Workforce Data Consortium issues invitation to tender for Workforce Mapping Survey 2021/22

The Edinburgh Napier University Workforce Mapping Project team, 2014/15

In 2014/15 I led an Edinburgh Napier University team on a research project to profile the UK information professions. My colleagues were Christine Irving (now retired) and Dr Bruce Ryan of the Centre for Social Informatics; and Professor Robert Raeside (also retired), Dr Matthew Dutton, and Dr Tao Chen (now at the University of Bradford) of the Employment Research Institute. The output was a 186-page report (inclusive of 20 figures and 97 tables of statistics). 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

Defining the UK information worker: the CILIP/ARA Workforce Mapping Project #lib_research17

Senator William McMaster, founder of McMaster University

William McMaster

Yesterday I delivered a presentation about social media research undertaken by staff and students within the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University (slides available on SildeShare) at McMaster University.

Today I am returning to campus to contribute to the McMaster Library Research Symposium 2017.

At this event I will be relating the main findings of the CILIP/ARA Workforce Mapping Project completed in 2014/15, and the impact of the work to date. The slides for my presentation are available on SlideShare, and below. Continue reading

Information Literacy for Democratic Engagement (IL-DEM) project: findings

Information Literacy group logoPeter Cruickshank, Dr Bruce Ryan and I recently completed the Information Literacy for Democratic Engagement (IL-DEM) project. This work set out to investigate levels of digital and information literacy within Scotland’s Community Council system. It was supported by a grant from the CILIP Information Literacy Group.

We explored how community councillors develop the skills required to inform and engage with the citizens that they represent, and how libraries support this work. In doing so have extended further two established research streams within the Centre for Social Informatics: (1) Cruickshank and Ryan’s work on digital engagement in local democracy (such as our DigiCC workshops), and (2) mine with Christine Irving on information literacy and life-long learning. This work also builds upon our group’s track record in library and information science research. Continue reading

Information Literacy for Democratic Engagement: project update #IL-DEM

Information Literacy group logoThe Centre for Social Informatics is currently undertaking a project entitled Information Literacy for Democratic Engagement (IL-DEM).  Supported by a grant from the CILIP Information Literacy Group, our work investigates levels of digital and information literacy within Scotland’s Community Council system.

Specifically Peter Cruickshank, Dr Bruce Ryan and I are exploring how community councillors develop the skills required to inform and engage with the citizens that they represent, and how libraries support this work. In doing so we’re extending two established research streams within the Centre for Social Informatics: Cruickshank and Ryan’s work on digital engagement in local democracy (such as our DigiCC workshops), and mine with Christine Irving on information literacy and life-long learning. This work also builds upon our group’s track record in library and information science research. 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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A week in Aberdeen at iDocQ and i3 2015 #iDocQ2015 #i3rgu

Seven weeks of dissemination

When Leo Appleton presents the slides for our joint-authored paper on the value and impact of public library services on citizenship development at the 11th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services today, this will mark the end of a busy conference season for the staff and research students in the Centre for Social Informatics. Continue reading

Six papers at Information, Interactions and Impact i3 2015, and a preview of iDocQ 2015

i3 logoThe programme for Information, interactions and impact: i3 2015 has just been published. This international conference, held on a biennial basis in Aberdeen, brings together an international community of academic and practitioner researchers to explore the quality and effectiveness of the interactions between people and information, and how such interactions can bring about change. This year it takes place at the Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University from Tuesday June 23rd to Friday June 26th. I’m delighted that six paper proposals that I co-authored for submission to the conference have been accepted, and they can now be seen in the programme.

Five of the six papers draw on projects currently undertaken by colleagues and research students within the Centre for Social Informatics: Christine Irving; Lynn Killick; John Mowbray; Frances Ryan; and Louise Rasmussen. These are:

Continue reading