Information School News

Congratulations to our Head of School, Prof Briony Birdi, for receiving an Honorary Fellowship from the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) - their highest accolade! Professor Birdi is a leading academic and researcher in the field of library and information science and a thought-leader in the fields of reader development and Diversity, Equality and Inclusion in libraries. Speaking about the award, she said: "I've learned so much about libraries. And from such fantastic and committed colleagues as I've met through my various committees and groups that I've been involved in in with CILIP. Being able to bring this learning into my teaching, developing new programme a new decolonizing framework all sounds very grand but actually it's just me learning from everyone else. [...] honestly, I'm just delighted. Absolutely delighted to have this. So thank you very, very much." Also awarded were Joseph Coelho and Alison Wheeler. Find ...

Laura Sbaffi (Unfair Means Officer) and Skye Xin Zhao (Introductory Tasks Lead) are the winners of the University of Sheffield 2022 Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Learning and Teaching for the Digital Innovation category. The Vice-Chancellor’s Award is a prestigious and highly competitive award that is designed to encourage, promote and celebrate good practice across the university. As a department, we are very proud to have our staff members winning this award. The award has been awarded in recognition of a suite of resources and support developed since 2020 to support students’ academic transitions and enhance their understanding of Academic Integrity-related concepts, policies, and practices. The resources are a key part of the Information School’s early intervention strategy to provide positive and proactive, and sustained support to students in their academic work. Engaging students as partners, Laura and Skye have developed an online module incorporating a suite of interactive...

The Information Literacy Award recognises an outstanding UK-based practitioner or researcher. There was a hiatus for the award in 2021 and we presented the Leading Light Award to align with our online event: FestivIL by LILAC. For 2022 we are running a single award, due to the increase of digital activities in our working lives, which combines criteria from the Digital Award for IL. The CILIP Information Literacy Group and the Information School at the University of Sheffield are proud to offer an award for achievement in the field of information literacy (IL). IL “is the ability to think critically and make balanced judgements about any information we find and use. It empowers us as citizens to reach and express informed views and to engage fully in society”. IL applies within a number of contexts, including: Everyday – when people find information online Citizenship – helping people to understand the world around us Education – developing critical thinking skills at all stages of edu...

Congratulations to Dr Andrew Cox: Information Manager of 2021 CILIP Special Interest Groups, the Knowledge and Information Management Group (K&IM) and the UK e-information Group (UKeiG), are delighted to announce that the winner of their prestigious Information Manager of the Year Award, 2021 is Dr Andrew Cox, Senior Lecturer, Information School, Sheffield University. The award will be presented at the  Knowledge & Information Management virtual Awards evening  on Wednesday 10 th  November starting at  5. 30 pm.  Please join us for this free event as we celebrate all the K&IM Award winners for 2021.   Book to attend the awards  here .   The Information Manager of the Year Award is presented to professionals who have raised awareness of, and made a significant contribution to, the value and impact of knowledge and information management in the workplace and across the LIS sector.   The judging pan...

Now the dust has cleared from the 2019 iSchool Conference, we’ve had a break and come up with some interesting findings from the presentations at the event. The conference boasted a wide range of disciplines that PhD students from the iSchool are researching. The day kicked off purely with quantitative research, followed by mixed methods methodologies and ending with some thought-provoking qualitative research presentations. Here are our top highlights: Recommendation Systems in Drug Design The morning began with the first presentation by Gianmarco Ghiandoni, a 3rd year PhD student in the Cheminformatics research group . The study looks at De Novo design, a branch of cheminformatics dealing with the design of molecular structures. Gianmarco adapted  methods that are widely applied for recommendation purposes on human data - for example by companies such as Google, Amazon, or Netflix - to the computational drug design processes, where chemical and biological data are mai...

