Information School News

Dr Peter Stordy of the Information School is a co-investigator on a successful grant led by Professor Simon Tait in the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering. The project is entitled "Fostering evidence led research in the Water Industry - establishing a foundation that connects" and will involve the development of an open multimedia learning and knowledge resource for the water industry. The project is funded by UK Water Industry Research.

The Information School has won the award for Best Student Staff Committee at the Student Union's 2015 Academic Awards. The award recognised the Information School Student Staff Committee's success in: Making a difference to students in the department Ensuring that students' views are communicated the staff and that students are considered when decisions are made Achieving positive change and making improvements for students in the School Congratulations to all involved in the Student Staff Committee.  Pictured below with their award are Dr Peter Stordy, Committee Coordinator, and current undergraduate students Alaa Al Sairafi and Bent Bunge.

Two graduates from our MA Librarianship programme are featured on the "23 Librarians" blog this month. They talk about their current jobs and how they got there: Anneli Sarkanen (Senior Information Officer (Law), Field Fisher Waterhouse, London) https://23librariansengland.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/senior-information-officer-law-field-fisher-waterhouse-london/ Karen Dolman (Information Advisor, Health and Wellbeing Faculty, Sheffield Hallam University) https://23librariansengland.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/karen-dolman-information-advisor-health-wellbeing-faculty-sheffield-hallam-university/

On 20 May 2015 Dr Gianluca Demartini of the Information School will present a paper on 'The Dynamics of Micro-Task Crowdsourcing' at the 24th World Wide Web Conference in Florence, Italy. Micro-task crowdsourcing is a modern technique that allows outsourcing of simple data collection tasks to a crowd of individuals online. Tasks such as image annotation, document summarisation, or audio transcription are easy for humans to complete but very challenging for computers. micro-task crowdsourcing is commonly used to build information systems that combine the scalability of computers over large amounts of data with the quality of human intelligence. Over the last 10 years different micro-task crowdsourcing platforms have been created. These platforms are marketplaces where crowd workers complete tasks (usually called Human Intelligence Tasks or HITs) in exchange of small monetary rewards and where requesters post their data and tasks to quickly obtain large scale annotations. ...

On Tuesday 12 May 2015, Ed Child, Head of Customer Data Team at Asda joined us in the Information School to present a seminar on 'How Asda are using big data to understand their customers'. The seminar explored how Asda is engaging Big Data to understand its customers. Ed considered a number of factors during the seminar: The opportunities that Big Data has presented to business to understand customer behaviour Examples of this data use in action to drive personal communications How technology is impacting the changing retail landscape and impact on shopping Ed is responsible for Customer Data at Asda, having created and managed the Single Customer View for a number of years. This includes leading a team of analysts delivering insights from data to understand customer behaviour, as well as the tools and technology powering Asda CRM systems. He is also responsible for Marketing Effectiveness, helping support one of the country's largest retailers to understand t...

Congratulations to Dr Jorge Martins and the Information School's Student Staff Committee, coordinated by Dr Peter Stordy, who have been nominated in the 2015 Student Union Academic Awards. Jorge has been nominated for "The Best Feedback Award" and the School has been nominated for "The Best Student Staff Committee Award". The Academic Awards Ceremony will be held on 21 May 2015 and will be attended by Jorge, Peter and student reps from the Student Staff Committee. Good luck!

Congratulations to Sheila Webber, Senior Lecturer in the Information School, on being awarded a Senate Award for Sustained Excellence. The award is in recognition of continued excellence, and inspiration in teaching and learner support.  It is based on skills and practice demonstrated over a period of six years or more that represent a "model of excellence". Particular highlights have been noted as: The excellent support Sheila provides for her students The innovative assessment methods she has developed Her work on information literacy pedagogy, which has influenced teaching and policy internationally Her innovative use of technology enhanced learning including including her use blogs for over a decade Her pioneering use of virtual worlds Her recent contributions to the Faculty MOOC Many congratulations to Sheila for this very well deserved award!

