The power of audio – presenting archives via podcasts: submission accepted for Shaking the archives conference, Edinburgh, June 2023

Along with my colleagues Professor Hazel HallMarianne Wilson, and Dr Iain McGregor, I am delighted that the submission that we made earlier this year to the Shaking the archive – reconsidering the role of archives in contemporary society conference has been accepted.

This conference takes place at Queen Margaret University Edinburgh between 23rd and 25th June 2023. Delegates at this hybrid, multidisciplinary event will discuss the power of/within archives, while also exploring ways in which archives may be interrogated, re-imagined, and represented.

Please read more about our submission on Hazel’s post. Meanwhile, I look forward to 3 days of interesting discussions. As an information scientist, specifically interested in information literacy (IL), I begin to wonder how IL theory and practice can be used to engage with archives. A very, very quick online search didn’t bring up any hits, so perhaps there is a research gap here. Of course I stand ready to be proven wrong!

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National award recognises the Platform to Platform project: British Records Association Janette Harley Prize 2022 runner-up

The Platform to Platform project that I led, and which transformed Lorna Lloyd’s Diary of the war into a podcast series has been highly commended as a runner-up for the British Records Association’s (BRA) 2022 Janette Harley Prize. This prize, awarded in memory of archivist Janette Harley (1951-2015), is intended to generate interest in archives, and raise awareness of research and achievements in the world of archives.

Read more about it on Professor Hazel Hall’s blog: https://hazelhall.org/2023/01/16/national-award-recognises-the-platform-to-platform-project-british-records-association-janette-harley-prize-2022-runner-up/

Huge thanks to team-mates who worked so hard on the production of the podcast series: Co-investigators Hazel Hall and Iain McGregor; student production team members Alex Gencs, David Graham, James McLachlan, Andras Peter, and Michael Suttie; performers Bethany Ray (Lorna Lloyd), David Monteath (Theo Lloyd), Richard Godden (newsreader), and Katherine Stephen(announcer).

We are very grateful for the support of the wider community in bringing Lorna’s writing into the public domain, with special thanks to Jake Berger and Emma Gibbs (BBC Archive); Faith Renger (Malvern Museum of Local History); Marianne Wilson (researcher on the sister HOPSS project); Stella Wisdom (British Library); P2P project board members: David Darlington, David MonteathGuy Puzey, Sarah Ames and Sue Dumbleton; the Blipfoto community; the project team at Creative Informatics; and the Lloyd family.

What has Bruce been up to in the second half of 2022?

I write these pieces every 6 months. This one will be my ‘about my research’ contribution to the Applied Informatics research community gathering on Wednesday 11 February. (At previous Centre for Social Informatics all-centre gatherings I’ve been incapable of speech by the time it’s my turn to report.[1] But this is mostly because I hate public speaking.) Click this link to see all the pieces in this series.

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‘From a network model to a model network: strategies for network development to narrow the LIS research–practice gap’ published online

The paper by Hazel Hall, Rachel Salzano, Katherine Stephen and me, about the impacts of the 2019 to 2021 RIVAL events, and the plot even in 2018, has now been published online. Here’s the abstract:

Purpose

The purpose of the empirical study was to examine whether strategies shown to work well in one model of network development for library and information science (LIS) practitioners and researchers could be applied successfully in the development of a new network and contribute to the narrowing of the research–practice gap in LIS.

Design/methodology/approach

Overall, 32 members of a new professional network were surveyed by a questionnaire following the completion of a programme of four network events held between 2019 and 2021.

Findings

The analysis demonstrates the transferability of the existing model of network development to a new network and that it can be successfully adapted for online delivery of network events and activities.

Practical implications

The criteria deployed for the evaluation of the new network could be used in other similar settings. Funding bodies can also use these findings as demonstration of the value of their investment in network grants.

Originality/value

This contribution on means of growing collaborative networks to narrow the LIS research–practice gap stands out in contrast with prior research that tends to focus the support of research productivity of academic librarians in North American universities for the purposes of career development. Here wider aspects of research engagement are considered of value for LIS practitioners from a range of sectors and institutions, beyond North America, for purposes that are broader than personal advancement.

