Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2018 takes place in Kraków, Poland, this coming week from 9th to 11th October 2018. Representing Edinburgh Napier University’s Centre for Social Informatics at the conference will be third year PhD students Alicja Pawluczuk and Lyndsey Middleton (née Jenkins).

Alicja will present a full paper entitled ‘Digital youth work: the youth worker’s balancing act between digital innovation and digital literacy insecurities‘ in Thursday’s themed session ‘Information behaviour of specific groups of users 3’. Here Alicja will discuss her analysis of data that she collected by interview with 20 digital youth workers in 2017 on the ways in which they perceive, and evaluate, the social impact of their work. Alicja‘s main finding is that externally-governed evaluation practices fail to engage digital youth workers in the development of the skills necessary for the assessment of the impact of the interventions that they manage. For example, rather than being encouraged to evaluate the changes that arise from their work, they are more focused on identifying evidence of impact. For those participating at #isic2018 remotely, tune in at 11:00 Polish time (10:00 in the UK) to follow the tweets related to Alicja’s presentation.

Alicja has completed this research as part of her doctoral study, which she is due to complete in 2019. For further information about Alicja and her PhD research, which is co-supervised at Edinburgh Napier University by Dr Gemma Webster, Dr Colin Smith and Hazel Hall, please see https://www.alicjapawluczuk.com.

Lyndsey‘s main contribution to the conference is at the poster session on Wednesday afternoon between 16:30 and 17:45 (15:30-16:45 in the UK). Her poster is entitled How do we use information to help us learn to innovate in the workplace? A case study of a Scottish University.

The poster content identifies the relationship between information literacy, workplace learning, and innovative work behaviours, as drawn from an analysis of interview and focus group data collected at a Scottish university. The main findings to be presented are that: (1) information literacy contributes to the initiation of workplace learning; (2) information sources (primarily external information, internal databases and people) are important to workplace learning; and (3) ease of access to information, as well as information sharing, facilitate the learning of innovative work behaviours in the workplace. Lyndsey is also participating in the pre-conference doctoral workshop, which takes place on Monday 8th October.

Lyndsey is currently writing up her ESRC and Skills Development Scotland funded doctoral study. For further information about Lyndsey and her PhD research, which is co-supervised by Professor Robert Raeside, Dr Laura Muir and Hazel Hall, please see https://lyndseyjenkins.org.

Lyndsey Middleton and her Director of Studies Professor Hazel Hall at i3 2017

Alicja and Lyndsey‘s colleagues in the Centre for Social Informatics wish them both a safe journey to Kraków, and hope that they enjoy the conference with our colleagues from around the world at #ISIC2018.