTok got political By Penny CS Andrews   Our PhD Researcher in information, media and communication, Penny CS Andrews, has written a piece for The Conversation.  They discuss how Tik Tok has become a platform for political messages.  You can read their article here.

Blog: My Year as an Information Management Student by Jie Dai Last year, I made my best decision to choose to study at The University of Sheffield as an MSc student in Information Management. In the year I have not only extended my academic vision and gained many technical skills, but stored a wonderful memory in Sheffield as well. Firstly, I have to say I believe that Information School is worthy of its ranking (World 2nd best). All the teaching staff in the School are experts in the academic field, using their understanding and experience, trying to illustrate complex concepts in a way that’s easy to understand. Some of them are very strict on students’ reading quantity, which means in your spare time, you need to read a lot and try to take a critical view on several topics. Others are patient in teaching trainees how to operate on programs. They go out of their way to meet the students’ requirements and make timely adjustments based on the feedback from students. I really appreciate...

Studying at the University of Sheffield Jamie is from Hong Kong and is studying MA Librarianship February 2019, I was still in my undergraduate studies. February 2020, I am halfway through the Librarianship programme at the University of Sheffield, getting ready for the next semester. Everything happened so quickly. Sometimes I feel like I am still the Linguistics student who analysed word particles, corrected people’s grammar, made the same grammar mistakes myself and got away by saying that language is descriptive, not prescriptive. But sometimes it also feels like that was a long time ago. I am now a Librarianship student. I love it and my teachers and coursemates never fail to remind me that I am one of them. Everyone in the course is passionate about libraries in one way or another. It feels magical that you get to talk about the gorgeous architecture of a library, the cuteness in the children’s section, the bold selections in materials, the cutting edge technology and th...

I just want to preface this blog post by stating that I understand that everyone’s week is different. Especially if you are a distance learner. In this blog post I am going to outline my average week with what my other commitments are along with the periods during the day with which I study. The days that I am busy regularly are Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The commitments I have beside university work is my volunteer work which is twelve hours a week, my university ambassador job, any appointments I might have and any hobbies that I may have such as reading, writing and making YouTube videos. This blog post is to give tips that I’ve learnt from both my undergraduate degree and the first term of my postgraduate about how I’ve been able to manage my time as well as being able to have time to look after myself and to relax. I hope you’re able to take something away from this and for it to help you in managing your studies. Here are a few tips that you can p...

I’ve been a Student Ambassador for the Information School this academic year, which mostly involved talking to prospective students for my course, MA Librarianship, during Open Days. As well as (hopefully) helping them make a decision about where to study, I also found this really useful for myself; I got to talk to other people working, or wanting to work, in the same profession as me, and it also gave me a chance to reflect on my own experiences so far. I also really enjoyed getting to know other Student Ambassadors from other courses in the Information School – it was good to check in with them throughout the year, particularly when the dissertation period rolled around! With fellow student ambassador, MSc Data Science student Na Li I had the chance to try out some other skills when I took on a special project for the School. I filmed myself on a day out around Sheffield where I tried out as many free activities as I could (find out what I got up to here ). This was a gre...

In April this year, I attended the 10 th World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland. as part of the Faculty of Social Sciences' Global Leadership Initiative (GLI). I represented the Information School as a Policy Analyst in a team of eight students led by Dr. Suay Ozkula (Sociological Studies) and Dr. Paul Reilly (Information School). WSIS is a United Nations (UN) multi-stakeholder global forum that promotes the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines for advancing UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With a focus on “ICTs for development”, the Summit identified global trends and new partnerships to help achieve the SDGs. In addition to attending various sessions during the week-long Summit, we worked on blogs and policy briefs on our topics of interest, which were later published on Global Policy Opinion . The team also had an opportunity to deliver our own panel during the event. ICTs in the University Environment – 7 Case Studies saw ea...

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...

