Spreading the word of Lorna Lloyd’s ‘Diary of the war’ podcast series at #ARA2022 and #BBCat100

Members of the Platform to platform (P2P) and Heritage organisations and podcasts: scoping study (HOPSS) project teams from the Centre for Social Informatics have enjoyed presenting their work at two conferences this month. First, at the start of September I attended part of the Archives and Records Association’s annual conference 2022 in Chester. Then, with my colleagues Dr Bruce Ryan and Marianne Wilson, I spent most of last week in Bradford at the BBC at 100 Symposium. Continue reading

Paper acceptance at the 2022 Archives and Records Association conference for Edinburgh Napier team #ARA2022

ARA Conference

My colleagues Dr Bruce Ryan, Dr Iain McGregor and I have recently learnt that a submission that we made this January has been accepted for the Archives and Records Association UK and Ireland 2022 conference. This event runs from 31st August to 2nd September 2022 in Chester. The draft conference programme for the conference is already available, and registrations open. Continue reading

Workforce Mapping Project report now available for download

The full output of the Workforce Mapping Project that I led in 2014/15 as commissioned research for the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and the Archives and Records Association (ARA) has been released. This is now available as a download from CILIP and from ARA (free of charge for members, £40 for others). Continue reading

Demographics of the UK information professions: fact sheets published by CILIP and ARA

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

Who is the ‘typical’ UK information worker? Headline findings of the CILIP/ARA Workforce Mapping Project

Workforce Mapping Project executive summary

The executive summary is available from the CILIP web site

Last week the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and the Archives and Records Association (ARA) held a launch event in London. Here an executive summary of the Workforce Mapping Project, with which I have been heavily involved over the past 15 months, was presented. The summary distributed at the launch notes key findings of the study.

These include:

  • The estimated size of the UK workforce in the Library, Archives, Records, Information Management, and Knowledge Management professions is 86,376.
  • Women dominate the workforce (78.1% of the workforce is female, and 21.9% male), yet earn less than men, and are not so well represented in senior management positions.
  • The workforce is highly qualified: 61.4% hold postgraduate academic qualifications.
  • The workforce is ageing: 55.3% of its members are over 45 years of age. (The equivalent figure for the UK workforce as a whole is 41.1%.)
  • There is low ethnic diversity in the workforce: 96.7% identify as ‘white’.

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More men wanted – to complete the Workforce Mapping Project survey

Workforce mapping project banner
The Workforce Mapping Project survey is found at http://bit.ly/workforcemap

The Workforce Mapping Project survey closes at the end of the month on Thursday 30th April. The Edinburgh Napier project team is keen to encourage those who work within the UK in roles associated with libraries, archives, records, information, and knowledge management, and who have not already done so, to make their contributions to the study.

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Put yourself on the map: complete the Workforce Mapping Project survey

Workforce mapping project bannerThe Workforce Mapping Project survey is live at http://bit.ly/workforcemap

This is a call to workers in the library, archives, records, information, and knowledge management sector to contribute to a research project by completing a short survey. If you work in this sector, please read on to learn more about the project and how you can contribute to it.

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Modelling information literacy from a lifelong learning perspective: new work by Christine Irving

Christine Irving

Christine Irving

Christine Irving, part-time Research Fellow in the Centre for Social Informatics (CSI) at Edinburgh Napier University, is currently working on a thesis, provisionally entitled The development of a model of information literacy from a lifelong learning perspective, for the award of PhD by Published Works. This work will draw on Christine’s long track record of research and development work on information literacy and lifelong learning undertaken between 2004 and 2010 as part of the Scottish Information Literacy Project (2004-2010), and which continues with the Scottish Information Literacy Community of Practice The right information: information skills for a 21st century Scotland. I am Christine’s Director of Studies, and Dr Alison Brettle of the University of Salford is her second supervisor. Christine is required to submit her 25,000 word thesis by September 2015.

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