Last summer members of the Centre for Social Informatics delivered nine papers at Information: interactions and impact (i3) 2017. Following the conference, we were given the opportunity to develop this work into submissions for the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS). We took up this offer by working seven of the nine conference papers up to full journal article manuscripts. These were all submitted by the deadline of September 30th 2017. Following peer review and revisions all seven were accepted, and they will be published in JoLIS in due course. The manuscripts for all accepted articles have now been added to the Edinburgh Napier repository, and can be downloaded by clicking the article titles below. Continue reading
Category Archives: Events
Save the date for iDocQ8 – Thursday 3rd May 2018, Edinburgh
iDocQ will take place this year in Edinburgh on Thursday 3rd May 2018. Established in 2011, iDocQ is the longest running UK colloquium for doctoral students in Information Science and related subjects. Continue reading
EBLIP comes to Scotland in 2019 #eblip10
The Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP) conference will take place next year in Glasgow, Scotland. This news was announced earlier this week by Dr Rebekah (Becky) Willson and Dr Diane Pennington, who together led the bid for Glasgow to host the event in 2019. Becky and Diane are lecturers in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde.
This will be the third time that the biennial conference has been hosted in the UK: in 2001 the first conference in the series took place in Sheffield; then it came to Salford in 2011. The venues of other previous EBLIP conferences are Edmonton (Canada, 2003), Brisbane (Australia, 2005 and 2015), Chapel Hill (USA, 2007), Stockholm (Sweden, 2009), Saskatoon (Canada, 2013), and Philadelphia (USA, 2017). Continue reading
Publication of #ASIST2017 conference proceedings
The conference proceedings for the 80th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (#ASIST2017) have now been published. Included in the volume is Building identity in online environments: an Information Science perspective which I co-authored with Frances Ryan, Peter Cruickshank and Alistair Lawson. Continue reading
Information sharing, information literacy, and #Finland100
Last week I travelled to Turku to spend some time with colleagues at Åbo Akademi University. This was my first visit to Finland since my appointment last February as Docent in Information Studies within the Faculty of Social Sciences, Business and Economics at the University. Continue reading
Exploring data and information management in archaeology
Professor Isto Huvila of Uppsala University in Sweden made a trip to Edinburgh earlier this week. Isto has worked for the past 20 years with archaeologists, exploring their creation, use and management of data and information from an Information Science perspective.
As part of his visit to Scotland, Isto and I spent the afternoon of Tuesday 28th November with staff and associates of Historic Environment Scotland, the body that hosts both the national record and archive for the historic environment – including a growing digital archive – in Scotland. Here we discussed aspects of data/information management in archaeology. Continue reading
Practitioner research: value, impact, and priorities #libresearch17
This Wednesday 8th November I will be the opening speaker at ‘Themes and trends in library and information research‘, a one-day conference hosted by CILIP in Kent at Canterbury Christ Church University. Entitled ‘Practitioner research: value, impact, and priorities’ my presentation covers four mains themes:
- The long-identified (and debated) research-practice gap in library and information science research
- The case for research-led practice and practitioner-led research
- Access to current research in library and information science research in the UK
- Means of generating new research ideas
Fifty years of pulsars with Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Yesterday afternoon I visited the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) – of which I am a Fellow – to attend its 2017 Annual Statutory Meeting. Immediately afterwards the RSE opened its doors to members of the public who had booked places to hear a Presidential Address delivered by RSE President Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Continue reading
Building identity in online environments: an information science perspective #ASIST2017
Over the past couple of days members of the international information science community have been heading to Washington DC for the 80th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (#ASIST2017). Sadly I am not one of them, but my PhD student Frances Ryan (who should be somewhere over the Atlantic as I write this) will be there to present a poster at the conference. Continue reading
Themes and trends in library and information research: a one-day conference by CILIP in Kent #libresearch17
Two weeks today on Wednesday 8th November I will be the opening speaker at a one day conference entitled ‘Themes and trends in library and information research‘. The event is hosted by CILIP in Kent, and takes place at Canterbury Christ Church University in the Frederic Mason room of the grade II listed St. Martin’s Priory. Continue reading


