Congratulations to Alicja Pawluczuk and Lyndsey Middleton (née Jenkins) on the recent news that the conference submissions that they made in March this year to Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2018 have been accepted. The conference takes place in Kraków, Poland, 9-11 October 2018. Continue reading
The seventh (and final) article that I recently co-authored for publication in the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) has now been published as an OnlineFirst paper. Entitled ‘Youth digital participation: measuring social impact‘, the content of the article concerns scholarly debate around digital participatory youth projects, and approaches to their evaluation. My co-authors Alicja Pawluczuk, Colin F Smith, Gemma Webster and I reveal (1) an over-reliance on traditional evaluation techniques for such initiatives, and (2) a scarcity of models for the assessment of the social impact of digital participatory youth projects. Continue reading
Iris Buunk
The sixth of the seven articles that I recently co-authored for the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) has now been published as an OnlineFirst paper. This is ‘Tacit knowledge sharing in online environments: locating ‘Ba’ within a platform for public sector professionals‘ by Iris Buunk, Colin F. Smith, and Hazel Hall. It reports findings from Iris‘ doctoral study, which I supervise with Colin.
With reference to the concept of Ba (Nonaka and Konno, 1998), and based on empirical research conducted in the UK public sector, we draw two main conclusions in our article. First, online social platforms play a strong role in the facilitation of tacit knowledge sharing, and this leads to outcomes of learning, expertise sharing, problem solving, and innovating. Second, such platforms are important to the initiation of discussions among experts, the fostering of collective intelligence, and making tacit and personal knowledge visible and accessible quickly, with minimal effort. Continue reading
The fifth of the seven articles that I recently co-authored for the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) has now been published as an OnlineFirst paper. In this article the paper co-authors – Frances Ryan, Peter Cruickshank, myself and Alistair Lawson – report on some of the main findings of Frances’ doctoral study on personal reputation building and management in online environments with specific reference to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Continue reading
Lyndsey Middleton (née Jenkins)
The fourth of the seven articles that I recently co-authored for the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) has now been published as an OnlineFirst paper. The article is entitled ‘Applications and applicability of Social Cognitive Theory in information science research’. Its content is concerned with the origins and key concepts of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and its value to Information Science research. Particular reference is made to SCT and its applicability to, and applications in, studies of information-seeking behaviour and use, and knowledge sharing.
This work is related to the ESRC/Skills Development Scotland doctoral study of Lyndsey Middleton (née Jenkins). It extends content that Lyndsey presented as a conference paper at Information: interactions and impact (i3) 2017 in June last year (slides available on SlideShare). The full manuscript of the article is also available to download from the Edinburgh Napier repository. Continue reading
Congratulations to Centre for Social Informatics colleagues Dr Ella Taylor-Smith and Dr Colin Smith on the publication of their article ‘Investigating the online and offline contexts of day-to-day democracy as participation spaces’ in Information, Communication and Society.
The main theme of the article is citizen-led participation in democracy, and the online and offline spaces – introduced as ‘participation space’ – in which people work together to influence those in power, and to improve their communities. The findings draw upon a sociotechnical analysis of data from three case studies to expose the relationship between activities of local, grassroots democracy and the characteristics of the online and offline spaces in which it occurs. Continue reading
The third of the seven articles that I recently co-authored for the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) has now been published as an OnlineFirst paper. The article is entitled ‘UK public library roles and value: a focus group analysis‘. Part-time PhD student, and award-winning practitioner-researcher, Leo Appleton is the first author of this article. Continue reading
Congratulations to Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Lyndsey Middleton on the acceptance of the paper that she recently submitted to the Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology 2018 (ASIST 2018). This conference takes place in Vancouver, Canada, between November 10th and 14th 2018. Continue reading
John Mowbray
The second of the seven articles that I recently co-authored for the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) has now been published as an OnlineFirst paper. The article is entitled ‘Job search information behaviours: an ego-net study of networking amongst young job-seekers‘.
Through the analysis of a set of egocentric networks of young job-seekers, my co-authors John Mowbray, Professor Robert Raeside, Pete Robertson and I reveal the key informational role of network contacts in job-seeking as one that extends beyond the simple diffusion of information about employment opportunities.
In the article we develop some of the findings from John Mowbray‘s ESRC/Skills Development Scotland funded doctoral study that were presented as a conference paper at Information: interactions and impact (i3) 2017 in June last year (slides; liveblog). The full manuscript of the article is also available to download from the Edinburgh Napier repository. Continue reading
All interested in library and information science (LIS) research are invited to register free of charge for a community event on the theme of LIS research impact and value to held in Edinburgh on Wednesday 11th July 2018. Continue reading
Hazel Hall 