How do young people and careers advisers collaborate in their use of careers information? New publication in the Australian Journal of Career Development

The collaborative use of career information by young people and career advisers: a thematic content analysis of career counselling records has been published in the April 2024 issue of the Australian Journal of Career Development. I am one of the co-authors of this article alongside Marina Milosheva, Professor Pete Robertson, and Dr Peter Cruickshank.

In this work we discuss the information behaviours of young people and careers advisers. We highlight three modes of information seeking: (1) that prompted by careers advisers; (2) that undertaken by careers advisers on behalf of young people; and (3) that completed collaboratively by young people with their careers advisers. The patterns of the interactions, the language deployed over their duration, and the roles of each set of actors in the process of information seeking, point to ways in which career services may be improved, and career information, advice and guidance policies developed. Continue reading

Creative informatics: unleashing the power of data – exhibition review

Edinburgh Science Festival 2024 brochure coverOn Thursday 4th April, I attended a private reception to celebrate the exhibition Creative Informatics: unleashing the power of data. The exhibition was hosted at the National Museum of Scotland as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival 2024 to mark the end of the funded phase of the Creative Informatics (CI) programme. Since its inception in 2018, Edinburgh Napier University has been one of the four partners of the CI programme alongside the University of Edinburgh, Creative Edinburgh and Codebase.

Over the past five years, the programme has supported individuals and organisations in the creative industries in Edinburgh and south east Continue reading

Work over winter 2023/24

Marina Milosheva draft PhD thesis

Marina Milosheva’s draft PhD thesis

I have been a little quiet on this blog over the past five months or so. The main reason for this is that I have taken on a further role in addition to that of Emeritus Professor. I am now Continue reading

All set for ECIL 2023

ECIL 2023 | European Conference on Information LiteracyThe 2023 European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL2023) takes place in Krakow, Poland this coming week from Monday 9th until Thursday 12th October. Continue reading

Community validation as a method to establish trustworthiness in qualitative LIS research: submission accepted for #asist2023

ASIST 2023 #asist2023 logo LondonCommunity validation as a method to establish trustworthiness in qualitative LIS research has been accepted for the 86th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology. The conference takes place in London between 27th and 31st October this year.

This contribution to the conference poster session is an output from Dr Rachel Salzano‘s doctoral study. It was co-authored by Rachel and her supervision team members: Professor Hazel Hall, Dr Gemma Webster, and Dr David Brazier. Here we evaluate a novel means to determine trustworthiness in qualitative and mixed methods research, while making reference to Rachel’s doctoral study on the adoption and use of public library services by forced migrants. Continue reading

Platform to Platform project: 2022/3 review; 2023/4 preview

RSS Diary of the war header page Lorna Lloyd

The diary of the war is available as a podcast series from https://rss.com/podcasts/lornalloyd/

The Platform to platform (P2P) project ran between February and July 2022. In that time the P2P team met its two main aims. The first was to produce a podcast series based on Lorna Lloyd’s Diary of the war. The second was to use this new audio version of archival content (originally made available as text and images as the LornaL Blipfoto journal between 2019 and 2021) to explore modes of audience engagement with different formats of digitised archive data sets. Continue reading

Congratulations Dr Rachel Salzano!

Dr Rachel Salzano

Rachel Salzano at the Usher Hall just before the start of the graduation ceremony

Congratulations to Dr Rachel Salzano, who was awarded her PhD at the Edinburgh Napier graduation ceremony at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh last Friday 7th July.

I supervised Rachel’s doctoral work alongside Dr Gemma Webster and Dr David Brazier. Given that Rachel was only five and a half months into her doctoral study when the UK went into the first of the COVID19 lockdowns* in March 2020, we consider it a real achievement that she managed to complete her empirical work, write it up, and submit her thesis in October 2022, exactly three years after joining our research group.

Rachel’s doctoral study is entitled The influence of culture on perceived use of public libraries by forced migrants in Scotland and England. Continue reading

A contribution to the RIVAL reunion

Last month, on May 25th 2023, I enjoyed the novelty of participating at a RIVAL network event not as an organiser, but as an invited speaker. Expertly coordinated by Dr Bruce Ryan and Professor Diane Pennington, the event was funded by Edinburgh Napier University with additional sponsorship from McMaster University, Canada (the keynote speaker was Professor Brian Detlor), CILIPS, and SLIC. Continue reading

HOPSS project presentation at ‘Shaking the archive’

Marianne Wilson

HOPSS project speaker Marianne Wilson

Over the past weekend, between 23rd and 25th June, Queen Margaret University hosted a conference entitled Shaking the archive: reconsidering the role of archives in contemporary society.

Yesterday, on the last morning of the conference, Marianne Wilson represented the whole Heritage organisations and podcasts scoping study (HOPSS) project team* when she delivered a presentation entitled The power of audio: presenting archives via podcasts. Continue reading

An afternoon of Social Informatics lightning talks

Hazel Hall, Brian Detlor

Professors Brian Detlor & Hazel Hall

Dr Brian Detlor, Visiting Professor to the Social Informatics Research Group at Edinburgh Napier University, has been in the Edinburgh for the past week. Last Friday I was pleased to participate in one of the events organised to mark Brian’s visit: a lightening talk showcase of some the excellent research undertaken by researchers in the Social Informatics Research Group.

My own presentation was about the AHRC/Creative Informatics funded Platform to Platform project that I completed last year with Dr Bruce Ryan (PI) and Dr Iain McGregor (Co-I). This work involved the creation of a podcast series based on Lorna Lloyd’s Diary of the war, and an assessment audience engagement with archives in two different digital formats – (1) a Blipfoto journal of text and images, and (2) sound in podcast episodes. The slides for my presentation are available on SlideShare. Continue reading