Information School News

The next meeting of the Departmental photography group (PARDIS) is in the Lecture Room (Rm 204, Regent Court) at 4-5pm on Tuesday 6th March. The activity for this meeting will be for each person to present a panel/series of 6-9 of their own photographs/images on a particular topic or theme. All DIS staff and students welcome, contact Dr Peter Bath. The next meeting of the Book Group for staff and research students is at on 19th March at 5.30pm in the Departmental common room, discussing Q and A by Vikas Swarup. The following session will be on 16th April, discussing Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

Last week Sheila Webber attended a meeting of the Management and Marketing Section of IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions). This was held at the University of Geneva Library. Dr Barry Eaglestone is currently visiting City College, Thessaloniki, as part of his study leave.

The 12th International Symposium for Health Information Management Research (ISHIMR 2007) is hosted by the University of Sheffield from 18th to 20th July 2007 . This year’s theme is From Research to Development to Implementation: Challenges in Health Informatics and Health Information Management . ” Paper submissions from those in the international healthcare community are welcome, particularly from those with teaching/ research responsibilities in health information management and health informatics, with clinical responsibilities, and those involved in provision of information and knowledge services. Papers may be submitted reporting on research in any area of health information management or health informatics. For more information, please visit the ISHIMR website at: http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/ishimr07/index.html Peter Bath: Organising Committee Co-Chair; Programme Committee Co-Chair Kendra Albright: Organising Committee Co-Chair Tony Norris: Programme Committee Co-Chair

Dr Louise Brereton from the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sheffield will give a research seminar next Tuesday, 27th February, at 2pm in room 204, Regent Court: The needs and responses of family carers post stroke . Family carers are essential to a good post stroke outcome (Intercollegiate Stroke Working Party, 2004) but little is known about the needs of these carers who suddenly adopt their role. This presentation outlines the methodology and findings of a doctoral study, one of the few longitudinal studies that have examined carers' needs and responses post stroke. Findings will make clear reference to carers' changing information needs and highlight how these relate to other needs.

Last week staff activities included Barbara Sen running a session on Marketing ourselves at the annual conference of the Health Sciences Libraries Group (HSLG) of the Library Association of Ireland, in Athlone, Ireland, on 16th February. Earlier in the week Professor Sheila Corrall attended as a member of the JISC Learning & Teaching Committee meeting in London. This part of JISC "is responsible for supporting the learning and teaching community by helping institutions to promote innovation in the use of ICT to benefit learning and teaching, research and the management of institutions." Dr Val Gillet attended a committee meeting of the Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society.

Dr Kendra Albright is returning this week from a visit to Africa which included time at Makerere University, Uganda, discussing a joint project. Dr Albright and Dr Elisam Magara (Makerere University) have just been awarded a British Academy grant for their project Information vaccine: development of an HIV/AIDS information curriculum in Uganda. Last week Dr Albright was a also a participant at the African Information Ethics Conference:Ethical Challenges in the Information Age which took place in Pretoria, South Africa.

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.

Last week was the start of our Spring Semester, so it was a busy time for all our staff and students. A new module starting this year is the Inquiry in Information Management module which is taken by our 1st year BSc Information Management students as part of their core curriculum. This is gaining extra support from being one of our Departmental CILASS (Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences) projects (scroll down the page to see information about this particular project).

Today we welcomed Barbara Sen , formerly Senior Lecturer in Information Library Management at Liverpool John Moores University, as a new lecturer in the Department. We will profile her more fully in a future blog entry.

Dr Thomas Jackson, University of Loughborough, will be giving a research seminar Can seminar and computer-based training improve the effectiveness of email communication within the workplace , at 12 noon on Wednesday 7th February 2007, Room 204, Regent Court (Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield). "Email communication has become an integral part of the communication structure within organisations. However, we are far from efficient in using this organisational communication and knowledge sharing tool. We aim to improve workplace communications by improving the way email is used within the workplace. We undertake extensive two-phase research to demonstrate the need to give employees training regarding email communication, and conduct both seminar-based training and computer-based training. Findings indicate that email training can lead to significant improvements in the way that employees use email within the workplace with computer-based training (or e-learni