Information School News

James Wallace achieved runner-up in the poster section of the 2013 Northern England Postgraduate Chemistry Competition organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry and held in York. James is a PhD student in the Chemoinformatics Research Group and his poster is entitled: A novel approach to De Novo design utilising Reaction Networks.

Taking place today 25th July 2013, iFutures is a one-day conference run by and for PhD researchers in the information science community. It has been organised by the Information School at the University of Sheffield to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the University’s Information Studies department. Based on the theme of "The Next 50 years," our aim has been to create an event for future information science researchers and practitioners to explore the potential impact of our research, and determine how we can help shape the future of our discipline, both in academia and beyond. We hope that the conference will provide a valuable opportunity for students to present innovative and forward-thinking research to their peers in a non-judgmental and supportive environment. Best Paper and Best Pecha Kucha prizes will be awarded. Keynote speakers: Diane H. Sonnenwald is Professor, Chair of Information & Library Studies at the School of Information

The Sheffield conference on Chemoinformatics ( cisrg.shef.ac.uk/shef2013 ) is being held at The Edge and is being run by Val Gillet, John Holliday and Peter Willett on behalf of the Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society and the Chemical Structure Association Trust.  The conference has brought together over 140 delegates from industry and academia from across the globe to discuss the latest techniques in computer-aided drug discovery.  With over 75 oral and poster presentations and an exhibition from leading software companies, it has been a very busy but enjoyable three days.

Congratulations to Paul Tovell (MA Librarianship 2004/5) as the winner of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) IFLA First Timer Award. The prize, awarded to a CILIP member who has made a positive contribution to the sector, helps fund attendance at the 79th World Library and Information Congress in Singapore on 17 – 23 August 2013. Paul is Library Development Officer: East Staffordshire for the Staffordshire Library and Information Service.

There are presentations from iSchool staff and students at the 10th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services this week. - Partial Findings from a Case Study Exploring the Strategic Orientations Adopted by a Public Library Service in Relation to their Performance and Success (Barbara Sen, University of Sheffield) - Total Quality Management Applications in the Saudi University Libraries (Faisal Altamimi (University of Sheffield), Sheila Corrall (University of Pittsburgh), Barbara Sen (University of Sheffield), Peter Willett (University of Sheffield) - Evaluating the Intellectual Assets in the Scholarship and Collections Directorate at the British Library (Alice Schofield, University of Sheffield)

Last week on the 2nd day of CILIP's annual Umbrella conference, Andrew Cox and Barbara Sen presented on Research data management for you . One of our successful PhD students, Eva Hornung, also presented in the same session (which focused on Future Skills and Future Roles ).

Tomorrow Paul Clough is giving a talk on " Challenges in providing multilingual information access" at the UK ISKO conference in London. Stephen Pinfield also spoke today at the Europe PubMed Central funders' meeting at the Wellcome Trust, London.

Sheila Webber is presenting at CILIP's Umbrella conference in Manchester, UK, tomorrow. She will be giving a talk Helping citizens develop their own information literacy curriculum for lifelong learning (available at http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/umbrella-2013 ) co-presented with Bill Johnston, Honorary Research Fellow at Strathclyde University.