Yesterday afternoon I participated in an online meeting of the UK Electronic Information Group (UKeIG). At one time I was heavily involved in the work of this group – I served as its Honorary Secretary for a while early in my career – but this was my first attendance at such an event for some time. The two presentations that sandwiched the 2021 UKeIG AGM were my main motivation for attending the meeting.

The first presentation was about mapping information landscapes. It was delivered by Andrew (Drew) Whitworth of the University of Manchester. Drew started by explaining that his interest in this topic was inspired by the work of Annemaree Lloyd. He drew attention to the metaphor of the ‘information landscape’ as introduced in Lloyd’s 2010 book, and the argument that people need to understand their positioning within such landscapes so that they gain a sense of place before they are able to develop information literacy. (Lyndsey Middleton and I also deploy the information landscape metaphor with reference to the work of Lloyd in our recent paper Workplace information literacy: a bridge to the development of innovative work behaviour.)

The second presentation was delivered by two eminent information scientists – Martin White and Sandra Ward. They have been working on a project that they describe as their ‘private passion’ with two other well known figures in the field of Information Science: Charles Oppenheim and Val Skelton.