Information School News

CALC - Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference - May 2020 We are thrilled to sponsor the Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference on Wednesday, 13th May 2020. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation, the conference will now be held online. Our sponsorship, along with sponsorship from CILIP's Community, Diversity and Equality Group, has meant that the conference is free to attend. The event, jointly-organised by one of our alumni, Michelle Bond, Academic Liaison Librarian, Coventry University and her colleague Darren Flynn. Places are limited to 80   please click here to register.

Tackling the Covid-19 pandemic and the loneliness epidemic together Peter A. Bath, Information School and School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the current advice from the government is that we should all be taking social distancing measures and reducing our interaction with other people as much as possible to avoid spreading the coronavirus. Some groups in particular, for example, people aged 70 and over and those with long-term health problems, are being asked to limit their contact with friends and family to protect themselves. Whilst it is good that this can help reduce the spread of the virus, and protect vulnerable people, it also runs the risk of making people feel more isolated and lonely.  We live in an age in which there is what has been called “an epidemic of loneliness”. Older people and those with long-term health problems are not only more vulnerable to the effects of Covid-19, but they are also at r

Dr Paul Reilly featured in Forge Press  Senior Lecturer in Social Media and Digital Society, Dr Paul Reilly, has been featured in Forge Press. Dr Reilly, whose research focuses on the study of online political communication, is quoted in a feature around social media and censorship. You can read the feature here on page 12.

Celebrating the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2020 We are thrilled to announce that we have retained our position as 2nd in the World, and 1st in Europe, for Library and Information Management in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2020.  Speaking about the achievement, Head of School Professor Val Gillet, said: “This ranking reaffirms that our School is home to excellent teaching informed by our world-leading research. These rankings reflect our outstanding reputation established over six decades, our excellent reputation among employers, the high quality of our research publications and the large number of citations our papers achieve, as well as the achievements of our students and graduates.  “We strive to provide the best research and teaching environment for both our staff and students and this ranking is testament to this.” The School currently has around 30 members of academic staff, 12 administrative and technical staff and around 60 research staf

Yingshen Huang, a visiting scholar from the University of Peking, along with Andrew Cox and Laura Sbaffi, presented their paper 'Research Data Management Policy and Practice in China' at the the 15th International Digital Curation Conference on the 17th February. The event, run in Dublin by the Digital Curation Centre in partnership with Digital Repository of Ireland, brought together the various stakeholders that play a role in ensuring digital objects are appropriately created, managed, preserved and shared. The conference - which consisted of workshops, a two day-long main conference and an unconference focussed on community - was held at Croke Park. Keynote Lecture 'Collecting and Curating the National Memory' by Dr Sandra Collins, Deputy Director of the National Library of Ireland. Keynote lecture 'The Internet of Things: Utopia or Dystopia?' by Francine Berman, Edward P Hamilton Distinguished Professor in Computer Science at Rensselaer