We are pleased to invite you to a talk on ‘Digital Humanitarians’ by Patrick Meier. Patrick is an internationally recognized thought-leader on humanitarian technology and innovation and he will be speaking about the use of Big Data and social media during humanitarian crises. See abstract for full details. Date: Friday 22 May Venue: ICOSS Conference Room, University of Sheffield Time: 14:00-16:30 ( talk: 14:00-15:30 with coffee and tea served afterwards ) Registration: This talk is open to all, but registration is required as places are limited to 55. Please add your name to this form  to register. This talk is hosted by the Visual Social Media Lab , the Digital Society Network and the Sheffield Institute for International Development . We look forward to seeing you next Friday! If you have any questions, please contact Farida Vis: f.vis@sheffield.ac.uk Digital Humanitarians - The information overflow that occurs in the wake of a disaster can paralyze humani...

A paper on 'Taxonomy of Literacies' by Dr Peter Stordy, University Teacher in the Information School, has been published in the Journal of Documentation. The paper explores the different conceptions and types of literacy, and argues a need for a taxonomy of literacies that reflects more recent developments, comprehensively captures the current literacy landscape and might have affordances in the future. The paper can be viewed here .

The Information School is pleased to launch the new iTeach seminar series. The following sessions have been set in the series so far: Wednesday 13 May, 13.00 Information School, Regent Court, RC-204 "Being a Futurelearn MOOC educator" - Sheila Webber. Wed 20th May, 13.00 Information School, Regent Court, RC-324 "Doing an Engaged Curriculum Project (developing cultural awareness and community engagement)" - Briony Birdi. Thu 28th May, 13.00 Information School, Regent Court, RC-204 "Discussion on group work" - Peter Holdridge. Wed 3rd June, 13.00 Information School, Regent Court, RC-204 "Reinventing exams" - Peter Stordy The following sessions are planned for the future: "MOLE Wizard - improving the look of your MOLE pages" "Using iPads" "Recording lectures" "Teaching reflective practice" All are welcome to attend these sessions and there is no need to book a place. 

The iFutures conference for PhD researchers in the information science field is back for 2015. Organised by PhD students in the Information School, 2015 sees the third running of the conference.   The theme of the 2015 conference is “Open Information Science: exploring new landscapes”. Openness is a key part of Information Science research, from using open source tools and big open data sets to open standards advocacy, creating open accessible environments in institutions, and opening information science to radical perspectives and exploring diverse communities. The conference will give delegates the chance to talk about how open information influences and relates to their research. In addition to these workshops, the programme will include keynote talks by two distinguished speakers - Fabio Ciravenga (Professor of Computer Science, University of Sheffield) and Helen Kennedy (Professor of Sociology, University of Sheffield), who will get to the heart of the technical and soci...

Funding is available through the University of Sheffield SURE scheme to employ a student researcher within the Information School.  The researcher will work with Pam McKinney during the summer of 2015 on her “student conceptions of group work” research project. The position will run from Monday 15 June to Friday 24 July and the researcher will be paid £180 per week (£1080 for the full six week project).  The researcher will assist in the cataloging, scanning and photocopying of drawings made by students in response to the question “what is group work”.  They will also assist in the design and running of a focus group and will analyse the data gathered using Nvivo software.  Full training will be given on all aspects of the work, and valuable research experience will be gained which will be beneficial when completing a final year dissertation.  In addition, the student researcher will have the opportunity to present the results at a conference in November wit...

Dr Farida Vis will speak at the Politics of Big Data Conference at King's College London on 8 May 2015. Her speech is part of the masterclass series on big data, with the session on 8 May focusing upon interventions in big data politics.  Farida will speak about visual cultures in social media and will discuss work which is being carried out by the Visual Social Media Lab  to develop methodological and theoretical strategies for capturing and interpreting social media image data. More information about the conference can be found on the conference website .