This week saw a poster session for the Faculty of Social Sciences BA Digital Media and Society students, a cross-department programme to which the Information School contributes two core modules. The posters are the result of a 2 week 'group challenge' in which students had to develop a proposal for a digital media campaign aimed at raising awareness about how personal data are gathered from online sources to be analysed and used by different people for different purposes. Well done to all the students involved, and particularly the winners of the Best Poster award, seen below! Group 10, winners of the Best Poster award: Shuyue Deng, Yoonho Jeong, Su Hyun Kim, Luyi Ma and Jianuo Wang Group 4, runners up:  Shu Ki Cheung, Qinghanyue Li, Yijie Lin, Eun Phil Lee, Huiting Zhao and Shafei Zhuang

From Director of Research Professor Paul Clough: I am delighted to announce that Alessandro Checco and Jo Bates (together with Gianluca Demartini) have won the Best Paper award at the prestigious Human Computation or HCOMP 2018 conference for the following paper: Checco A, Bates J & Demartini G (2018) All That Glitters is Gold -- An Attack Scheme on Gold Questions in Crowdsourcing. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. Abstract here; http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/130654/ Not only is it a significant achievement to even be accepted at this conference it is an outstanding achievement to be nominated for Best Paper and then to win it is incredible. Alessandro and Gianluca were awarded the prize at HComp 2018 . Alessandro had this to say about the paper and reviews: "Feedback from chairs was that they really liked the fact we opened a new direction (that is having workers using ML solutions on the employers). We will have the opportu...

Dr Jonathan Foster, Lecturer in Information Management and Programme Coordinator for the MSc Information Management, recently received his Teaching and Excellence in the Social Sciences (TESS) award from the University's Faceulty of Social Sciences. 'It was wonderful experience to receive the TESS award, in recognition of the Deliberation Day that we hold annually during Induction Week', says Dr Foster. 'The aim of the event is provide an enabling context for new students - many of whom are international - to experience a setting where dialogue and the revision of views - rather than their dogmatic reception - becomes a distinct possibility.' Dr Foster received his award, along with other colleagues from across the Faculty, at a reception in the ICOSS building at the University. During his acceptance speech he elaborated more on the influences he drew from for the Deliberation Day event. 'I believe that a democratic approach to learning and teaching is ne...

PhD student Shuyang Li recently won a Student Employee of the Year Award at the University's SEOTY awards 2018. This is a national award, coordinated by the National Association of Student Employment Services (NASES). The award recognises and promotes students who successfully undertake a part-time job alongside their studies and who make an exceptional contribution to their employing organisation. Shuyang was nominated by the Student Jobshop, part of the Careers Service, as she worked part time as a student ambassador and recently as a part-time researcher at the Careers Service. Shuyang Li receiving her award from Wyn Morgan, Vice-President for Education. "To me, this award means recognition for the work that I have conducted and trust from my employing organisation", says Shuyang. "As an international student, I also feel more confident at the working environment." Find out more about the awards here. See the full results listing here.

Professor Emeritus of the Information School and leading figure in the information field Tom Wilson was awarded the ASIS&T (Association for Information Science & Technology) Award of Merit , the Association's highest award, in September 2017. This award recognises sustained contributions to the field of information science and marks a lifetime of achievements for Professor Wilson, who now joins a list of well-respected figures in information science who have won the award previously. Professor Wilson was presented with the award at the 2017 ASIS&T Annual meeting held in October 27- November 1 2017 in Washington DC . Professor Wilson could not attend the event in person and his award was sent to his home in Sheffield. Professor Paul Clough was recently able to catch up with Professor Wilson and his award. Professor Wilson’s response to receiving the award: "Many of the previous recipients of the Award are heroes of mine - people like Cyril Cleverd...

The SRUK (Society of Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom) is a non-profit organization that aims to support Spanish researchers abroad, foster scientific cooperation between the UK and Spain, and provide a cohesive position of our community to influence science policy. It organizes science outreach events, provides awards and funding for outstanding members of the community, and generates many networking opportunities. I joined as a volunteer at the beginning of the year and I currently serve as secretary of the Yorkshire constituency, which includes Sheffield, York, Hull, Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield. I had the pleasure to attend an award ceremony that took place on the 14th of December at the Spanish embassy in London. This was the 2nd SRUK emerging talent award, that recognizes and supports young Spanish researchers that have developed their careers in the United Kingdom. The awardee this year was Xavier Moya, material physicist in the University of Cambridge, for his wor...

Senior Lecturer Dr Paul Reilly has been recognised by the University of Sheffield's Research and Innovation Service as a Dedicated Outstanding Mentor. His nomination can be read here. One of Paul's mentees wrote this about his mentoring skills: “It made me reflect on my options and I feel that now I have agreed formal timelines, I am more likely to action my ambition to be a P.I on a project, sooner. I think it is reasonable to say that I would have applied to be a P.I at some point, but feel the support has really pushed me on, and also helped me realise that there are other options open to me.”

