Are you an aspiring or emerging leader in the library, information and knowledge profession keen to develop your career and empower yourself to take your next step into leadership?

Have you never attended a CILIP Conference before and couldn’t ordinarily afford to go?

The UKeiG Management Committee is delighted to announce that it is sponsoring two full bursary places (including travel and one night’s hotel accommodation) at CILIP Conference 2025,  the UK’s leading event for the library, information and knowledge community.

This generous bursary offer will provide CILIP members - unwaged, studying, new to the profession or without the financial means to attend - with an exciting career development and networking opportunity.

About CILIP Conference 2025

2 - 3 July
Hilton Birmingham Metropole

Taking place over two days in Birmingham, the event brings together established, emerging and aspiring leaders to discuss and explore ‘top of mind’ challenges and opportunities in the sector, including:

• AI Innovation
• AI & Copyright
• Crisis Management
• Data literacy and consent
• KM & IM: Grenfell - Lessons Learned
• Advocating for the Sector

Bursary Criteria

 Bursaries are offered to CILIP members who fall into at least one of the below categories:

• Students
• Those new to the profession (having joined the profession in the last 5 years)
• With earnings below £23,000 per annum
• or who are unwaged.

Successful bursary recipients are expected to produce a written report of their experiences of and learning outcomes from the event. It may be published in UKeiG’s open access journal eLucidate and will be shared with the CILIP team to publish in print and/or online. You will also be expected to actively document your time at the conference on social media to support colleagues who are unable to attend.

To Apply

Please email:

Richard Bridgen – Hon. Secretary UKeiG secretary.ukeig@cilip.org.uk

copied to:

Gary Horrocks - UKeiG Business Coordinator info.ukeig@cilip.org.uk

and

Elizabeth Roberts – Hon. Treasurer UKeiG treasurer.ukeig@cilip.org.uk with a succinct statement of no more than half a side of A4 outlining your interest in attending Conference 2025 and how this bursary place will support your professional development.

Please also confirm the following information:

• First name
• Surname
• Email
• Phone
• CILIP membership number
• Role/job title or unwaged/student status.

clarifying that you fulfil the bursary criteria and are currently without the financial means to attend Conference 2025.

To help with your application, UKeiG showcases and celebrates digital knowledge and expertise, ensuring that members from all sectors are savvy with R&D and innovations across the information industry. Core topics in our portfolio include artificial intelligence, digital literacy, effective information retrieval and search technologies, enterprise search, social media, data visualisation and management, research support, scholarly communication and open access publishing.

CILIP members can join UKeiG for free via the CILIP website, and you are encouraged to do so before you submit your application.

Applications must be received by 6pm on Friday 30th May 2025

The UK electronic information Group (UKeiG) is pleased to announce that there are delegate places remaining on the repeat of its popular half-day online CPD course ‘Data Visualisation for librarians, information and knowledge professionals’ between 1 pm and 4 pm on Wednesday 5th February 2025.

Book now: https://www.cilip.org.uk/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1913612&group=201314

Overview

Data Visualisation - the representation, interpretation and understanding of data through graphics - offers invaluable opportunities to transform your datasets and communicate complex research outputs and quantitative information to a much wider audience. It can surface insightful and compelling context and enables you to explore data relationships not immediately apparent using traditional statistical methods and analysis.

It is crucial to understand the opportunities open access tools can offer in visualising data. The library, information and knowledge sector is data-rich, regularly collating statistics to evidence service value and impact and advise decision makers. This data may take the form of library usage and stock circulation statistics, utilisation of digital content, satisfaction surveys and user experience studies, for example. Open data science and linked data are an integral part of Open Science and Open Access, and Artificial Intelligence is built on data literacy, management, validity and integrity.

This course will introduce and explore data visualisation theory and applications with advice and tips throughout.

Spreadsheet software (Microsoft Excel, for example) still has value as a default data application of choice. The course will review its benefits before introducing delegates to a portfolio of open source and free data visualisation alternatives.

A key practical element of the course will include hands-on experience of setting up and working with the visual analytics platform Tableau using your own data. This will include cleaning and organising data, creating basic charts, plots and word clouds and integrating your outputs into a dashboard.

Who should attend?

This three hour course is ideal for any library, information and knowledge professional from senior managers through to early career professionals. It will also have relevance to researchers, research support staff and marketing and communication teams. Anybody who regularly authors publications, papers and reports or delivers presentations will benefit from these essential data visualisation skills.

