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

A return visit to McMaster University in August 2017

Dr Brian Detlor

Dr Brian Detlor

Later in summer 2017 I will be visiting McMaster University Ontario, Canada to work with my Canadian collaborator, and Visiting Professor to the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University, Dr Brian Detlor. Amongst the various activities that we have planned, I will be delivering two seminar papers when I am at McMaster.

The first paper entitled ‘Research into social media information practices, and social media information practices for research’ will be presented as part of the DeGroote Business School seminar series on Monday 14th August. The following day, on Tuesday 15th August, I will relate the main findings of the CILIP/ARA Workforce Mapping Project to an audience of librarians at the McMaster Library Symposium in a paper entitled ‘Defining the UK information worker: the CILIP-ARA Workforce Mapping Project’. (The abstracts for these two papers are given below.) Continue reading

Diversity and equality in libraries: as services, as workplaces

In general, libraries are considered as inclusive institutions, where all users expect to receive the same level of service regardless of personal characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, race, religion, sexual orientation or social class.

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Poster presentation in Copenhagen: Mapping the UK Information Workforce at #asist2016

Heering Copenhagen

Some colour under a cold grey sky in Copenhagen

I’ve been in Copenhagen since the end of last week, participating at the 79th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology. I’ve been enjoying the presentations – from Greg Welch‘s keynote on telepresence to Debbie Rabina‘s account of research of prisoners’ information needs examined through discourse analysis – and catching up with colleagues from around the world.

There’s some really interesting work being conducted in Information Science across the globe, and I’ve learnt about some tempting job opportunities too. For example, if you’re functionally bilingual in English and French, and looking for a tenure-track position in North America, the University of Ottawa’s School of Information Studies – l’École des sciences de l’information (ÉSIS) – is hoping to recruit an Associate Professor who can make contributions to teaching and research in  library and information management. Do contact Mary Cavanagh (mary.cavanagh@uottawa.ca,@mfcavanagh) if this is of interest to you. I’ve also managed to play tourist a little with a short visit the city (in the cold and grey) on Sunday morning with my Finnish colleague Gunilla Widen. 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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DREaM Again moves into the data analysis phase

DREaM logoSince 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.

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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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