Information School News

MA Librarianship student, Jodie Walker , has won a fully-funded residential place to attend this year's CILIP Umbrella Conference at the University of Hertfordshire on 14-15 July. Jodie's attendance is being funded by the Yorkshire & Humberside section of the CILIP University, College & Research Group. The competition was open to both students and professionals who had not previously attended Umbrella.

Professor Corrall and Sheila Webber have given a number of presentations recently. Professor Corrall : Information Literacy: The Case for Strategic Engagement : Invited presentation to Rector, Chairmen of Scientific and Pedagogic Councils and other professors, Universidade Nova Lisboa, Lisbon, 16 June 2009 Hybrid Roles and Blended Professionals: What competencies are needed and how can they be acquired? Plenary address to SCONUL Annual Conference, Bournemouth, 10 June 2009 Exploring the Development of Information Literacy Strategies Plenary address to Network of Government Library and Information Specialists (NGLIS) Annual Conference, London, 3 June 2009 Sheila Webber: Exploring information behaviour in Second Life. Paper presented at the i3 (Information Interactions and Impact) conference held at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, 25 June 2009 Information Literacy in Second Life : Co-presented with Vicki Cormie and Denny Colledge. Workshop session at the 2009 CoFHE (Colleges

The short course on Chemoinformatics, run by the Chemoinformatics Group (Val Gillet, John Holliday and Peter Willett) together with colleagues from industry (Richard Lewis, Novartis and Andrew Leach, GlaxoSmithKline) from June 16-19, was a great success. The 24 delegates from around the UK and Europe enjoyed a very intense few days consisting of lectures, extensive practical sessions and excellent evening meals. To quote from one of the delegates: "This has to be one of the best courses I have attended"

Daniela Petrelli has won a design award to attend the 1st international workshop on Digital Object Memories . The design study, done with Ann Light (Communication & Computing Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University) and entitled 'Memory Baubles and History Tinsels', beat the competition to the prize of 750 Euros (made available for travel and accommodation). The one day workshop will be held in Barcelona in July, part of a conference on Intelligent Environments. As it happens the design is for means of storing Christmas digital memories in traditional seasonal objects so it will seem rather inappropriate in the Spanish summer sun.

The department has been ranked 1st in the Complete University guide, which is conducted in association with the Independent newspaper. Confirming the department's high ranking status, in the Times 2010 subject lists it was placed 2nd . In the Guardian newspaper, where Library and Information Management departments are mixed with media studies, Sheffield was ranked 3rd . Higher than any other University with a Library and Information Management department.

Douglas Oard from the iSchool at the University of Maryland is speaking on "Evaluating E-Discovery Search: The TREC Legal Track". Douglas Oard is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, with joint appointments in the College of Information Studies and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, and his research interests center around the use of emerging technologies to support information seeking by end users. Dr. Oard’s recent work has focused on interactive techniques for cross-language information retrieval and techniques for search and sense-making in conversational media. He serves as a track coordinator for the TREC Legal Track. Additional information is available at http://www.glue.umd.edu/~oard/. Civil litigation relies on each side making relevant evidence available to the other, a process known in the USA as “discovery” (and in the U.K. as “disclosure”).

Barbara Sen, along with PhD student Liz Brewster and former MA student Martin Coates (in conjunction with Peter Bath), attended the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL) conference in Dublin last week. Liz and Martin presented papers on consumer health information, looking at the role of librarians and the public library, while Barbara gave a workshop on reflection as a technique for improving partnership working. The theme of the conference was 'explore, engage, extend!' and with a series of empowerment workshops and informative paper sessions, this gave the opportunity to think in a cross-sector, international way about partnership working, using technology and improving personal skills. Liz wishes to thank the John Campbell Trust for providing her with a travel bursary to enable her to attend the conference.