The course will enable you to:

Ø  Consider the fundamentals of data visualisation as a data science communication tool

Ø  Understand visualisation as a significant analytical component to data analysis

Ø  Evaluate, critique and interpret visualisation design using traditional plot types like pie charts, bar charts, scatter plots and histograms. Are they relevant and fit for purpose?

Ø  Review the strengths and benefits of Excel

Ø  Explore alternative open source or free data visualisation applications, including Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio), Power BI, Seaborn, D3.js, Shiny

Ø  Visualise your data with a practical hands-on experience using Tableau

Ø  Explore further reading and resources

Ø  Consider next steps: taking lessons learned into the workplace.

Course leader

Suvodeep Mazumdar is a senior Lecturer in the Information School at the University of Sheffield. His primary research interest is Big Data Analytics and Crowdsourcing. He conducts inter-disciplinary research on highly engaging, interactive and visual mechanisms in conjunction with complex querying techniques for seamless navigation, exploration and understanding of complex datasets and has applies his research in various application domains (such as health informatics, smart cities, emergency response etc.)

Booking and payment

The course (including presentation slides and documentation) costs:

Ø  UKeiG/CILIP members £50 + VAT

Ø  Non-members £80 + VAT

Ø  Employer Partner staff £64 + VAT (Please contact your rep or email employerpartners@cilip.org.uk for the discount code)

Credit and debit cards are the preferred method of payment. Invoices are available on request using the online ‘Bill me’ option.

UKeiG announces the 2024 call for nominations for 3 prestigious international awards

The UK e-information Group (UKeiG) is delighted to launch a call for nominations for three international awards in the fields of information retrieval, library and information services and open science.

All three awards are open to individuals or groups from anywhere in the world.

Nominations for all three 2024 awards must reach UKeiG by 6 pm GMT on Friday 27th September 2024.

The Tony Strix Award

The Tony Kent Strix Award was inaugurated in 1998 by the Institute of Information Scientists . It is presented by UKeiG in partnership with the International Society for Knowledge Organisation UK (ISKO UK), the Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group (RSC CICAG) and the British Computer Society Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BCS IRSG) and awarded in recognition of an outstanding practical innovation or achievement in the field of information retrieval and search. Nominations must be for a major, sustained or influential achievement that meets one or more of the criteria listed below.

Science

The advancement of our understanding of information retrieval methods, experimentation and evaluation, at either the theoretical or the practical level. The scope includes approaches as diverse as linguistic, probabilistic, fact-checking or artificial intelligence applied to search.

Service Delivery

The development and management of systems, networks or services:

• Enhancement of the mechanisms/technology/standards underpinning information products or services
• Establishing an innovative information resource or service
• Innovations leading to improved accessibility/usability of information resources.

Education and organisational infrastructure

The provision of leadership in education, training, community development and/or collaboration to advance information retrieval at local, national or international level.

The Jason Farradane Award

The Jason Farradane Award is presented in recognition of an outstanding, creative and enterprising contribution to the wider library and information profession. It will be awarded to an individual or a team in recognition of exemplary and innovative practice. This may take the form of a specific project, a piece of research or the development of a service or resource.

The Award celebrates creativity and enterprise across the library and information profession in its broadest sense and honours Jason Farradane, who first made an impact on the LIS community with a paper on the ‘scientific approach to documentation’ presented at a Royal Society Scientific Information Conference in 1948. He was instrumental in establishing the Institute of Information Scientists  in 1958, alongside the first academic information science courses in 1963 at the precursor to City University, London, where he became Director of the Centre for Information Science in 1966.

Nominations should meet one or more of the following criteria:

• Contributing to the creation, promotion and exploitation of digital resources and services
• Raising the profile of library and information services across the organisation
• Raising awareness of the value and impact of library and information services internally and/or externally
• Evidencing a significant contribution to organisational goals and strategies through internal and/or external collaborative partnerships and cross team working
• Demonstrating excellence in library and information science education and teaching
• Making a significant contribution to the theory and practice of library and information science.

The UKeiG Open Science Award

UKeiG’s inaugural open science award will be presented in recognition of an outstanding contribution in terms of digital/electronic information to one or more of the following areas of Open Science: Open Access, Open Data, Open Peer Review, Open Science Tools.

It will be awarded to an individual or a team in recognition of exemplary and innovative practice. This may, for example, take the form of a specific project, the development of a service, resource or research activity.

Nominations should meet one or more of the following criteria:

• Contributing to the creation, promotion and exploitation of Open Science resources, services and tools
• Raising awareness of the value and impact of Open Science internally and/or externally
• Evidencing a significant contribution to Open Science through internal and/or external collaborative partnerships
• Demonstrating excellence in support for and the implementation of Open Science
• Making a significant contribution to the theory and practice of Open Science.

Submission guidelines

In all cases nominations should take the form of a succinct justification (maximum 2 pages) for the individual or team nomination showing clearly which of the award criteria the nominee meets and how they are met. Please include full contact details, job title and qualifications of both the nominee and the nominator emailed to Richard Bridgen – Hon. Secretary UKeiG secretary.ukeig@cilip.org.uk and copied to: Gary Horrocks -   info.ukeig@cilip.org.uk and Elizabeth Roberts – Hon. Treasurer UKeiG treasurer.ukeig@cilip.org.uk.

Please clarify in the email subject heading - ‘UKeiG 2024 award nomination’ - followed by the award name.

Self-nominations will not be accepted.

If you want your nomination to be considered in two or all three of the specified award areas, please clarify that in your justification.

Please include testimonials, letters of support, references, a selective bibliography relevant to the nomination, or links to supplementary information including professional profiles or social media, for example. 

Please email info.ukeig@cilip.org.uk  for more information and guidance.

Deadline

Nominations for all three 2024 awards must reach the UKeiG by 6 pm GMT on Friday 27th September 2024.

Further information

Further information about UKeiG awards and bursaries is available here , and includes previous winners.

Please share the news

The library and information science community is encouraged to raise awareness of these awards with individuals and groups in their networks and help encourage nomination submissions.

All winners will be invited to present at an awards ceremony in late November 2024 and featured in UKeiG’s open access e-journal eLucidate.

The UKeiG Management Committee is delighted to announce that it is sponsoring two full bursary places (including travel and one night’s hotel accommodation) at CILIP Conference 2024, the UK’s leading event for the library, information and knowledge community. 

Bursaries are offered to CILIP members who fall into at least one of the below categories:

• Students
• Those new to the profession (having joined the profession in the last 5 years)
• With earnings below £23,000 per annum
• Or who are unwaged.

Successful bursary recipients are expected to produce a written report of their experiences of and learning outcomes from the event. It will be published in UKeiG’s open access journal eLucidate and shared with the CILIP team to publish in print and/or online. The deadline for receipt of reports is 12th August 2024. You will also be expected to actively document your time at the conference on social media to support colleagues who are unable to attend.

Last year’s successful applicants wrote:

‘As a new professional, this was the first time I had been able to attend a major event like this in-person. It was a valuable experience to attend talks and get a feel for what is taking place in the wider sector. Returning to work after the CILIP conference has given me a boost and made me feel more connected to the UK library world.’

‘I am incredibly thankful that I had the opportunity to add my own voice to the mix of discussions that were held over the two days. The CILIP Conference was full of thought-provoking discussions and presentations, and it was a fantastic opportunity to be able to learn from other professionals in the library and information sector that were facing similar challenges.’

To Apply

Please email Richard Bridgen – Hon. Secretary UKeiG secretary.ukeig@cilip.org.uk  and copy in Gary Horrocks - UKeiG administrator info.ukeig@cilip.org.uk and Elizabeth Roberts – Hon. Treasurer UKeiG treasurer.ukeig@cilip.org.uk with a succinct statement of no more than half a side of A4 outlining your interest in attending Conference 2024 and how this bursary place will support your professional development.

Please also confirm the following information:

• First name
• Surname
• Email
• Phone
• CILIP membership number
• Role/job title or unwaged/student status.

Please confirm that you fulfil the bursary criteria and are currently without the financial means to attend Conference 2024.

To help with your application, UKeiG showcases and celebrates digital knowledge and expertise, ensuring that members from all sectors are savvy with R&D and innovations across the information industry. Core topics in our portfolio include artificial intelligence, digital literacy, effective information retrieval and search technologies, enterprise search, social media, data visualisation and management, research support, scholarly communication and open access publishing.

CILIP members can join UKeiG for free via the CILIP website.

Applications must be received by 6 pm on Friday 31st May 2024.

About CILIP Conference 2024

10 - 11 July

Taking place over two days at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole, the event brings together established, emerging and aspiring leaders to discuss and explore ‘top of mind’ challenges and opportunities in the sector, including:

• Intellectual freedom, censorship and information rights
• Developing future literacy as a leader
• The sector’s response to the UN Sustainability Goals
• Crisis and strategic communications
• Building future resilience in the face of continuing resource and budget pressures.

As well as informing delegates of the sector’s latest developments, CILIP Conference will help delegates to move the needle on pressing issues within their organisation and aim to support a generation of emerging and aspiring leaders as they progress through the sector.