Applications open for 10 fully-funded PhD studentship places within the School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University

PhD supervisors Dr Frances Ryan, Dr David Haynes, Debbie Meharg, Dr David Brazier

PhD supervisors from the Centre for Social Informatics

The School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University is currently advertising ten fully-funded PhD studentships across a wide range of subjects, from sound technologies to cybersecurity. Amongst these are four proposed by Centre for Social Informatics colleagues: Continue reading

Lorna Lloyd’s ‘Diary of the war’ podcast series launch event: review and resources

Bethany Ray plays Lorna Lloyd

Actor Bethany Ray, pictured here with the original  Diary of the war, plays her great-great aunt Lorna Lloyd in the podcast series

After several weeks of preparation, on Tuesday 24th May 2022 we launched the Diary of the war podcast series at Great Malvern Priory. This blog post provides a review of the launch. It also provides links to materials related to this event, and to the wider Platform to platform (P2P) project. (Please scroll to the bottom of the post for the full list of resources.)

The content of the podcast series episodes centres on 25 year old Malvern resident Lorna Lloyd‘s chronicle of the first 16 months of World War II, complemented with contemporaneous news coverage related to the events and issues that she discusses in her writing. A further four ‘bonus’ episodes that comprise a selection of Lloyd’s poetry are included in the series. Continue reading

Acceptances at Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2022 for Edinburgh Napier team #isic22

iSchools, Inc. - Contributions sought for 2022 Information Seeking in Context

Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Marina Milosheva has recently learnt that both of the submissions that she made earlier in the year for Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2022 have been accepted. Marina will participate in the doctoral workshop, and present a full paper co-authored with her PhD supervisors (myself, Professor Pete Robertson, and Dr Peter Cruickshank) as one of the contributions to the conference programme. Continue reading

Is the public library included? New paper on local authority services for forced migrants from Edinburgh Napier University team at #CoLIS11

CoLIS11 logo Oslo 2022Conceptions of Library and Information Science (CoLIS) 11 opens today in Oslo, Norway. Hosted by the Department of Archivistics, Library and Information Science at Oslo Metropolitan University, the conference runs until Wednesday 1st June. Continue reading

Applications sought for funded PhD studentship jointly supervised by colleagues from the University of Glasgow, Edinburgh Napier University, and the National Library of Scotland

SGSAH Gaelic logoWith colleagues Dr Paul Gooding (University of Glasgow) and Amina Shah (National Library of Scotland), Dr David Brazier of the Centre for Social Informatics has been awarded an Applied Research Collaborative PhD Studentship by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH). Continue reading

Data collection by multi-location, longitudinal focus group: an application in library and information science research

Leo Appleton

Dr Leo Appleton

I have recently published a new paper on research methods in Library and Information Science (LIS) research with Dr Leo Appleton of the Information School at Sheffield University.

This work is concerned with the data collection phase of Leo‘s part-time doctoral study completed in 2020 within the Centre for Social Informatics.  For this, Leo deployed a novel multi-location longitudinal focus group method. Fifty-three participants took part in three rounds of focus group meetings in eight public library authorities in England and Scotland over a period of three years. Continue reading

Rachel Salzano wins bursary place at 2022 CILIP conference #CILIPconf22

Rachel Salzano

Rachel Salzano

Congratulations to Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Rachel Salzano, who has won a bursary to attend the 2022 Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) conference in Liverpool on 7th and 8th July.

The award is sponsored by CILIP’s Library and Information Research Group (LIRG). The purpose of LIRG is to promote the value of information research, and strengthen links between research with practice. As a qualified librarian who is currently undertaking a doctoral study that aims to influence practice as well as contribute to the development of theory, it is fitting that Rachel has been selected for the bursary.

Find out more about Rachel’s PhD in the PhD musings on her web site Librarian Sans Library.
CILIP conference 2022 logo

The public library as public sphere: new article accepted for publication in the Journal of Documentation

Journal of Documentation 2021The public library as public sphere: a longitudinal analysis has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Documentation. I recently co-authored this article with Dr Leo Appleton (Senior University Teacher at the University of Sheffield).

In the article, Leo and I discuss the role of the UK public library as a public sphere, and the ways in which this role relates to the epistemic, community, and political functions of public libraries. The article is a major output from Leo‘s doctoral research, which he completed part-time in the Centre for Social Informatics. The findings presented in the article derive from the analysis of empirical data that Leo collected in 24 focus groups with active public library users over a period of four years. Continue reading

‘New information literacy horizons: making the case for career information literacy’: new paper published in Proceedings of 7th European Conference on Information Literacy

#ECIL2021 European Conference on Information Literacy 2021 conference proceedingsSelected papers from the European Conference on Information Literacy 2021 (ECIL2021) are now available in a set of conference proceedings published by Springer. Amongst these is the conference contribution co-authored by Edinburgh Napier University colleagues Marina Milosheva, Hazel Hall, Pete Robertson, and Peter Cruickshank on career information literacy (CIL), and distinctions between CIL and the concepts of workplace information literacy (WIL) and employment information literacy (EIL). Continue reading

Strong showing from the Centre for Social Informatics at the ASIST 24-hour Global Conference

The two-day ASIST 24-hour Global Conference opens today across all time zones. Five members of the Centre for Social Informatics (CSI) will be presenting their research completed within the Centre in four presentations as part of the the Europe/Africa programme tomorrow (27th April 2022). They are: Continue reading