Information School News

Dr Igor Bernik is Associate Professor of Information Sciences, and Head of the Information Security Department at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Slovenia. His research fields are information systems, information security, and the growing requirement for information security awareness. Dr Bernik is visiting the Information School from 9 to 20 May 2016 and durin g his visit will deliver the following seminars and workshops: Cybersecurity in a changing workplace environment 12th May 12-1pm , RC-204 Experts emphasise that cybersecurity is an important issue in the modern world as cybercrime is increasingly targeting individual users and, through them, also threatening the economic sphere and organisational environments, which possess large amounts of valuable data. In this seminar, we outline a practice-based understanding of contemporary cybersecurity problems from the perspective of individuals and organisations. Cybersecurity...

On 21 October Dr Briony Birdi will be hosting a visit from Dr. Leanne Bowler , Associate Professor from the School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh. Dr Bowler specialises in the area of 'youth interaction with information, data and technology and will be discussing possible research collaborations with Dr Birdi and Professor Nigel Ford. Dr Bowler will also attend an offsite session with the MA Librarianship students at Sheffield Schools Library Services at Stadia Technology Park.

Dr Mette Skov, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University in Denmark will be visiting the Information School between 13 and 17 October 2014. Dr Skov will be delivering a seminar on 14 October entitled ‘Unlocking radio broadcast: user needs in sound retrieval’.  This will discuss the development of a research infrastructure to enable future radio and audio-based research.  She will present findings about the information seeking behaviour of humanities scholars dedicated to radio research and will discuss how this has informed the information architecture and interaction design of the research infrastructure.  The seminar starts at 13:00 in Information School lecture room RC-204 with refreshments beforehand in the iSpace.  All are welcome and booking is not required. Her visit is being funded by the COST Action, Multilingual and Multifaceted Interactive Information Access (MUMIA) as a short term scientific miss...

Over the last month we’ve had an exciting selection of lunch time Careers events for students in the ISchool. These included a visit from IBM with the opportunity for students to have a one-to-one with IBM staff, including former iSchool student James Ansell, and an Accenture Interview and Assessment Centre Workshop run by ISchool alumnus, now Accenture employee, Dr Claire-Marie Hanford. We’re looking forward to more events after the Easter break, including a workshop on enterprise and making ideas happen, and sessions on information careers in the health and media sectors.  

Jennifer Sigalet, (pictured, right) Campus Public Services Librarian at Okanagan College, British Columbia, Canada, visited the iSchoool as part of an information literacy study tour last week. Jennifer has been involved in some interesting initiatives, and she and her colleagues at Okanagan College received the 2011 Community and Technical College Libraries Innovation Achievement Award for the development and implementation of the CILRI (Course Integrated Library Research Instruction) programme. Jennifer joined with Dr Shahd Salha (graduate of the iSchool) and Bill Johnston (Honorary Research Fellow, Strathclyde University) in presenting a one-hour seminar on information literacy at the iSchool on 9th December, chaired by Sheila Webber .

Today 10 librarians from the University of Stockhom, Sweden, visited Sheffield University. As well as learning more about the work of the library, with a programme organised by Lyn Parker, three of the librarians participated in the Masters level class Information Literacy Research , which is led by Sheila Webber . Here Lina, Per and Andreas from Stockholm University Library are pictured together with visiting speaker Bill Johnston (Honorary Research Fellow, Strathclyde University) and students taking the Information Literacy Research class.

The Department hosts the Fifth Joint Sheffield Conference on Chemoinformatics from 13th to 15th July 2010, in the University's Octagon Centre. More details can be found here: http://cisrg.shef.ac.uk/shef2010/ The conference will showcase the research of the Department alongside presentations from the field's leading researchers from across the world.

Last week were visited by Karin de Jager and Mary Nassimbeni, from the Centre for Information Literacy / Department of Information Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa. We discussed library and information curricula and our work in information literacy. Our visitors talked about their own work in Information Literacy and libraries, including work with public libraries, school libraries and academic libraries. They met with with staff (including Sheila Webber, Sheila Corrall and Pam McKinney) and students in the Department.

From August to October we were visited by Núria Ferran Ferrer , an academic in Information and Communication Science Studies, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalunya). Núria has been involved in research projects related to cultural heritage (COINE), and open educational content (OLCOS). Her Ph.D. research is about the information behaviour of e-learning students in their academic, workplace and daily life contexts. Núria is pictured here with Sheila Webber (centre), Director of the Centre for Information Literacy Research, and (on the right) Phussadee Dokphrom, a doctoral student in the Department.

Today, the Department welcomes colleagues from across the UK and Ireland who have travelled to Sheffield for the half-yearly meeting of the Heads of Schools and Departments Committee of the British Association for Information & Library Education and Research (BAILER). Prof Sheila Corrall is Chair of the BAILER Heads Committee.

The Department of Information Studies today welcomes John Spencer, Head of Operations at The Press Association , the national news agency, who is visiting selected University of Sheffield departments on a fact-finding tour, with a view to furthering collaborative research. The Press Association relocated a significant part of its operation from London to Howden in 2000, bringing capital investment to nearly £10m in Yorkshire and Humber. The project increased the number of PA employees in Howden from 100 -500 (ftes) and together with sites in Leeds and Wetherby now employs more than 800 people in the region. John is Chair of Howdenshire Forward, a member of Humber Forum and the Press Association's representative member of the Hull and and Humber Chamber of Commerce.

Visitors this week included visiting Professor and Departmental Advisory Panel member Martin White , Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd. As well as meetings with staff members, he was checking up on some of the new facilities available in the teaching spaces he will be using later in the Semester when he provides valuable contributions to our teaching. Various staff members also met with representatives of the South East European Research Centre , an international, multidisciplinary, not-for-profit research centre jointly established by the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies, located in Thessaloniki, Greece. We already have links, including jointly supervised PhD students. Photograph: Firth Court, Sheffield University.