Information School News

Information School lecturer Chris Foster recently published a new post on the SPERI comment blog entitled " The balancing act of Brexit and digital trade " As the UK leaves the EU it risks a potential ‘digital cliff-edge’. How it navigates its way through global tensions around digital trade rules will orientate the shape of the economy for years to come. This post is part of his ongoing research looking at cross-border data flows and the political economy of digital trade.

Earlier this week, Dr Paul Reilly was interviewed on BBC Radio Leicester's Jonathan Lampon show about recent research findings on nomophobia. Nomophobia is anxiety associated with not being able to access and use smartphones, and recent research suggests that it is becoming an increasing problem amongst young people. Dr Reilly spoke about this and also whether or not it affects older smartphone users. The article which sparked this conversation and references this research was this one from the Daily Mail. You can listen to Dr Reilly's interview by clicking here  and skipping forward to 1:46:40.

We invite contributions for iConference 2018, which will take place March 25-28, 2018 at the University of Sheffield. The iConference is presented by the iSchools organisation, a worldwide consortium of information schools dedicated to advancing the information field, and preparing students to meet the information challenges of the 21st Century. Affiliation with the iSchools is not a prerequisite of participation; and we encourage all information scholars and practitioners to take part in this, the thirteenth iSchools conference and the first to be held in the UK. The theme is “Transforming Digital Worlds” and the aim is to bring together thinkers and leaders from academia, industry and not-for-profit organisations, to discuss emerging challenges and potential solutions for information and data management in our rapidly changing world. The conference is being jointly organised by the iSchools at the University of Sheffield and Northumbria University and will include not only peer-re

Professor of Information Services Management, Stephen Pinfield, along with his Co-Investigator, Professor David Bawden (of City University London), have been awarded £182,097 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for the 'Open Access in Theory and Practice' project. The project will investigate the uses of theory in open access research and their relationship with practice. The project will recruit a full-time Research Associate to be based in Sheffield. "We are delighted to have received this funding from the AHRC”, says Stephen. “We believe our project will make an important contribution to current discussions about open access and also about the relationship between theory and practice – both really important issues with wide implications for the role that academic research can play in society." The project will start in the first quarter of 2018 and will last for 18 months.

On 13th and 14th July Professor Paul Clough and Professor Stephen Pinfield visited CERN , the European Organization for Nuclear Research which is located near Geneva. The visit was to meet with Xiaoli Chen, a PhD student being funded by CERN and supervised by Stephen and Paul, along with Dr Sunje Dallmeier-Tiessen an Information Manager at CERN and working on the INSPIRE digital library that serves the High Energy Physics (HEP) community. Xiaoli’s PhD is investigating how INSPIRE can better support the Open Science practices of the HEP community. Paul and Stephen’s visit included a visit to the office where Tim Berner’s Lee invented the World Wide Web as well as visiting Geneva and its beautiful city centre.  Paul and Stephen also gave invited talks to staff at CERN. Paul gave a talk entitled “Competent men and warm women: Gender stereotypes and backlash in image search results” based on a CHI’2017 paper written with Jo Bates from the Information School and J

Academic librarians are being invited to participate in the survey “Mapping the academic library of the future”. https://survey.shef.ac.uk/limesurvey/index.php?sid=39554 The survey forms part of a research project commissioned by the SCONUL Transformation Group. We are investigating the future academic library for the next 10 to 15 years in the context of the decline in importance of the printed book and its repercussions for use of library space, development of services, and deployment of staff. As part of the project, we have already undertaken interviews with senior library staff and others from education, technology, publishing, estates and heritage sectors, and are now conducting a survey to add to our findings. The results of this research will be used to inform policy and future plans and will be made widely available. We would like to hear a range of views and are inviting all library staff to complete the survey. Because this research focuses on informing the SCONUL community,

This week Dr Ángel Borrego is visiting the Information School. Ángel is a ​Senior Lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Barcelona. His research interests focus on scholarly communication and research evaluation. On Thursday he gives a research seminar at 12pm in room 231, entitled 'Scholars’ information behaviour in the electronic environment: attitudes towards searching, publishing and libraries'. You can read the abstract below: The seminar aims to summarise the results of several studies conducted during the past decade in order to understand the impact of the transition from print to electronic journals on scholars’ information behaviour. The studies have focused on the behaviour of the academics affiliated to the eight public universities that make up the Consortium of Academic Libraries of Catalonia. The presentation combines the results obtained through the analysis of usage statistics provided by publishers, surveys and