Citation: Hall, H.Ryan, B.M.Salzano, R. and Stephen, K. (2022), “From a network model to a model network: strategies for network development to narrow the LIS research–practice gap”, Journal of Documentation, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-04-2022-0088

Published: ‘Practices related to diabetes information in a group of Finnish adults living with Type 1 diabetes’

My research fits within the broad field of information science, so you might think that I’d be fascinated by information anywhere, all the time. But as far as my Type 1 diabetes is concerned, I’m an information avoider. I was curious to know more about this, especially after a presentation by Gunilla Widén.

Edinburgh Napier University funded a short project, supervised by Gemma Webster, to investigate information avoidance in young UK adults who have Type 1 diabetes. Some initial findings are on this poster. At the same time, Kristina Ericksson-Backa and Gunilla used the interview questions we’d devised to investigate this phenomenon in Finnish adults.

They have just published this paper (in which I’m third author) about their participants’ information behaviour – including avoidance – around diabetes. We all hope to undertake a larger study, and I really hope this would enable me to visit Finland!

References

Eriksson-Backa, K., Widén, G., & Ryan, B. (2022). Practices related to diabetes information in a group of Finnish adults living with Type 1 diabetes. Informaatiotutkimus41(2–3), 29–33. https://doi.org/10.23978/inf.122558

Ryan, B. M., & Webster, G. (2020, June). Information avoidance and diabetes – a preliminary empirical study. Poster presented at Information Science Trends: Health Information Behavior, online

RIVAL paper accepted for publication

The final paper from the RIVAL project has been accepted for publication. In this paper, Hazel Hall, Rachel Salzano, Katherine Stephen and I examine whether strategies shown to work well in one model of network development for Library and Information Science (LIS) practitioners and researchers can be applied successfully in the development of a new network. The first model was centred the DREaM network, while the second was RIVAL.

We show that the model was indeed transferrable, and that it can be successfully adapted for online delivery of network events and activities. (I’m sure you remember all those moves to online as lockdown kicked in!) We believe that the strategies we tested can be used by yet further networking programmes, especially those aiming to bring together researchers and practitioners.

The paper can be downloaded from Edinburgh Napier University’s repository, via the outputs on my Napier web-page, or via the link on my publications and outputs page in this blog. There’s a personal/chatty description of the network model in my post about presenting at CILIPS conference 2021.

Time to be honest: while I did most of the grunt work in organising the RIVAL events, gathering the data reported in this paper and then analysing it (oh the joys of UCInet!), Hazel was the leader who made RIVAL happen and wrote the paper.

Job vacancy: Professor in Social Informatics, Edinburgh Napier University (full-time, permanent)

Scotland’s top modern university for research power and impact is recruiting a new Professor in Social Informatics. Please pass the message on!

Full details of the job can be found in the advertisement on jobs.ac.uk, and by following the links on the Edinburgh Napier University ‘work with us’ page. The deadline for applications is Sunday 4th September 2022, with Interviews expected to take place in the week of 10th October 2022.

This is a senior full-time permanent research, teaching, and leadership role (grade 8, £65,573-£74,735) for an experienced academic whose research interests and expertise align with, and will develop, those of the Social Informatics research group. The group currently comprises ten academic staff, three research staff, one emeritus professor, one visiting professor, and nine PhD students (the majority of whom hold studentships awarded through our membership of the ESRC-funded Scottish Graduate School of Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership). The professor will be expected to play a key role in leading the research group, especially in terms of driving the research agenda and leading the exploration of new foundational research areas.

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What has Bruce been up to in the first half of 2022?

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.

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‘Platform to Platform’ update

This 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?

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Thank you Vladimir Agafonkin!

I’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:

Click the image to get to the actual map!

Anyway, thank you Vladimir. I hope you and yours are safe, and that Mr Putin just stops!