I write these pieces every 6 months, usually for the Centre for Social Informatics’ all-centre meetings. (I’m usually incapable of speech by the time it’s my turn to report.[1]) Click this link to see all the pieces in this series.
Continue readingThis entry is more about my feelings than most posts on this blog.
This weekend I listened to all of Lorna Lloyd’s World War 2 diary entries recorded by Bethany Ray and the team for the Platform to Platform project I’m leading, after reading through a colleague’s nearly-finished PhD thesis. I’m wryly amused that after each recording ended, iTunes started playing songs from The Chemical Brothers’ Surrender or The Clash’s Combat Rock. From horribleness in the early twentieth century to either (sometimes brooding) dance music or depictions of the Vietnam War, U.S. foreign policy, and American society in moral decline. What would Joe Strummer make of today?
Continue readingI’ve been using LeafletJS to create online maps since 2013:
None of this would have been possible without Vladimir Agafonkin. LeafletJS enables easy creation of online maps. An ecosystem of plugins enables use of different background maps and images, lines and shapes, different markers, overlays, clusters, heat maps, data visualisation, events and so much more! Much of this free and open-source. There is also a free WordPress plug-in, but you’ll need a paid WordPress instance to use plugins. Hence this map is elsewhere:
Anyway, thank you Vladimir. I hope you and yours are safe, and that Mr Putin just stops!
I’ve just updated my list of projects (on my CV page) to include 5 projects that are now current or imminent. They are
I’m also doing some marking in April, and contributing to outputs from some previous projects. This includes waiting to see what changes the reviewers want me to make to a paper submitted to ISIC 2022. I can’t tell you how much I want to go to Berlin!
And a big shout out to my colleagues on these projects and outputs: David Brazier, Alison Brettle, Peter Cruickshank, Pritam Chita, Wegene Demeke, Paul Gooding, Hazel Hall, Ingi Helgason, Iain McGregor, Marina Milosheva, Jon Mortimer, Gemma Webster, Marianne Wilson, 2 MSc students on the MSc/CPP programme.
I write these pieces every 6 months, usually for the Centre for Social Informatics’ all-centre meetings. (I’m usually incapable of speech by the time it’s my turn to report.[1]) I’m still really miffed that we can’t get together in person. Click this link to see all the pieces in this series.
Continue readingRecently, I created online maps of creative companies in Scottish Borders, the Lothians, Edinburgh and Fife (collectively ‘south-east Scotland’). This was commissioned by the Creative Informatics programme, which aims ‘to explore how data can be used to drive ground-breaking new products, businesses and experiences’, among other good things.
Without further ado, here are the maps:
Below I rant about the problems encountered in this project – they are almost all about the data.
Continue readingLast week I attended training on ‘How to communicate your research using social media, blogs, video and infographics’, run by CILIP’s UK eInformation Group. I am grateful to Napier’s School of Computing for funding my attendance and this training by Andy Tattersall of Sheffield University’s School of Health and Related Research.
Continue readingMy first formal experience of leading an academic project has started. I am principal investigator of Platform to platform: an investigation into audience engagement with digitised archives and its transformative impact across different online formats. (The link is to Hazel Hall’s description of the project.)
The project will
This online session, hosted by Queen Margaret University on 24 November, provided an overview of how to get research noticed by government and other policy institutions. The ‘research questions’ were
The following is my lightly edited notes of the presentation by the presentation by Nick Bibby, Director of Scottish Policy and Research Exchange, and the following Q&A session. Hence any mistakes or poor language are due to me, not Nick. Images are screenshots. If I receive the slides, I will update the images so they are clearer.
Continue readingA few weeks ago, I was at CILIP Scotland‘s Autumn Regathering, the first such in-person event for a couple of years. You can read about it on CILIPS’ website, and you can read about two of the presentations on the Centre for Social Informatics blog. In that piece, Rachel Salzano and I write about the session on ‘AI and the information professional’ and ‘Climate Action, Inequalities and Knowledge’.
Last week, I was virtually at CILIP Scotland East Branch‘s AGM. Following the brief formalities, there was an in-conversation discussion of synergies between the strategies below, and the need to prioritise actions for the post-Covid world.
As CILIPS wrote:
Three important new library strategies have recently been launched that will set the scene in Scotland for years to come: The National Library of Scotland’s Reaching People, SLIC’s Forward – Scotland’s Public Library Strategy, and Vibrant Libraries, Thriving Schools – A National Strategy for School Libraries in Scotland. These continue the work over recent years to place libraries at the heart of Scottish civic, cultural, and educational life.
(from EventBrite)
Panellists National Librarian Amina Shah, SLIC CEO Pamela Tulloch, and Chair of the Public Library Strategy Advisory Group Jeanette Castle discussed the synergies between the strategies, and the need to prioritise actions for the post-Covid world.
You can watch the panel session, and you can check out live-tweets with hashtag #PowerOfThree. Lots to learn and enthuse about!
Bruce's IT-ish world 