Information School News

Bringing together contributions from the fields of sociology, media and cultural studies, arts, politics, science and technology studies, political communication theory and popular culture studies, this volume engages both with theoretical debates and detailed empirical studies, showcasing how the public sphere is transformed by digital media, and in turn how this digital public sphere shapes and is shaped by debates surrounding crisis, conflict, migration and culture. Case studies from Bulgaria, Nigeria, China, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, UK, Mexico and India are discussed in detail. Our research associate Dr Elisa Serafinelli co-edited this book, which can be found here: https://www.springer.com/de/bo ok/9781137504555 https://www.palgrave.com/de/bo ok/9781137504555 Reviews:  all direct requests for review copies and will ensure that interested publications receive a copy (either electronic access or a print review copy, depending on their preference). If a review venue contac...

Last week Dr Chris Foster was an invited presenter at the workshop " Trade and the digital economy " in Bangkok, Thailand, organised by UN agencies UNESCAP/UNCTAD and the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) He presented a paper entitled "Value chains and the challenges of connectivity" which explores the growth on digital connectivity in the global South, and how this might be changing firm relationships. This presentation particularly drew on research examining the impacts of digital technologies in small and medium enterprise in East Africa. This workshop highlights a growing interest on the role of digital technologies to transforming trade. In the ASEAN region, there is growing use of digital ICT and e-commerce within firms, including many smaller firms. But, it is not yet clear the best directions for policy makers and governments to support these innovations to drive wider economic growth. This workshop was a first step to exploring such questions.

Search Solutions is the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group's annual event focused on practitioner issues in the arena of search and information retrieval. The tutorials for this year's event took place on Tuesday 29th November. Several experts from across the field delivered practical training courses on issues in information retrieval, and our academic Professor Paul Clough presented a session in the afternoon along with Martin White of Intranet Focus Ltd. Their session was entitled 'Enterprise search evaluation - good practice in action', and offered attendees the chance to learn about enhancing search evaluation in an enterprise context. You can read more details about Paul and Martin's session here , and the programme of the whole day here .

Wasim Ahmed , PhD researcher, at the Information School, recently delivered a workshop titled “insights into social media” at Media City, Salford, which is the home to the BBC and ITV. The workshop was a part of the Creative Entrepreneur event, which aims to foster collaboration between academia and industry, and which was attended by over 500 delegates. The workshop focused on how it is possible to gather customer insights from social media using Social Network Analysis (SNA), and data analytics. The workshop was very well attended with delegates from academia, the media, and industry Wasim’s talk also touched on some of the ethical challenges of social media data, and why it is important for academics and those within industry to respect the privacy of social media users. The event was organised by Salford Business School , at the University of Salford, Manchester.

It is always exciting to be invited to speak at a conference, especially when it is on a continent you have never visited! This month I was fortunate enough to have the chance to talk at the  Stellenbosch University 14th Annual Library Symposium  in South Africa.  Stellenbosch is a very beautiful town in the hills above Cape Town, famous for its vineyards. The programme of talks was amazingly good and stimulating. It was framed around OCLC’s report  Shaping the academic library of the future: adapt, empower, partner, engage . You can see the programme and download slides here:  http://conferences.sun.ac.za/ index.php/sulis_symp14/index/ pages/view/prog   This includes a recorded video link to a fascinating presentation by Lorcan Dempsey, from OCLC.  I was particularly impressed by the way that the first and last keynotes were drawn from beyond the library sector to discuss how we can respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world....

Information and the body The study of information behaviour [1] has traditionally focussed on documentary sources of information and to some degree information that is shared through interaction. Such an emphasis reflects the origins of the whole field  in the study of information behaviours of users of libraries and other institutions that provide access to encoded forms of knowledge. Yet the centrality of embodied experience in all aspects of human life makes the relative neglect of the body in information behaviour studies surprising and potentially problematic, as a number of authors have suggested (Cox, Griffin and Hartel, in press; Lueg 2014, 2015; Lloyd 2009,2010,2014; Olsson, 2010, 2016). This special issue of Library Trends on “Information and the Body” seeks to bring together researchers interested in embodied information, including how we receive information through the senses and the way the body is used as a sign that can be interpreted by others. Several in...

This week, the second edition of the University's Engaged Learning book, 'Facing Outwards', was made available, and it features a piece by our own lecturer Dr Briony Birdi entitled 'The problems of scale: five reasons why small is beautiful, too'. Led by Professor Brendan Stone of the School of English, the publication follows on from a 2015 book  and contains articles from people across the University, as well as external contributors, relcting on the ideas of 'engaged learning'. Themes in the book include social accountability in universities and researching inequality and the book also shows case studies of particular new projects. A PDF of the book can be downloaded here .