Information School News

The Call for papers has recently appeared for the 6th Joint Sheffield Conference on Chemoinformatics .  This major international meeting, which is again being co-sponsored by the Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society and by  the Chemical Structure Association Trust, will be held at The Edge, University of Sheffield, 22nd-24th July 2013.

Third year PhD student Angharad Roberts recently gave a presentation about her research at the 32nd Charleston Conference on Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. The conference ran from 7-10 November and Angharad gave her presentation, 'Exploring Concepts of "Collection" in the Digital World' , on Saturday 10 November.

Dr Peter Bath has been appointed Deputy Chair of the University Research Ethics Committee (UREC) . Peter is currently the Senate representative for the Faculty of Social Sciences and has been on the UREC since 2007. The UREC reports to Senate and its tasks include promoting an awareness and understanding of research ethical issues throughout the University, advising on any ethical matters in research within the University. One of Peter's early roles as Deputy Chair is to look into the feasibility of an online system for the research ethics application process.

Our Centre for Information Literacy Research hosted a meeting in the virtual world, Second Life (SL), on 13th November. Clara O'Shea (Edinburgh University) led a presentation and discussion on the Manifesto for Teaching Online ( http://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/ ). The Manifesto  is a series of brief statements that attempt to capture what is generative and productive about online teaching and course design. It was produced by Jen Ross, Clara O’Shea, Sian Bayne and Hamish Macleod; members of the programme team on the MSc in E-learning at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Jen and Hamish were also present in SL to join in the discussion with the international group of participants who assembled for the event.

Jennifer Sigalet, (pictured, right) Campus Public Services Librarian at Okanagan College, British Columbia, Canada, visited the iSchoool as part of an information literacy study tour last week. Jennifer has been involved in some interesting initiatives, and she and her colleagues at Okanagan College received the 2011 Community and Technical College Libraries Innovation Achievement Award for the development and implementation of the CILRI (Course Integrated Library Research Instruction) programme. Jennifer joined with Dr Shahd Salha (graduate of the iSchool) and Bill Johnston (Honorary Research Fellow, Strathclyde University) in presenting a one-hour seminar on information literacy at the iSchool on 9th December, chaired by Sheila Webber .

Dr Stephen Pinfield will be speaking at the Research Libraries UK Conference 2012 , at St James' Park, Newcastle. The conference runs from Wed 14 to Fri 16 November , and Stephen will be speaking on Thu 15 November, on "Skills for the Library and Information Professional of the Future".

The Information School's Dr Farida Vis, along with two colleagues from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation, is featured in the Guardian Datablog today, discussing " How many fake Sandy pictures were really shared on social media? " The article includes a gallery of the 50 most tweeted Sandy images , both real and fake .

The iSchool congratulates Dr Iain Kewley, a student on the MSc in Health Informatics programme and Chief Clinical Information Officer for the Department of Health on the Isle of Man, on his recent appointment to the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Iain's award is in recognition of his work with St John Ambulance in the Isle of Man. Iain has been appointed as Knight Commander in the Order of St John. Further details about Iain's award can be found at: https://www.sja.org.uk/sja/counties/isle-of-man/latest-news/historic-change.aspx and at: http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/60119/notices/1574655/sort=newest Well done, Iain!

Despite the threat of superstorm Sandy , Dr Andrew Cox travelled to Baltimore at the end of October, to participate in the 75th Annual Meeting of ASIS&T , where he participated in a panel on social media and presented a paper for the Social Informatics symposium.

Two representatives of the School spoke at Internet Research 13 at the University of Salford, 18-21 October. Dr Andrew Cox participated in a panel discussion on "Weaving handicrafts into the Web: crafting cultures and online communities", while Dr Farida Vis presented on "What do data visualisations want?".

Dr Farida Vis is an invited speaker at The ‘Big Data’ Debate at The British Academy for the humanities and social sciences. Part of the 2012 ESRC Festival of Social Science, the debate will feature speakers discussing such topics as: What opportunities does 'Big Data' offer to the social sciences? What challenges are there, what skills, training and resources are needed? What are the wider implications for public scrutiny and debate?  The debate is chaired by Guardian commentator and former BBC Social Affairs Editor Polly Toynbee, and takes place on Monday 5th November.

Peter Willett attended the Internet Librarian International 2012 conference in Olympia, where he received the Jason Farradane Award on behalf of the School's Chemoinformatics Research Group (Val Gillet, John Holliday and Peter Willett). Next week he will be visiting the USA to give talks on "Introduction to chemoinformatics" at Fordham University and "Fusing database rankings in similarity-based virtual screening" at Rutgers University.