Information School News

Congratulations to Peter Stordy . Peter, University Teacher and DIS Learning & Teaching Advocate, is among a small group of only 5 university staff who have been chosen this year to receive a Senate Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching in the Rising Stars category. This award recognises excellence in teaching and/or learner support demonstrated by staff who have been involved in university teaching and/or learner support for a period of less than six years.

Sheila Webber presented at the Special Interest Group Phenomenography conference , held in Kristianstad, Sweden on 22-24 May. The presentation was Variation theory as a basis for designing a module on teaching information literacy and was coauthored with Stuart Boon and Bill Johnston from Strathclyde University. One of Sheila's research students, Eva Hornung , was also able to participate in the conference. The presentation is on Slideshare here .

We congratulate Maryam Nazari , one of our doctoral students, who is investigating spatial information literacy. She is this year's recipient of the John Campbell Trust Scholarship award , administered by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, to support work on her PhD.

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.

Sheila Webber is in Pamplona, Spain, give an invited talk "What does Information Literacy mean? Some examples from different disciplines" at the Las VI Jornadas CRAI . She was invited by Rocio Serrano-Vicente (pictured) who graduated from our MA Librarianship programme and is one of the organisers. Rocio is now one of the deputies in the Science library at the University of Navarra.

Jesus Lau , PhD graduate of the Department, is the president-elect of the Mexican Library Association and has joined the Governing Board of IFLA. Jesus graduated from the Department of Information Studies in 1988. His thesis was entitled "A study of selected social factors influencing information development in low, middle, and highly developed countries : an assessment for the period 1960-1977."

On Saturday 10 May, Prof Sheila Corrall travelled to London to take part in the second annual SLA Europe Dissertation Award event, celebrating the success of recent MA Librarianship graduate, Clare Sinclair , who won one of three prizes awarded this year. Clare’s dissertation was a case study of Knowledge Management in Government, based on the Department for Work and Pensions, and the expertise gained through this project helped her to get her current job as Knowledge Management Projects Officer at the Royal Institute of British Architects. SLA Europe Board Members attending the event included Penny Leach (President) from Goldman Sachs International and Marie-Madeleine Salmon, from Publicis Conseil, who travelled from Paris to join the celebrations. More info about SLA Europe’s student awards can be found at http://www.sla-europe.org/awards/students/students_a.html .

Professor Nigel Ford has just published a new book. Ford, N. (2008) Web-Based Learning through Educational Informatics: Information Science Meets Educational Computing . IGI Global. ISBN: 978-1-59904-741-6. 406 pages. "The book presents developments in “educational informatics”, which represents the fusion of key concepts from library/information science, education and computing. The book seeks to offer a rigorous definition of educational informatics (differentiating it, for example, from educational technology by highlighting library/information aspects), and goes on to develop a new integrated conceptual framework for this field." Foe full details (table of contents, exerpts, etc.) please see: http://igi-global.com/books/details.asp?id=7643

Sheila Webber gave presentations last week at the ESCalate conference, held at Stirling University (on Inquiry Based Learning in a first year undergraduate class ) and at the CLIASS Staf-Student Symposium, held here in Sheffield in the Information Commons (on Inquiring in Second Life ). In the latter talk she was joined by Masters student Tim Zijlstra in real life, and by St Andrews University librarian Vicki Cormie in Second Life. Sheila was also quoted recently in a Guardian feature discussing students' use of information ( http://education.guardian.co.uk/librariesunleashed/story/0,,2274796,00.html ), with her Second Life avatar referred to as a "blue haired babe"!