Information Matters - Library and Information Studies at the University of Brighton

Book published!

Audrey Marshall — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:44:21 +0000

Over the last year or so I’ve been busy co-editing a book on collection development with Maggie Fieldhouse from UCL. Our book has now been published and we’re very pleased with it. It’s a Facet publication: Collection Development in the Digital Age.

The book is aimed at students but is also useful to practitioners. Those of you working in collection development and management will be only too aware of the changes taking place in the market, the technologies and user expectations. The book addresses those challenges and explores how collection development, as both a concept and a practical activity, is evolving to meet them. The book draws together the perspectives of academics and practitioners at the forefront of modern collection development.

Check it out here: CD Book and get your library to order a few copies!

Filed under: Announcements, CPD

Our own new professionals

Audrey Marshall — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:33:34 +0000

Two of the students who are just completing MAIS have had an article published in Impact, the journal of CILIP’s Career Development Group. Joseph Norwood and Ka-Ming Pang have given a couple of presentations on the theme of professional activism among their cohort at university. Read their article about it:

http://wp.me/p1t82Z-2m

Filed under: Announcements

ISHIMR Conference

Audrey Marshall — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:03:49 +0000

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!).

Filed under: Health Informatics, Meetings/Events

Student successes

Audrey Marshall — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:04:23 +0000

MAIS graduates 2011

: This is Julie Gabriel, Sally Norwood and Lindsay White, all now MA graduates. This was taken shortly before the ceremony began, when they were nervouslyawaiting proceedings! Congratulations to them as well as to those students who weren’t able to attend to the graduation ceremony. Keep in touch!

Henrik Jones winners 2011

The second photo shows Marion Huckle, from CILIP, together with the winners of the CILIP Henrik Jones prize. CILIP awards this prize in honour of Henrik Jones, who was the first librarian of the Library Association and who also had connections with Brighton Library School. The prize is awarded to MA students who have done exceptionally well in information retrieval work. This year it was shared amongst the three students in the photo: Ka-Ming Pang, Josh Jenkin and Julia Worley. Well done all three.

Filed under: Announcements

Keeping it in the family

Audrey Marshall — Mon, 30 May 2011 10:05:12 +0000

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.

Filed under: CILIP, Meetings/Events Tagged: CILIP, Event

New models of information production, distribution and consumption

Martin De Saulles — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:54:02 +0000

I gave a talk last week to CILIP Sussex based on a book I am writing for Facet Publishing. The slides and my talk are below:

Filed under: CILIP, Research, Social Media, Web 2.0 Tagged: CILIP, Facet

Research placements

Audrey Marshall — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:34:09 +0000

As part of their MA course, our students have to do a placement in a host organisation. This is partly to give them relevant work experience but is mainly to give them a setting within which they can carry out a piece of research. This forms the basis of their dissertation. It also gives the host organisation a useful piece of work – typically something they don’t have the time or resources to do themselves.

Recent projects have included: an evaluation of services to disabled children in East Sussex; the role of Knowledge Support Librarians in the NHS in Hampshire; the use of visual imagery to promote Rare Books and Special Collections; geo-tagging as a retrieval aid at Screen Archive South East.

This is a small sample of what recent students have done, but you can see the range for yourselves. One local host commented on one placement: “It was a very positive experience for everyone involved. We have been able to use her dissertation on electronic resources to great effect…”

This is the time of year that we start matching students up with host organisations. The placements themselves take place over the summer (for full-time students) and from October through to February (for part-time students). If you’d be interested in hosting a placement or would like to know more please contact:

Audrey Marshall
a.m.marshall@brighton.ac.uk.

Filed under: Announcements, Research

Open Day

Audrey Marshall — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:01:13 +0000

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.

Filed under: Meetings/Events, Uncategorized

Rare Books in Brighton

Audrey Marshall — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:33:55 +0000

It’s always good to have cause to celebrate and on Wednesday evening there was a very uplifting event in the Jubilee Library. This was to celebrate the launch of their new online Rare Books catalogue. The Rare Books Collection is a wonderful treasure and it’s good to see it made more accessible through this resource. It was also good to chat to colleagues, present and former, and also to meet up with former – and potential – students. The City Councillors who were there reinforced the message that Brighton & Hove are committed to their library service and that there won’t be any closures in the near future. Another cause for celebration!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Graduation ceremony

Audrey Marshall — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:40:44 +0000

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.

Filed under: Meetings/Events, Uncategorized