Centre for Social Informatics at #ASIST2016, Copenhagen

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Hazel Hall

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 →

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

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Hazel Hall

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 →

New funding for information literacy project

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Hazel Hall

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 →

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

Posted on December 2, 2015 by Hazel Hall

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’.

Continue reading →

Community councils and digital engagement: report on autumn workshops delivered to date

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Hazel Hall

Dr Bruce Ryan and Peter Cruickshank, both of whom work with me in the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University, are currently delivering a programme of four workshops on the theme of digital engagement for Community Councils and Registered Tenants Organisations in Scotland.

These workshops are supported by the Scottish Government and the Improvement Service. The main aim of hosting these events is to improve knowledge sharing and networking between community council representatives. They also provide an opportunity to showcase (1) the Scottish Government’s work on Community Empowerment, (2) the Improvement Service’s work on the KnowledgeHub and the national web site for community councils, and (3) how community councils might use digital tools for participatory budgeting. Continue reading →

Community councils and digital engagement: free workshops around Scotland this autumn

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Hazel Hall

Earlier this year I wrote about a workshop on digital engagement for community councillors hosted by Peter Cruickshank and Dr Bruce Ryan, both of whom are my colleagues in the Centre for Social Informatics. This first event at Edinburgh Napier University was a great success, as can be seen in the blogged review of the day and the outcomes report.

Following on from this, we are running another four such events in other locations this autumn in: South Ayrshire (9th October); Moray (30th October); Angus (13th November); and the Borders (20th November). Continue reading →

DREaM Again moves into the data analysis phase

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Hazel Hall

Since the end of May my colleague Dr Bruce Ryan and I have been investigating the long-term impact of the AHRC-funded DREaM project (for which I was Principal Investigator in 2011 and 2012), and the forms that such impact has taken.

As part of this work we have been considering what ‘impact’ means in the context of library and information science (LIS), and how this relates to conceptions of the term in other domains where there is a perceived research-practice gap, such as policing, social work and nursing. This first part of the study has been based on an analysis of the extant literature. We intend to write this up as a review paper.

Continue reading →

DREaM Again project launch

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Hazel Hall

In 2011/12 I was Principal Investigator (PI) on the AHRC-funded DREaM project. The aim of this work was to develop a formal UK-wide network of Library and Information Science (LIS) researchers. The project ran from January 2011 to August 2012, and was supported by the Library and Information Science Research Coalition. We reported the initial successes of the DREaM project in a paper that I co-authored with Alison Brettle and Charles Oppenheim and presented at QQML 2012. Three years later, we are interested in any further lasting impacts of the project.

To this end I am working with my colleague Dr Bruce Ryan on a follow-up study that investigates any longer-term impact of DREaM, and the forms that such impact (if it exists) has taken. I mentioned these plans earlier in the month in a presentation at the Third International Seminar on LIS Education and Research, and then during my recent opening keynote paper at the 2015 EAHIL conference (the format of which was inspired by the DREaM project, and the event masterminded by Marshall Dozier, who was a member of the DREaM cadre).

Continue reading →

Centre for Social Informatics hosts workshop on digital engagement for community councillors

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Hazel Hall

Today my colleagues Peter Cruickshank and Dr Bruce Ryan are hosting a workshop on digital engagement for community councillors at the Merchiston campus of Edinburgh Napier University. Peter and Bruce will draw on the findings of recent projects completed within the Centre for Social Informatics, such as the Research Councils UK Digital Economy Programme funded Hyperlocal government engagement online project, and the 2012 and 2014 surveys of Community Council Internet use, to share good practice on the development of Internet presences for community councils.

Continue reading →

Hyperlocal government-citizen engagement: a new project for the Centre for Social Informatics

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Hazel Hall

The Centre for Social Informatics has been awarded a new research grant by the Communities and Culture Network+.

My colleagues Peter Cruickshank and Dr Bruce Ryan have won funding for a study into hyperlocal government-citizen engagement. They will investigate the efforts of three neighbouring Scottish community councils in improving engagement with their citizens in both online and offline conversations. This work follows on from recent and ongoing investigations into the use of online communication by community councils: (1) a project to visualise community council locations; (2) a study of public online presences of community councils.

Continue reading →

Hazel Hall

Emeritus Professor, Edinburgh Napier University

Tag Archives: Bruce Ryan

Centre for Social Informatics at #ASIST2016, Copenhagen