Karen Blakeman and Gary Horrocks (Photo credit G. Horrocks.)

Congratulations to Karen Blakeman, named by the UK eInformation Group (UKeiG) as the winner of the 2024 Jason Farradane Award.

The award is given annually to an individual or a group of people in recognition of outstanding contribution to the information profession, who have distinguished themselves in one or more of the following ways:

• raising the profile of the information profession within an organisation or field of endeavour in a way which has become an exemplar to others;
• raising the awareness of the value of information in the workplace;
• demonstrating excellence in education and teaching in information science;
• making a major contribution to the theory and practice of information science or information management

It honours Jason Farradane, who presented a paper on the ‘scientific approach to documentation’ at a Royal Society Scientific Information Conference in 1948. Farradane was instrumental in establishing the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) in 1958. He also set up the first academic Information Science courses in 1963 at the precursor to City University, London. It was also here that Farradane became Director of the Centre for Information Science in 1966.

Karen Blakeman has won this award for her contributions to search tool awareness, and for raising the profile of the information community through active involvement with professional organisations. I am particularly pleased to learn that Karen’s career has been recognised in this way because I was one of her nominees, alongside Chris Armstrong.

Further information

• The full citation about Karen’s award is available on the UKeIG pages of the CILIP web site.
• For more about the IIS, see the free downloadable book by Martin White and Sandra Ward Evolution and impact: a history of the Institute of Information Scientists 1958-2002.