Information School News

The Information School has achieved top positions in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 for research environment and for the impact of our research, based on the combined 4* (world-leading) and 3* (internationally excellent) categories. The results, published on 18 December 2014, show that 100% of our research environment was judged to be of world-leading quality and 100% of our research impact was judged as world-leading or internationally excellent. The School was assessed alongside 66 units from different universities across the UK who conduct research in the areas of Communication, Cultural and Media Studies and Library and Information Management. This effectively represents the merger of two distinct units of assessment from previous Research Assessment Exercises, where the School was consistently in top position amongst a much smaller set of Library and Information Management departments. Professor Val Gillet, Head of School, said "This is an excellent outco

The Information School would like to congratulate  Jess Elmore who has been awarded the 2014 Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) Student Prize for an outstanding research-b ased project. LIRG offers the Student Prize award to promote a greater awareness  among  students of the importance of research and to facilitate the dissemination of the results of outstanding projects.  The prize is awarded to a student who has completed a course leading to a first professional qualification recognised by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) in Library and Information Studies departments.   Jess' MA Librarianship dissertation was entitled  “We don’t go home. We carry on our lives: An exploration of the information literacy experiences of home educating families”.  The awarding committee believed the dissertation  "to be of an extremely high standard as well as having an original focus" which is fantastic feedback to receive. Jes

On 9th December 2014 the Centre for Information Literacy Research held a successful research methods event on the iSchool's Second Life island, Infolit iSchool . Sheila Webber, together with Marshall Dozier (University of Edinburgh), presented on Social ethical digital: issues in 3D worlds research , Evelyn McIlhinney (Glasgow Caledonian University) presented on Undertaking qualitative health research in virtual worlds , and this was followed by a discussion. This free event was attended by an international audience including the virtual ethnographer Professor Tom Boellstorff (University of California) and Professor Diane Nahl (University of Hawaii). The photo shows Sheila and Marshall presenting, in the custom-designed venue.

MSc Data Science students at the Information School took part in an industry day on Tuesday 9 December 2014, giving them insight into what it's like to work in the data science profession. The day was organised by Programme Coordinator Professor Paul Clough and Deputy Coordinator Dr Gianluca Demartini and was held at the Sheffield Methods Institute at the University of Sheffield. Ian Radmore, Big Data Specialist at IBM UK (automotive sector and big data); Ben Hollis, Intelligence Analyst in Specialist Crime Services at South Yorkshire Police; and John Curtis, Head of Information and Knowledge Management at Sheffield City Council all presented on the day and discussed their roles and experience as data science professionals.  Students took the opportunity to ask the speakers questions and to network with them during the event. The Information School would like to thank the presenters for taking part in the event.  Following the success of the day, there are plans to run a s

The Information School's recent visit to China to launch its partnership with Wuhan University's School of Information Management was a great success. Head of School Professor Val Gillet, Dr Miguel Nunes and Dr Angela Lin visited Wuhan University at the end of November 2014 where they met with  Deans and the Head of the International Office before delivering a presentation to Wuhan students.  They presented information about the Information School and its postgraduate study opportunities which students from Wuhan have the opportunity to experience  as part of the partnership established between the two universities . Wuhan University reported on the visit on their website . During their visit to China, Professor Gillet, Dr Nunes and Dr Lin also visited  Nanjing University’s School of Information Management and the School of Information Resources Management at the University of Renmin, Beijing. The University of Renmin reported on the visit on their website , and Pr

Congratulations to Dr Jorge Martins of the Information School on receiving funding for his Early Career Research Grant which was submitted to the Regional Studies Association. His project is entitled 'Drivers of industrial rejuvenation in UK and Portugal old industrial regions'.  It will investigate which manifestations of industry rejuvenation can be observed and conceptualised in firms embedded in South Yorkshire and the North of Portugal, with a particular focus on understanding how organisational capital and regional network capital support firms' trajectories.    Jorge's project is one of only 5 projects to receive funding out of a total of 50 submissions in what was a high-quality field.     

Professor Val Gillet, Head of School at the Information School, will be in Bari from 8 to 10 December 2014 at the kick off meeting for an EU-IAPP (Industry Academia Partnerships and Pathways) project which will explore a "Diagnostic and Drug Discovery Initiative for Alzheimer’s Disease". The University of Sheffield is represented in this project by Professor Gillet and by Professor Beining Chen, Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the University's Department of Chemistry.  Professor Chen is the project lead and the orher project partners are are Eli Lilly of Bari SME Biofordrug, Lisbon Univeristy and Canadian company Amorfit. The scheme is part of the Marie Curie FP7 scheme.  It includes a considerable amount of exchange of existing researchers (both PhD and more established).  It will also fund 5 post-doctoral researchers, two of which will come to the University of Sheffield.  One will be based in the Information School and one in the Department of Chemistry.

Professor Paul Clough from the Information School is giving an invited talk at the Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation (FIRE) 2014 conference in Bangalore, India, between 5 and 7 December .  His talk is entitled "Examining the Limits of Crowdsourcing for Relevance Assessment "  and is based on work which he has undertaken with the UK National Archives. Evaluation is instrumental in the development and management of effective information retrieval systems and ensuring high levels of user satisfaction. Using crowdsourcing as part of this process has been shown to be viable. What is less well understood are the limits of crowdsourcing for evaluation, particularly for domain specific search.  Professor Clough will present results comparing relevance assessments gathered using crowdsourcing with those gathered from a domain expert for evaluating different search engines in a large government archive. While crowdsourced judgments rank the tested search engines in

On Tuesday 9 December 2014 Professor John Sandars from the Academic Unit of Medical Education at the University of Sheffield will deliver a seminar at the Information School. The seminar, entitled 'self-regulated learning - an insight into helping to learn',  will explore the importance of self-regulated learning for effective learning and how this process can be identified to help learners to become more effective learners. The approaches include micro-analysis and calibration workbooks. The potential of collaboration to further this research focus will be explored. All are welcome to attend the seminar and booking is not required.  It will take place at 13:00 in Lecture Room RC204 in the Information School, with refreshments provided beforehand at 12:30 in the iSpace. 

On Wednesday 3 December Dr Stephen Pinfield will present the keynote speech at the Academic and National Library Training Co-operative seminar in Dublin. His keynote is entitled 'Research Data Management in Practice: Roles and Skills for Libraries'.  The speech will refer to  the growing body of work produced by the University of Sheffield on research data management, including that by Andrew Cox, Eddy Verbaan, Jen Smith, Barbara Sen and Stephen himself.