Last month I participated at two conferences back-to-back: the 79th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST2016) in Copenhagen from Friday 15th to Tuesday 18th October, and then the second day of Internet Librarian International (ILI2016) in London on Wednesday 19th October. Continue reading
Some colour under a cold grey sky in Copenhagen
I’ve been in Copenhagen since the end of last week, participating at the 79th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology. I’ve been enjoying the presentations – from Greg Welch‘s keynote on telepresence to Debbie Rabina‘s account of research of prisoners’ information needs examined through discourse analysis – and catching up with colleagues from around the world.
There’s some really interesting work being conducted in Information Science across the globe, and I’ve learnt about some tempting job opportunities too. For example, if you’re functionally bilingual in English and French, and looking for a tenure-track position in North America, the University of Ottawa’s School of Information Studies – l’École des sciences de l’information (ÉSIS) – is hoping to recruit an Associate Professor who can make contributions to teaching and research in library and information management. Do contact Mary Cavanagh (mary.cavanagh@uottawa.ca,@mfcavanagh) if this is of interest to you. I’ve also managed to play tourist a little with a short visit the city (in the cold and grey) on Sunday morning with my Finnish colleague Gunilla Widen. Continue reading
Today I’m giving the opening keynote presentation in Copenhagen at the SIG USE Information Behavior in Workplaces. This is one of a series of workshops taking place as part of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST2016). It has been organised by the SIG/USE Symposium Chairs:
The title of my presentation is ‘Watching the workers: researching information behaviours in, and for, workplaces‘. The slides are available on SlideShare and below.
Next week I will be attending the 2016 Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) Annual meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. On the evening of Tuesday 18th October there will be a University reception at the conference. I have created a flyer to distribute at this event with Frances Ryan (one of my PhD students, whose participation at the conference is supported by the John Campbell Trust). The flyer provides details about the Centre for Social Informatics (CSI) at Edinburgh Napier University. Continue reading
What does it mean to be a ‘dangerous woman’?
This is the question posed by the Dangerous Women Project, a one-year initiative of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, led by Professor Jo Shaw. Between International Women’s Day 2016 and International Women’s Day 2017 contributions that respond to the question are being collected and curated on the project web site as a series of daily blog posts. These cover a range of themes:
This week the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and the Archives and Records Association (ARA) published a series of 24 fact sheets on the demography of the UK workforce in libraries, archives, records, information management, and knowledge management. The data, presented in the fact sheets by sector and region, derive from the findings of the Workforce Mapping Project.
This project was completed in 2014/15 by an Edinburgh Napier University team that comprised three staff from the Centre for Social Informatics (Hazel Hall, Christine Irving and Bruce Ryan) and three from the Employment Research Institute (Robert Raeside, Tao Chen and Matthew Dutton). In November 2015 CILIP and ARA used data from the final project report to publish the headline findings from the study. Continue reading
CSI colleagues Iris Buunk, Dr Laura Muir, Marwa Salayma (Centre for Distributed Computing, Networking and Security), Dr Tom Kane, John Mowbray, Lyndsey Jenkins, & Frances Ryan
The Centre for Social Informatics had a very successful day at Edinburgh Napier University’s 2016 Research Conference last Wednesday. We presented our work in three of the sessions: Continue reading
The Centre for Social Informatics has won funding to investigate levels of digital and information literacy within Scotland’s Community Council system in a project entitled Information Literacy for Democratic Engagement (IL-DEM). The award has been granted by the CILIP Information Literacy Group.
Peter Cruickshank, Dr Bruce Ryan and I will explore how community councillors develop the skills required to inform and engage with the citizens that they represent, and how libraries support this work. It will build on two established research streams within the Centre for Social Informatics: Cruickshank and Ryan’s work on digital engagement in local democracy (such as our recent DigiCC workshops), and my work with Christine Irving on information literacy and life-long learning. It will also build on our group’s track record in library and information science research. Continue reading
Between 2009 and 2012 I led the implementation of the UK’s Library and Information Science Research Coalition. The broad mission of the Coalition was to facilitate a coordinated and strategic approach to Library and Information Science (LIS) research across the UK, strengthening links between LIS researchers and LIS practitioners, and between research and practice. This was achieved through the activities of the Coalition as a whole, and its ‘daughter’ projects: Developing Research Excellence and Methods (DREaM), and the two-part Research in Librarianship Impact Evaluation Study. Continue reading
As was the case in many UK universities, last Tuesday 8th March – International Women’s Day – was a busy day for Edinburgh Napier University’s Athena SWAN teams. The coordinators of our gender equality network (GEN) – Dr Clare Taylor (Senior Lecturer in the School of Life, Sport and Social Sciences) and Frances Ryan (PhD student, School of Computing) – organised ‘equality breakfasts’ on each of the three main University campuses. These were co-hosted by the Athena SWAN leads for our six schools and Equate Scotland, the Edinburgh Napier based organisation that supports the recruitment, retention, development, and progression of women in science, engineering, technology and the built environment in Scotland. Continue reading
Hazel Hall 