Sheffield Information Studies
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Information School or iSchool of the
University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public university, public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Fir ...
, in
Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...
,
South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the north, the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north-east, Lincolnshire ...
,
England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
, was founded in 1963 as the University's Postgraduate School of Librarianship and became in 2010 the first UK
iSchool An information school (sometimes abbreviated I-school or iSchool) is a university-level institution committed to understanding the role of information in nature and human endeavors. Synonyms include school of information, department of informat ...
. Other names were the Postgraduate School of Librarianship and Information Science (PGSLIS, 1967–81) and Department of Information Studies (1981-2011). , it employs 33 academic staff, 16 administrative/support staff, 6 affiliated research staff, and has about 65 research students. The current head of school is Professor Val Gillet. The department opened in 1964 as a library school, becoming only the second university-based department in the UK. Since then, like many information science departments it has grown to encompass teaching and research in
cheminformatics Cheminformatics (also known as chemoinformatics) refers to the use of physical chemistry theory with computer and information science techniques—so called "'' in silico''" techniques—in application to a range of descriptive and prescriptive ...
, educational informatics,
health informatics Health informatics combines communications, information technology (IT), and health care to enhance patient care and is at the forefront of the medical technological revolution. It can be viewed as a branch of engineering and applied science. ...
,
information retrieval Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the task of identifying and retrieving information system resources that are relevant to an Information needs, information need. The information need can be specified in the form ...
,
information systems An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems comprise four components: task, people, structu ...
, knowledge and information management, as well as libraries and information society. Such is the status of the school, that it has twice been honoured with a special issue of the '' Journal of Information Science'' devoted entirely to the department, its staff and its research outputs.


Research achievements

The School is Number One in the World for Library and Information Studies in the ''
QS World University Rankings The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with '' Times ...
'' 2021. The school has ranked highest or joint highest in its subject rating in every
Research Assessment Exercise The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) was an exercise undertaken approximately every five years on behalf of the four UK higher education funding councils ( HEFCE, SHEFC, HEFCW, DELNI) to evaluate the quality of research undertaken by British ...
since the running of the first exercise in 1986. In this UK-government sponsored assessment of research outputs, no other department in its subject field (or its
University A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...
) achieved this consistency; few departments of any subject area in UK universities managed such a high level of continuous research output (see the following links to the 1992, 1996, 2001 RAE results). In 2008, rankings of departments was left to news organizations; the
Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The THES''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...
placed Sheffield at No. 1 again. In 2008, an analysis of citations showed four of the ten most cited UK information studies academics were working in the Sheffield department. It is also the first UK-based (and 2nd European) department to become an
iSchool An information school (sometimes abbreviated I-school or iSchool) is a university-level institution committed to understanding the role of information in nature and human endeavors. Synonyms include school of information, department of informat ...
.


Notable staff, past and present

* Micheline Beaulieu - Chair of the Computing and Informatics Panel of the
European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...
(2008-2011) *
Sheila Corrall Sheila Mary Corrall is Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests are in scholarly communication, collection development in the digital world, professional competence, and intellectual cap ...
- first President of
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP, pronounced ) is a professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge management, knowledge managers in the United Kingdom. It was established in 20 ...
(CILIP), 2002-3:. * Michael Lynch, chemoinformatics specialist * Wilfred Saunders, Founding Director of the Postgraduate School of Librarianship, Sheffield * Bob Usherwood - President of the Library Association, 1998; fellow of the
Royal Society of Arts The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, commonly known as the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), is a learned society that champions innovation and progress across a multitude of sectors by fostering creativity, s ...
. * Steve Whittaker - inducted into the
SIGCHI The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI). It hosts the flagship annual international H ...
academy in 2008. * Paul Clough - Head of Information Retrieval Research Group * Peter Willett - leading researcher in
cheminformatics Cheminformatics (also known as chemoinformatics) refers to the use of physical chemistry theory with computer and information science techniques—so called "'' in silico''" techniques—in application to a range of descriptive and prescriptive ...
. * Tom Wilson - recipient of the 2009 ASIS&T SIG USE award for "''outstanding contributions to information behavior''" and
Association for Information Science and Technology The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) is a nonprofit membership organization for information professionals that sponsors an annual conference as well as several serial publications, including the ''Journal of the Associ ...
(ASIS&T) Award of Merit, 2017.


Notable alumni

*
Michael Buckland Michael Keeble Buckland (born 1941) is an emeritus professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information and co-director of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. Career Buckland was born and grew up in England. He entered library work as a ...
- Emeritus Professor at the University of California—Berkeley School of Information and Co-Director of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative *
John McTernan John McTernan (born 1959) is a British political strategist and commentator. He has been a political adviser to the Labour Party. McTernan was Prime Minister Tony Blair's Director of Political Operations from 2005 to 2007. He then worked on ...
- Director of Political Operations at
10 Downing Street 10 Downing Street in London is the official residence and office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime minister of the United Kingdom. Colloquially known as Number 10, the building is located in Downing Street, off Whitehall in th ...
under
Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader ...
. * Alasdair Paterson - poet, winner of the 1975
Eric Gregory Award The Eric Gregory Award is a literary award given annually by the Society of Authors for a collection by United Kingdom poets under the age of 30. The award was founded in 1960 by Dr. Eric Gregory to support and encourage young poets. Past winne ...
for poetry. * Hatoon Kadi -
Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...
n
comedian A comedian (feminine comedienne) or comic is a person who seeks to entertainment, entertain an audience by making them laughter, laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolishly (as in slapstick), or employing prop c ...
and
activist Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...
who hosts the Noon Al Niswa comedy show on
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
.


References


Further reading

*Saunders, W. L., ed. ''University and Research Library Studies: some contributions from the University of Sheffield Post-graduate School of Librarianship and Information Science''. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1968 *


External links


University of Sheffield Information School home page
{{Authority control University of Sheffield Information schools Library science education