PhD student Shuyang Li recently won a Student Employee of the Year Award at the University's SEOTY awards 2018. This is a national award, coordinated by the National Association of Student Employment Services (NASES). The award recognises and promotes students who successfully undertake a part-time job alongside their studies and who make an exceptional contribution to their employing organisation. Shuyang was nominated by the Student Jobshop, part of the Careers Service, as she worked part time as a student ambassador and recently as a part-time researcher at the Careers Service. Shuyang Li receiving her award from Wyn Morgan, Vice-President for Education. "To me, this award means recognition for the work that I have conducted and trust from my employing organisation", says Shuyang. "As an international student, I also feel more confident at the working environment." Find out more about the awards here. See the full results listing here.

MA Library and Information Services Management (Distance Learning) student Laura Palmer attended the LILAC Conference 2018 in Liverpool, along with other staff and students from the Information School. Here are her thoughts on the conference. LILAC 2018 from a distance learning LIS student perspective A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to attend LILAC 2018, a conference all about information literacy and librarianship, which I have wanted to attend since starting out in librarianship. In September 2016 I began studying for the MA in Library and Information Services Management by distance at the Information School, and at the same time began teaching IL in my previous job role in the HE in FE sector. My experience was that of being ‘thrown in at the deep end’; my enthusiasm for all things library and learning ‘accidentally’ landed me the role of coordinating and designing the Library’s IL provision. Since then I have been keen to learn all I can about e...

MA Librarianship student Chloe Beswick attended the LILAC Conference 2018 in Liverpool, along with other staff and students from the Information School. Here are her thoughts on the conference. I was one of the students fortunate enough to receive an Information School student bursary to attend LILAC 2018 in Liverpool. LILAC (Librarian’s Information Literacy Annual Conference) is an opportunity for librarians and information professionals to come together and discuss information literacy and explore what libraries are doing to teach and develop information literacy skills. This was the first time I had ever attended an academic conference and it was such a brilliant experience. Everyone was so enthusiastic about information literacy! As a MA student, I thought I would feel out of place, but it was soon clear that delegates came from a variety of library backgrounds. During the three days, I helped at the Information School exhibition stand which was a great opportunity to meet othe...

MA Librarianship student Terry Bassett recently attended the UKSG conference in London. Read on to hear about his experiences. In November I was lucky enough to be chosen to attend the UKSG conference and forum at the very swanky Grange Tower Bridge Hotel in London. The UKSG is a professional group of librarians, publishers and anyone in-between, who work together to promote better academic communications and collaborative research practices. Their website has details of all the work they do and some of the presentations from the events. Attending the conference and forum was a very eye-opening experience. My own background is in public libraries so although I’ve had exposure to HE in my undergraduate degree and the first few weeks of my Masters, I was still quite new to a lot of the concepts being discussed. That said at no point did I feel completely out of my depth; the sheer range of topics discussed meant everyone needed to give at least a quick introduction and that went ...

The CILIP Conference 2017 was held last week, in Manchester. This is one of the most important events for the library and information professionals across the UK, it provides a great opportunity for collaboration, debate and networking. This year the programme included interesting sessions on topics such as managing information, literacy and learning and copyright and ethics and the presentation of three keynote speakers: Dr Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, Professor Luciano Floridi, and Neil MacInnes, Strategic Lead for Libraries, Galleries and Culture at Manchester City Council. I found the sessions on Information Governance and Ethics very useful as they addressed topics that are relevant for my PhD research. Furthermore, I met some information professionals and students from different backgrounds and was really interesting to share ideas an experiences with them. One of the highlights of the conference was, without doubt, the keynote delivered by Professor Luciano Floridi: Fo...

