Information School News

Peter Bath participated in a workshop on 'The Changing Data Landscape' at a conference for final year PhD students organised by the White Rose Doctoral Social Science Training Centre and the Economic and Social Research council (ESRC) and hosted by the University of Sheffield. Peter discussed his experience of using administrative data sets for research, harmonising data and record and data linkage. Also speaking in the workshop were Richard Rowe (Psychology) and Aki Tsuchiya (Economics / ScHARR); this led to a discussion on the opportunities and challenges of using existing data sources for research. The conference was held at Cutler's Hall, Sheffield on 24th April 2013. Further details of the conference can be found at the conference web-site .

The school hosted a Question Time style panel discussion on the theme "21st Century Challenges: What contribution for Information Science?" as part of our series of events marking our 50th anniversary. Panel members included Professors Peter Willett, Elaine Toms and Peter Bath and Professors Emeritus Tom Wilson and Bob Usherwood.  Questions touched on how information professionals could contribute to critiquing, resisting and building credible alternatives to the Government's agenda of cuts and privatisation; the nature of the LIS academic discipline in 20 years' time; and whether academia blazes the trail or analyses the results of information innovation. Jo Bates chaired the discussion which could have gone on significantly longer than we had time for!

Laura Williams, graduate of our MA Librarianship programme, has won the SLA Europe Early Career Conference Awards 2013 .  Laura, along with three other winners, will attend the SLA Conference & INFO-EXPO in San Diego in June. Laura is currently working in the media library at ITV as a Media Logistics Co-ordinator responsible for delivering programme content on tape across the organisation for broadcast.

CILIP's MmIT group conference is in Sheffield today... #mmit2013 Several iSchool staff and students have been involved in its organisation... particularly Jen Smith, and current/prospective student helpers: Ben, Despina, Emily, Janine, Penny and Taghreed. 9:30 - registration and morning coffee - Richard Roberts Foyer 10:00 – Introduction and welcome – Chris Sexton, University of Sheffield, Leo Appleton, MmIT - Richard Roberts Auditorium 10:15 -11:00 – Keynote presentation by Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services “Searching in the cloud” - Richard Roberts Auditorium 11:00 -11.50 – Parallel workshops sessions 1 ·         Gurdish Sandu & Adjoa Boateng (University of East London) “The UEL Library: Entering the Cloud” - Room A84 ·         Lise Robinson (OCLC) “Something good is going to happen” : an overview of developing a cloud based solution” - Room A85 ·    ...

Sheila Webber was active at the LILAC conference in Manchester this week. She presented a workshop and a poster on the project #infolitpro: Developing profiles of the information literacy professional , an IFLA Information Literacy Section initiative that she is leading. She also presented a paper with some initial findings from the AHRC-funded Deep Critical Information Behaviour project: Collaborating for deep critical information behaviour (coauthors Nigel Ford, Mary Crowder, Andrew Madden). Current MA Librarianship student Roisin Cassidy also attended the conference, as one of the winners of a sponsored student place.

Two iSchool staff are speaking at the Research Libraries UK AGM and members meeting on 22nd March: Dr Stephen Pinfield talks about Research data management and libraries: current activities and future priorities and Dr Andrew Cox on RDMRose: Taught and CPD learning materials about Research Data Management Tailored for Information Professionals http://www.rluk.ac.uk/content/rluk-agm-and-members-meeting-2013

As part of his recent visit to India , Jonathan Foster gave an interview to CIOL, in which he discussed the characteristics of a digital economy. You can read the full article at CIOL .