The four partner universities of the ESRC Scottish Graduate School of Social Science information science pathway hosted iDocQ 2013 in Aberdeen on Monday 24th June. iDocQ is the annual doctoral colloquium for doctoral candidates in information science and other related disciplines.
Tracking scholarly digital footprints
Like many I communicate my scholarly research over multiple platforms in a range of activities that have now become routine for research-active academics. These include, for example:
Screenshot of link listings on Hazel Hall’s About.me page
Dushko with his summer 2013 colleagues Tracey Binnie (L) and Cheryl Cairns (R)
Dushko Stanoeski joined us this week at Edinburgh Napier University to help complete a summer project.
Dushko is a final year student at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia where he specialises in Informatics and Computer Engineering.
Dr Robert Irvine
Many congratulations to Dr Robert Irvine, who graduated with his PhD from Edinburgh Napier University on Wednesday at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh.
I co-supervised Robert’s doctoral study entitled Success factors for organisational information systems development projects: a Scottish suppliers’ perspective.
The starting point for Robert’s work was the acknowledgement that organisational information systems development (OISD) projects have long been associated with failure, and the cost of these failures is enormous. Yet, despite numerous previous studies, understanding of real-world projects is limited. In particular, Robert identified that little was known about the way in which various factors affect the success of OISD projects. In addition, Robert’s work concluded that earlier research has generally tended to focus on OISD projects from an in-house or client perspective, with the views of the supplier largely ignored.
Last week I was delighted to be invited along to the Scottish Parliament for the Scottish launch of the Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge.
In Scotland the Summer Reading Challenge is delivered in partnership by the Reading Agency and the Scottish public library service across twenty-nine of its thirty-two local authorities. For the third year Tesco Bank is the sponsor of the Challenge. In 2013 the project partners hope to support 40,000 children engage in reading activities around the theme of “Creepy House”. The launch itself was hosted by Fiona McLeod MSP. Fiona herself is a Chartered Librarian and currently serves as the chair of the Scottish Library and Information Council.
The Institute for Informatics and Digital Innovation (IIDI) is currently advertising a funded PhD place to start in September 2013. The full advertisement can be found at at jobs.ac.uk and on the Edinburgh Napier University vacancies web site. There is also an associated item about the vacancy on the IIDI news feed. The closing date for applications is Monday 1st July 2013, with interviews expected to take place on Wednesday 24th July 2013.
Patrick Notz
At the exam boards this week it was announced that one of the projects that I supervised in 2012/13 has won the Institute of Informatics and Digital Innovation award for knowledge exchange.
The winning work examined the application of social media in the heritage sector, drawing on a case study of social media practice at the National Museum of Scotland. It was completed by final year undergraduate student Patrick Notz.
Since 2011 the partner universities of the ESRC Scottish Graduate School of Social Science information science pathway have hosted an annual doctoral colloquium. This is aimed at students studying for PhDs in information science and other related disciplines. This year’s event takes place on Monday 24th June at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, and registrations for the day are now open. The event is suitable for doctoral students at all stages of their studies. Registration is free to UK students. International students can also attend for a small fee: if you are an international student who would like to attend please e-mail me at h.hall@napier.ac.uk for details.
This afternoon I gave an invited presentation to staff at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). The RCAHMS is Scotland’s national collection of buildings, archaeology and industry. I’d been invited to contribute to the Commission’s research seminar series not for my knowledge of history, but to share my experience of using social media to support community development. My specific remit was to distil key lessons from the AHRC-funded Developing Research Excellence and Methods (DREaM) project completed in 2012, the main aim of which was to develop a formal UK-wide network of Library and Information Science (LIS) researchers. My full presentation is available on SlideShare.
Aga’s poster describes work for the Acquisition for VFX module
Today two Edinburgh Napier computing students are competing for an award at a BCS event at the University of Nottingham.
Two months ago in February 2013 Aga Banach and Tracey Binney responded to a call for students to submit a 250 word abstract for a poster presentation at the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium.
The colloquium is the UK’s main event for women undergraduate students of computing. Now in its 6th year, the day features talks from industry and academia, a panel-based careers session, stalls from employers, and lots of networking opportunities.
Hazel Hall 