Last week, I represented the Information School at the annual CILIP conference in Manchester. This was a huge deal for two reasons; it was my first major library conference and as a ‘southerner’, I got the chance to explore a bit more of the north. My first port of call on arrival was to man the Information School stall. This was an excellent opportunity to interact with distance learners and talk about my own experiences on the MA Librarianship course to potential students. I even got the chance to meet someone from the area that I’m moving to; networking has its advantages. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress opened up the conference with an incredible speech on the importance and diversity of the librarian profession. She reminded all of us that ‘Librarians are the original search engines’ and I plan on buying a t-shirt with that phrase asap. The fact that such a superstar librarian applauded library students showed just what an inspiration she is. Dr Konstantina Martzoukou, a senio...

The conference started off with an uplifting keynote speech by Dr. Carla Hayden, the current Librarian of Congress. One of the comments she made towards the start of her talk was that ‘the colleagues you meet now will be with you for the rest of your career’. This resonated strongly with me as the conference proved to be an opportunity to connect, and re-connect, with a number of peers I don’t often get to see. I found myself connecting with professionals from around the country, including current and former work colleagues, fellow students, and those I’ve come across ‘in the profession’, particularly through my volunteer work with CILIP. If these are the peers I will be working with for the rest of my career, then I am truly fortunate as they are all intelligent, motivational, and hard-working! During the 'Using Data and Information' seminar, Caroline Carruthers raised the interesting concept of data hoarding, saying how we have 'forgotten the value of the information wi...

Despite the impressive range of fascinating keynotes and innovative sessions on offer, this Day 1 session instantly appealed to me on first reading the CILIP 2017 programme. Having attended this session I certainly was not disappointed. Delivered by CILIP development officers Juanita Foster Jones and Jo Cornish, and with input from CILIP Assistant Director of Workforce Development Mandy Powell, the session was engaging, informative and practical, with a range of career stage appropriate advice for all participants. My only regret would be that I hadn’t attended this session at a slightly earlier point in my library course. Nevertheless, there was a wealth of advice available on a diverse range of topics and CPD opportunities, as well as several genuine and sincere offers of future help and support post-conference. The session consisted of three main group activities which involved: a brief SWOT analysis of personal skills and skills gaps  an overview of the CILIP PKSB and...

Current MA Library and Information Services Management student Billie Coxhead is cycling from London to Sheffield to raise money for Sheffield Hospitals Charity, along with her friend Gracey Power. The three day ride begins tomorrow, Wednesday 12th July. The Sheffield Princess Royal Spinal Unit looked after Billie's brother Keir after a car crash, so the funds from this trip are both a thank you to them and a help in continuing this work for others. You can read about Billie's ride and cause, as well as donate money, on her JustGiving page here .

MA Librarianship student Lucy Branford-White has been selected as a Policy Analyst to join a team of staff and students going to the G20 summit in Hamburg next month. Lucy has been selected as part of the Faculty of Social Sciences' Global Leadership Initiative, which is part of GLOSS . The 2017 G20 Hamburg summit will be the 12th G20 meeting. It is planned to be held from July 7th to 8th in Hamburg, Germany. G20 was initiated in 1999 and consists of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union (EU). Before the outbreak of global financial crisis in 2008, G20 meetings of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors were held to discuss international financial and monetary policies, reform of international financial institutions and world economic development. The first G20 Leaders' Summit wa...

Extract taken from the LSE Impact blog: Following his initial post on this topic in 2015, Wasim Ahmed has updated and expanded his rundown of the tools available to social scientists looking to analyse social media data. A number of new applications have been released in the intervening period, with the increasing complexity of certain research questions also having prompted some tools to increase their data retrieval functionalities. Although platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp have more active users, Twitter’s unique infrastructure and the near-total availability of its data have ensured its popularity among researchers remains high. You can read the full post here .

An article entitled ‘Back to School: a Student Insight into LIS Qualifications, the LIS Sector and What it can Offer to New Professionals’ by Information School student Josephine Bailey was recently published in the Legal Information Management journal.  Josephine’s article offers a student’s perspective of LIS qualifications and the current challenges for professionals. Further information on the article can be found here.