Tuesday 29 January 2013

Information Resources Stategy Day!

Today is our bi-annual strategy day. There's a plan , but as always with these things we could end up tearing that up and going in a totally different direction... One thing is for certain there will be coffee and there will be cake. Bring it on!

Wednesday 23 January 2013

LIRG Research Scan Award 2012/13




Helen Buckley Woods and Andrew Booth have been awarded the LIRG Research Scan Award 2012/13.
The idea of the award is to address a current urgent issue in Library and Information Science, by generating a summary of relevant literature. The question under investigation for this award is “What do LIS practitioners want from research?”
The team will conduct a scoping review of practitioner engagement with research with a focus on current literature. Diverse evidence sources will be included such as social media in order to give a more complete picture of practitioners’ relationship with research.
A draft report will be completed by 15th June and the findings will be presented at a LIRG Pre-Umbrella conference event on 1st July. The report will be used to inform LIRG/CILIP research policy.
LIRG (Library and Information Research Group) is a special interest group of CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). For more information about LIRG and the Research Scan Award, please see: https://sites.google.com/site/lirgweb/home/awards/lirg-scan-award

Tuesday 22 January 2013

MmIT National Conference 2013 - Cloudbusting




Book Now “Cloudbusting – demystifying the Cloud”
MmIT Conference, University of Sheffield, 5th April 2013
MMIT bring you an exciting new conference in 2013 covering all aspects of Cloud technology and the implications for library and information services. Featuring a wide variety of excellent speakers and session formats this interactive conference will be both informative and inspirational. If you work in the library and information sector and are increasingly being asked to work in the Cloud or with new technologies, or are just generally interested in library Cloud developments, then this conference is for you!
Full programme available on the MmIT events page

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Talking of the Cloud at The British Library Digital Conversations Series



On Friday I will brave the weather to make the long trip down South to the Big Smoke and give a talk at The British Library as part of their Digital Conversations Series on our experiences at Sheffield in stepping into the Cloud - especially the shift to Google. Previous talks have come from ScHARR Library favourite Mendeley, Artfinder, Karen Blakeman, The Guardian and the BBC to name but a few, so I'm in esteem company. #lookingforwardtoit 

Tuesday 15 January 2013

And I would view 10,000 slides and IIIIIIII would view 10,000 more...


Congratulations to IR's Andy Tattersall on NOT ONLY making the homepage of the web's No.1 slide-sharing site, SlideShare, but also reaching a magnificent 10,000 views of his uploaded presentations so far!

He's such a caring, sharing guy!

Posted by Claire

Latest Research Funding Update: Projects & Programmes (January 2013)






Photo by Rennett Stowe

Previous editions of the update can be viewed here

Posted by Kath

Monday 14 January 2013

Snow falling on...ScHARR Towers!


Created with cinemagr.am

As you can see, its been snowing here at ScHARR Towers (a.k.a Regent Court). Alas its not amounting to much, but its nice just to watch it fall...

Posted by Claire

Tuesday 8 January 2013

Latest Research Funding Update: Fellowships & Studentships (January 2013)




Photo by jeeheon

Previous editions of the update can be viewed here

Posted by Kath

Minute Mendeley - Videos to Help you Reference Better



At ScHARR we teach all of our students the excellent and freely available Mendeley reference management software. As previously mentioned we've also taught students in other faculties and several 100s of students down the line we've not had too many complaints, well nothing we cannot rectify. The response from our students, who are mostly International has been overwhelmingly positive - we think it is a real game changer. Mendeley is a superb piece of software that not only manages your references, cites as you write and creates bibliographies, but it is a social network, a database of references and a place for collaboration. To help all of our students, I have made a few short informal videos, under the banner 'Minute Mendeley' - sadly the hope of making these videos in just a minute were short-lived, so in reality they should be called Minute and 40 Seconds Mendeley, but it just doesn't roll of the tongue, does it? I've also added other official Mendeley videos, so virtually everything you wanted to know about Mendeley is here in one place. 
Here is one of the videos below on annotating PDFs online, for more go to the Minute Mendeley website.




Monday 7 January 2013

Video saved the library star!

Information Resources' Andy Tattersall and Claire Beecroft have recently been published in Panlibus magazine. They were commissioned to write the article as a result of tweeting a short video about their presentation at the 2012 Internet Librarian International conference. Check out their article in full, for free at: