Library and Information Research Group

LIRG Postgraduate Student Prize Winners

The Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) awards a student research prize each year for a postgraduate project. Each School of Library and Information Studies is invited to nominate one of their students' projects for the award.

LIRG offers the prize to promote a greater awareness amongst students of the importance of research and to facilitate the dissemination of the results of outstanding projects.

LIRG is pleased to announce the winners for the 2005 and the 2006 prizes:

• Neil Parkinson, formerly of City University. (Winner 2006)
  What's so special about special Collections?
  
• Louise Glen, formerly of the University of Sheffield. (Winner 2005). Louise is pictured below at the LIRG AGM July 18th 2006 receiving her prize from Tony Roche of Elsevier.

The creativity of reading fiction.

• Miggie Picton, formerly of Loughborough University (Highly commended. 2005)
  Research students and institutional repositories.

• Cheryl Twomey, formerly of the University of North London, for her study, An analysis of the design and quality of patients information leaftlets supplied with medicines sold by pharmacists in the United Kingdom
• Alyn Jones, formerly of Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh, for his study, The Corporate Internet (Undergraduate winner)
• Nicholas Lewis, formerly of Thames Valley University, for his postgraduate dissertation on Level 4 Information and Library services NVQ: and alternative route to professional status in the ILS sector (Postgraduate Student Prize winner)
• Amanda Tinker, from Loughborough University, for her dissertation, Automatic abstracting: a review and an empirical evaluation (Postgraduate Prize winner)
• Jonathan Back of Loughborough University, for his dissertation on An evaluation of relevance ranking techniques used by Internet search engines (Undergraduate Prize winner)

LIRG POSTGRADUATE STUDENT PRIZE: Procedures and Conditions

1. Prizes will be awarded to students completing courses leading to a first professional qualification recognised by CILIP in Schools/Departments of Library and Information Studies.
2. The value of the award is £300.
3. The work of one postgraduate student may be submitted by each of the Schools/Departments of Library and Information Studies with a short (no more than 200/300 word) supporting recommendation.
4. The closing date for submission is 31st March 2006. Work completed and assessed in the past twelve months is eligible.
5. Projects to be submitted shall be ones completed as part of normal course requirements in a course leading to a first professional qualification and shall be of the level which might be called "dissertation", "major project", etc.
6. Research is to be interpreted broadly but must include some original work.
7. A Panel will be appointed by the Library and Information Research Group to judge entries and award prizes. The Panel's decision will be final. The Panel will publish a general summary of the strengths and weaknesses of entries in order to encourage the quality of student research.
8. The Library and Information Research Group will from time to time publish a set of criteria for the judging of entries.
9. Prize winners shall agree to:
   1. Give a short presentation on their projects at a special LIRG meeting, when the prizes will be awarded;
   2. Write a short summary for the LIRG journal Library and Information Research
10. LIRG may wish to negotiate publication rights with the prize winner's department or school. Alternatively, LIRG will advise prize winners on the publication of suitable work.
11. Applications should be sent to:
    Dr Jean Yeoh
    Director ISS Corporate Services
    Information Services & Systems
    King's College London
    Strand
    London WC2R 2LS
    jean.yeoh@kcl.ac.uk
    Tel: 020 7848 1844

    The work will be returned to your School/Department after judging.

• Appropriate?
• Understood?
• Correctly applied?

Has the proposition been well argued?

Are the conclusions consistent with the findings?

Is the report well presented (in terms of clarity, layout and
readability)?

Is good use made of diagrams, supporting illustrations?

Does the work show evidence of originality?

Was the project successful or worthwhile?

Is the work of professional relevance?