Dr Bruce Ryan and I are planning a couple of speaking engagements about our work on Lorna Lloyd and her Diary of the war in the near future, so today we worked on an updated version of our publicity postcard. Above is the front of the version that we are sending to be printed today. If anyone would like a copy when it’s ready, please email me.
‘Podcasting the archive: An evaluation of audience engagement with a narrative non-fiction podcast series’ is now available in issue 2 of volume 28 of Archives, published last month. I am a co-author of the article alongside Dr Bruce Ryan, Marianne Wilson, and Dr Iain McGregor.
In this work we compare audience engagement with a Second World War archive presented digitally in two formats as: (1) images and text in a Blipfoto journal, and (2) sound in an eight-episode podcast series (which starts with episode 1 here). The main findings reveal differences in levels of engagement for each presentation in respect of entertainment value, learning opportunities, and emotional response. Flexibility of access and authenticity of the archived material were also found to be important to audience engagement, with the nature of contextual information provided alongside the core archive key to the latter. Here we further understanding of facets of audience engagement with digitised archives while opening up new thinking on means of encouraging the general public to interact in more meaningful ways with historical records. Continue reading
Karen Blakeman and Gary Horrocks (Photo credit G. Horrocks.)
Congratulations to Karen Blakeman, named by the UK eInformation Group (UKeiG) as the winner of the 2024 Jason Farradane Award.
The award is given annually to an individual or a group of people in recognition of outstanding contribution to the information profession, who have distinguished themselves in one or more of the following ways: Continue reading
Congratulations to Dr Bruce Ryan, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Computing Engineering and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University, on securing funding for a new research project.
The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Scotland (CILIPS) has funded Bruce to undertake research into the ways that school librarians can help pupils understand the implications of misinformation (i.e. incorrect information that has been created and disseminated by mistake) and disinformation (i.e. false information that has been deliberately created and disseminated with intent to mislead).
Bruce will collect qualitative and quantitative data from school librarians by focus group and in interviews on their: (1) efforts to help pupils in navigating challenging information landscapes and handling misinformation and disinformation; (2) training needs in fulfilling this role; and (3) collaborative work with teachers to address pupils’ understanding of misinformation and disinformation. Continue reading
Girton College, University of Cambridge
When I first started posting entries from the Diary of the war to a Blipfoto journal in September 2019, I knew very little about its author Lorna Lloyd. I was, however, aware that she had been a student Girton College Cambridge in the 1930s. I was therefore hopeful that the College archives might hold materials related to Lorna’s time as an undergraduate student. My plan was to use these to flesh out the few details that we knew about Lorna at that time. Continue reading
Dr Marina Milosheva’s full PhD thesis Career information literacy and the decision-making behaviours of young people is now available from the Edinburgh Napier repository.
On the basis of the ESRC/SDS-funded empirical work reported in the thesis, Marina presents three main contributions to theory:
‘Podcasting the archive: an evaluation of audience engagement with a narrative non-fiction podcast series’ has been accepted for publication by Archives journal in October 2024. This contribution is the main output of the AHRC-Creative Informatics funded Platform to platform project. It is co-authored by Dr Bruce Ryan, Professor Hazel Hall, Marianne Wilson, and Dr Iain McGregor. Continue reading
Earlier this year, the Platform to Platform project team responded to a call from colleagues at the University of Oxford for submissions of Second World War stories to the Their finest hour archive. Continue reading
Shakespeare’s pub on Lothian Road was transformed into the Napier Graduate last week
Congratulations to Dr Marina Milosheva, whose doctoral degree was conferred in absentia at the Edinburgh Napier graduation ceremony at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh last Friday 5th July. Although Marina did not attend the ceremony in person, this day was a significant milestone in her PhD journey. This is because it is only from the date of the graduation ceremony that new PhD graduates are permitted to place the term ‘Dr’ before their names. Continue reading
One of the questions most often asked of doctoral students is What are you going to do when you finish your PhD? For some students it is also one of the most dreaded, especially when it comes from family members or friends who barely understand the title of the doctoral research in question. An obvious, and truthful, answer is ‘No longer work on my thesis’. However, this isn’t really a suitable response. The questioner is interested in hearing about ‘proper’ job ambitions, and the value of these to a successful future career. Continue reading
Hazel Hall 