David Walsh, a part-time PhD student at the Information School (also works as a Senior Lecturer at Edge Hill University) has won second prize for Best Paper at the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries 2017 (TPDL'17)  in Thessaloniki, Greece. David's paper explored categories of visitor to the National Liverpool Museums website via a large-scale museum user survey in which data on a wide range of user characteristics was collected to provide well founded definitions for the user group's motivations, tasks, engagement, and domain knowledge. The results highlighted that the general public and non-professional users make up the majority of users and allow us to clearly define these two groups. David is supervised by Paul Clough and Jonathan Foster from Sheffield and Mark Hall from Edge Hill. Walsh D., Hall M., Clough P., Foster J. (2017) The Ghost in the Museum Website: Investigating the General Public’s Interactions with Museum Websites....

Professor Emeritus of the Information School and leading figure in the information field Tom Wilson has been awarded the ASIS&T (Association for Information Science & Technology) Award of Merit, the Association's highest award, which recognises sustained contributions to the field of information science. The award marks a lifetime of achievements for Professor Wilson, who now joins a list of well-respected figures in information science who have won the award previously. Asked about winning this prestigious award, Professor Wilson said 'I was very surprised the receive the Award, having been retired since 2000. But, of course, I am delighted to receive it, since there is no higher award in the field.' Professor Tom D. Wilson has worked in the information field since 1961, holding positions in the public sector, industry, colleges and universities. Following retirement he was awarded title of Professor Emeritus and now Visiting Professor at Leeds University Busin...

Information School PhD student Jessica Elmore (co-supervised by Sheila Webber and  Dr Peter Stordy) is recipient of the inaugural Mark Hepworth Memorial  Award. The award commemorates Professor Hepworth  (1955-2016).  Jessica  received the award for submitting the best abstract to the i3  (Information: interactions and impact) conference. Her paper, which  she presents on 29 June at i3, is entitled "Information Sharing in the  ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) classroom: a case study" She is shown here with i3 Chair Professor Peter Reid and Professor  Graham Matthews, from Loughborough University, where Mark was a  faculty member.

Information School Lecturer Pam McKinney is one of only a small number of Faculty of Social Sciences staff to win a 'Teaching Excellence in Social Sciences (TESS) Award for Outstanding Practice in Learning and Teaching' this year. The award follows research-informed teaching methods she has employed, especially around group work. You can read some of her research on the topic in her paper 'The use of technology in group-work: a Situational Analysis of students' reflective writing.' Director of Learning and Teaching for the School, Dr Peter Stordy, has this to say: "Pam is an inspiring and reflective teacher who is highly respected by both staff and students. She consistently attracts glowing comments in student module evaluations and motivates students to produce a high standard of work. Her tenacious determination to provide genuine opportunities to develop students' employability and team work skills distinguishes her from other excellent teachers. ...

Professor Stephen Pinfield, Dr Briony Birdi, Dr Sheila Webber, Pam McKinney, Peter Holdridge and Paula Goodale have been awarded a Teaching Excellence in Social Sciences Award for Outstanding Practice in Learning and Teaching' by the Faculty of Social Sciences. The award recognises the team's delivery of our innovative distance learning programme, MA Library & Information Services Management. The award will be presented at the TESS End of Year Celebration event later this month.

Matt Seddon, PhD student in the Chemoinformatics research group, has won the CINF Scholarship for Scientific Excellence at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco, April 2-6. The scholarship program of the Division of Chemical Information (CINF) is designed to reward graduate and postdoctoral students in chemical information and related sciences for scientific excellence. The award was made for his PhD work which he presented as a long abstract and in poster format: Global spectral and diffusion geometry descriptors of 3D molecular shape for virtual screening Authors: Matthew Seddon, David Cosgrove, Martin Packer and Val Gillet Matt also gave an oral presentation. Matt Seddon (second from right) and colleagues Matt's PhD is being funded by a BBSRC Industrial CASE Partnership Studentship in collaboration with AstraZeneca. He is supervised by Professor Val Gillet.