Skip to main content

CILIP Conference 2018: Highlights by Data Science student He Liu

It has been a while since my trip to the CILIP Conference in Brighton, and I believe this is the moment for me to express my experiences about this journey.  Firstly, I would like to thank the Information School of the University of Sheffield for providing me this opportunity with a student bursary. It was my great pleasure to attend the CILIP Conference.

This was not my first time attending conference. I was impressed to see so many admirable professionals and their brilliant ideas during the conference. Also, I felt welcome from the first day I arrived in Brighton. There was a city travel event on Tuesday evening before the conference. Even though I was the only student in our group, I made some new friends during the city travel. By the end, we spent a wonderful time enjoying the sunset at the lovely coast. At that moment, I was anticipating the next day’s conference.

No doubt, I couldn’t be more satisfied with my experience. Having the opportunity to be a member of CILIP during my studies can be considered as an advantage for my further career. This event proved to be very challenging, but it also offered exciting and new opportunities to learn from library and information professionals. Aside from a positive impact on my development, this also has an impact on a rather personal level. This particular conference experience provided me with an advantage in the field of work, as well as the possibility of being able to practice what I have learned from the Information School.

One of the many different perspectives offered during the conference, keynote speaker Helen Dodd from Cancer Reach UK highlighted the strong similarity between GDPR and the information life cycle. She concluded five steps to ‘collect, store, use, share, dispose’ for organisations to use their information. She announced that the implement of GDPR does not restrict the development of organisations, but is an opportunity for them. As she explained, ‘GPPR presents an opportunity to bring us closer to knowing how we use our information, and how we can use it better!’ For organisations, tackling GDPR is a first step in reducing risk, which provides a foundation for even more interesting, innovative work. Especially, she mentioned that GDPR activity in terms of core library and knowledge services skills: data processing reviews are information audits. As a data science student, her speech was really inspiring to me in my studies and advised me on how to progress my future career. After her speech, I couldn’t help myself but to meet her in person, and showed my gratitude.


Attending the CILIP Conference also provided me the opportunities to expand my social network. I completely understand that the power behind networking is quite a strong element in this conference. It does not just involve getting to know people, but it also allows people to practice personal learning. This conference was also a perfect platform for me to show my communication skills. As one of the student representatives, I got the chance to introduce my programme to people at the Information School exhibition stand. It refreshed what I have learnt from the class and shared my experience to prospective students.

To sum up, it was a wonderful experience for me to enhance my knowledge and skills, and to build my personality for attending the CILIP Conference in the future. Again, thanks to Information School of Sheffield for providing me this opportunity. It was a priceless opportunity in my life.

He Liu
MSc Data Science student

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.