Skip to main content

Dr Andrew Cox in South Africa

It is always exciting to be invited to speak at a conference, especially when it is on a continent you have never visited! This month I was fortunate enough to have the chance to talk at the Stellenbosch University 14th Annual Library Symposium in South Africa. 

Stellenbosch is a very beautiful town in the hills above Cape Town, famous for its vineyards.

The programme of talks was amazingly good and stimulating. It was framed around OCLC’s report Shaping the academic library of the future: adapt, empower, partner, engage. You can see the programme and download slides here: http://conferences.sun.ac.za/index.php/sulis_symp14/index/pages/view/prog 
This includes a recorded video link to a fascinating presentation by Lorcan Dempsey, from OCLC. 

I was particularly impressed by the way that the first and last keynotes were drawn from beyond the library sector to discuss how we can respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world. 
Altogether, it was a very forward-looking event.

I presented a workshop on RDM before the symposium, as well as giving a presentation in the main programme. And of course I just managed to slot in a little sight seeing!

Written by Dr Andrew Cox.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Raspberry Pi Weather Project now live

A project to create a raspberry pi weather station is currently live in the Information School.  The Sheffield Pi weather station has been created by Romilly Close, undergraduate Aerospace Engineering student at the University of Sheffield.  The project was funded by the Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) scheme and is being supervised by Dr Jo Bates, Paula Goodale and Fred Sonnenwald from the Information School. Information about the Sheffield Pi station and how to create your own can be found on the project website .  You can also see live data from the Sheffield Pi station on Plot.ly , and further information can also be found on the Met Office Weather Observations Website .    This work compliments the School’s existing project entitled ‘The Secret Life of a Weather Datum’ which explores socio-cultural influences on weather data.  This project is funded under the AHRC’s Digital Transformations Big Data call.  It aims to pilot a new approach to im

Our Chemoinformatics Group wins Jason Farradane Award

The Information School's Chemoinformatics Research Group has been awarded the 2012 UKeiG Jason Farradane Award , in recognition of its outstanding 40 year contribution to the information field. The prize is awarded to the three current members of the group,  Professor Val Gillet , Dr John Holliday and Professor Peter Willett . The judges recognised the Group's status as one of the world's leading centres of chemoinformatics research, a major contributor to the field of information science, and an exemplar in raising the profile of the information profession. The School has a long association with the Farradane prize. Its second recipient was long time member of staff Professor Mike Lynch in 1980.

Professor Mike Thelwall gives inaugural lecture

Professor of Data Science Mike Thelwall recently gave his inaugural lecture at the University of Sheffield, entitled  How helpful are AI and bibliometrics for assessing the quality of academic research? The lecture, delivered in the University's Diamond building, was introduced by Head of the Information School Professor Briony Birdi. It covered Mike's research into whether Artificial Intelligence can inform - or replace - expert peer review in the journal article publication process and what this could look like, as well as to what extent bibliometrics and citation statistics can play a role in assessing the quality of a piece of research. Mike also discussed whether tools like ChatGPT can accurately detect research quality. The inaugural lecture was well attended by colleagues from around the University.