April 22, 2013
We’re holding an Open Day on 1st May in the afternoon and early evening. If you’re interested in an information or library related MA course then come along. If you can’t make that day then check out the webinar option – details on the poster. Alternatively, get in touch with me: a.m.marshall@brighton.ac.uk
June 18, 2012
Celebrating the end of term (well almost, for some students) in the Prince George in Trafalger St.
A jolly time!
February 10, 2012
Erin Gow and Ngozi Odili
September 26, 2011
One of the highlights of the summer for me was attending ISHIMR 2011 in Zurich. The acronym stands for International Symposium on Health Information Management Research and the conference covers a wide range of topics, from the quite technical to the very practical via the frankly esoteric. What I enjoyed particularly was the opportunity to meet people from lots of different coutries. The Middle East was well represented, as was Eastern Europe and there is some fascinating work going on. Also refreshing was meeting several bright young people, some having just graduated with nursing degrees and others studying PhDs. My own contribution was a paper which looked at aspects of the Net.Weight project, the study I was involved in a couple of years ago with colleagues from Brighton University and the Brighton and Sussex Medical School. In the paper, we explored some of the results using the concept of involvement and a 3-stage model devised by Alice Wilson and Richard Casey, who at that time were doing work with the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. Their model has proved to be a useful way to think about our results and to highlight gaps in health information provision. I hope to be able to develop the thinking further but in the meantime the paper is in the Conference Proceedings. The photo shows me in earnest conversation at the conference dinner with a Swedish participant (we were probably discussing Wallander!). 
May 30, 2011
I officially took over as Chair of the CILIP SE Branch at the AGM on Thursday 26th May. I took over from my colleague Juliet Eve, so we’re keeping things in the University of Brighton family. The next year is going to be one of change, with CILIP’s review of Branches and Groups currently under way – but we’re up for the challenge. The speaker at the AGM was Phil Bradley, CILIP vice-President, but speaking to us more as future-watcher. He sees the future as one of opportunity for information professionals – if we’re prepared to grasp it and adopt the role of thought leaders. See more of Phil at http://www.netvibes.com/philbradley#General. 
March 21, 2011
We had a very successful Open Day on Thursday afternoon. Potential students came to talk to us about doing the MA in Information Studies course and their reactions to what we had to tell them was overwhelmingly positive. The photo shows Martin de Saulles and David Horner listening attentively. We talked to young graduates as well as people with several years work experience. There was also the usual wide range of backgrounds – from photography to script-writing. We’re confident that we’ll see a good number of them in September.
February 16, 2011
It was good to see 4 MAIS (pictured) and 2 MSc students at the Graduation Ceremony last Friday. The ceremony was particularly relevant because David House was receiving an honorary degree. David had been Deputy Vice Chancellor until his retirement last year. He started his academic career as a librarian and moved to Brighton to teach librarianship. He never forgot this and referred to it in his excellent acceptance speech – an inspiration to librarians. 
August 2, 2010
As well as our Graduation ceremony on Friday 30th July, it was also the prize-giving for CMIS and Business School students. CILIP award the Henrik Jones prize to a student who has demonstrated a high level of skill in information retrieval and this year it went to David Fricker, who has been studying MAIS part-time and is now about to embark on his dissertation. The photo shows David alongside CILIP’s Marion Huckle and myself, all of us enjoying a glass of bubbly in the garden at Grand Parade. Well done, David. 
August 2, 2010
As always, the graduation ceremony, held on Friday 30th July, proved to be a fitting and moving celebration of success. Three of the MAIS students attended their graduation and celebrated with friends and family. I managed to grab a photo of the 3 of them: Caroline Morris, Fran Fryer and Josef Cabey before they vanished off. Well done and keep in touch!
July 6, 2010
For me – as for many other attendees, the ‘one minute madness‘ session at last Monday’s (28th June 2010) LIS Research Coalition conference at the British Library conference centre was the highlight of the day. Over 20 brave souls stood up and presented on a research topic (from completed, funded projects, to PhD work in progress, to projects just getting off the ground) in 60 seconds. Not only did they all keep to time, but I – rather to my surprise – learnt a huge amount and can actually remember a lot of it! As Charles Oppenheim noted in his highly entertaining closing remarks, this should be the way forward for PhD vivas… I’d add all conference presentations to that. Although, having said that, I was glad Andrew Dillon had longer than a minute, as his informative and thought provoking keynote address was a great start to the morning, following on from Michael Jubb’s overview of LIS research in the UK over the last few decades, and outlining the work of the LIS Research Coalition to date. He rightly singled out Hazel Hall’s amazing work over the last year in promoting the work of the Coalition and in implementing its plans.
During the afternoon, delegates were split into breakout groups to firstly identify questions that needed answers (on the topic of either evidence or value and impact), and secondly, to come up with answers to the questions posed by a different group. I think many important issues were aired during these sessions (and I – of course – took the opportunity to put in my own twopence worth), but I felt rather that the group was better at identifying issues and challenges than answers! That may just have been the control freak lecturer in me wanting my seminar students to knuckle down to the task and come up with solutions! There is also a certain going over old ground on these occasions (as I couldn’t help pointing out, the same issues have been coming up over and over again in a number of research projects (including a study I did in 2006) and the literature for well over twenty years), but as Andrew Dillon had remarked earlier, culture change is a slow process. Having said that, now that the Research Coalition is in place, I have much more confidence that things will move forward than I would have done a few years ago.
Much tweeting and blogging of the event was done during the day (including by me), so you can get a sense of the day in a number of ways – follow the tweet trail (#lisrc10); check out the day’s live blog; and read/watch the sessions, all available from the Coalition conference website; read other reviews of the conference. The organisation of the day, the co-ordination of the reporting of sessions etc. and the enthusiasm were all excellent, so I’m looking forward to where we all take it next…
