Information School News

 This year Microsoft invited the iSchools to send a representative to their annual conference for university researchers (mostly in computer science), the Faculty summit, at their HQ at Redmond nr Seattle, WA. Andrew Cox drew the lucky straw, because there was a strong social media strand to the event this year. There were two full days of talks on latest developments including on social media and crowdsourcing, see http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/facultysummit2012-071612.aspx There was also a “Future of social experiences” Social media workshop attended by most of the iSchool delegates.

Miguel Nunes, as a panel member on behalf of the University of East London (UEL) , took part in two different Quality Assurance (QA) events at the Financial Training & Management Services (FTMS) College , Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. These events   held on 18th and 19th June 2012 included the Validation of a new programme (BSc (Hons) Computer Networks) and the Collaborative Review  of the partnership between UEL and FTMS that involves 3 established undergraduate programmes and 2 master programmes.

Miguel Nunes visited the Faculty of Information Management of the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in Shah Alam, Malaysia, on the 20th of June 2012 invited by Professor Sohaimi Zakaria.  During the visit, Miguel gave a seminar on "Research Issues in the Study of Knowledge Management in Organisations: moving away from obsolete dichotomies".  The interaction with both staff and students was very rich and rewarding and laid the seed for the creation of more closer academic links between UiTM and Sheffield in the future.

Prof Jianfang Wang from the Department of Information Analysis, National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences, visited our School on the 29th June 2012.  Prof Wang also gave a research seminar on “Tailored Bibliometrics Analysis: in support of evidence-based S&T policy decision making”.  This talk aimed at  explaining how evidence-based S&T policy decision-making in China uses evidence from scientific output analysed through bibliometrics.  Prof Wang illustrated how to take advantage of bibliometric analysis to get reasonable evidence on current trends and patterns of current research and publication. This talk focused on professional and research practice of the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences.