You are invited to the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of UKeiG on 22nd July 2021

You are invited to join our free Members' Day and Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Zoom on Thursday 22nd September from 2 p.m.  The Members' Day will focus on Information Mapping and the History of the Institute of Information Scientists. The full programme is below. The official AGM documents can be found here. Included are the minutes of the 2020 AGM, the official notice of the AGM and our Annual Report. The event is free to all CILIP and UKeiG Members. For Non-Members there is a nominal charge of £20.

To book the event click here.

Programme for the afternoon:

2 p.m. Mapping Information Landscapes, Andrew Whitworth (Manchester Institute of Education)

This talk will explore various ways in which mapping can be used as a tool for teaching and developing information literacy, in both formal and informal educational settings. Maps allow learners to develop a collective understanding of what information is important to them, represent this understanding graphically or discursively, and communicate it to others. Techniques including the use of geographical maps, concept maps, and text-based (or discursive) maps will be introduced, along with evaluations of their differing impacts.

3 p.m. AGM

3:30 p.m. The genealogy of UKeiG – our private passion, Martin White and Sandra Ward.

Over the last two years Sandra and Martin have been writing the history of the Institute of Information Scientists.  The IIS was founded in 1958 and eventually merged with the LA to form CILIP in 2002. Along the way the Institute was instrumental in forming UK Online User Group (UKOLUG), the current edition of which is UKeiG. The initial release of the History on its own web site will take place later this month. Sandra and Martin became members in the early 1970s, and will be talking about how the IIS was instrumental in ensuring that the information community in  the UK could take advantage of digital information services. The talk will profile some of the people who shaped the development of the Institute over the last six decades and also the careers of the two presenters.

4.30 p.m. Close

To book the event click here.

The UK electronic information Group (UKeiG), is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2020 Tony Kent Strix Memorial Award is Ian Ruthven, Professor of Information Seeking and Retrieval at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde.

Professor Ruthven leads the Strathclyde Information School Research Group (SISRG). SISRG operates across the boundaries between information and computer sciences and has established an international reputation for research excellence.

For more information see our Tony Kent Strix Award pages

UKeiG would like to inform you that the 5th Tony Kent Strix Annual Memorial Lecture 2019 is to be delivered by Professor Pia Borlund, Department of Archivistics, Library and Information Science at Oslo Metropolitan University and will take place on the afternoon of Friday, 29th November 2019 at The Geological Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London.

This is a free event. Book here.

Professor Borlund was nominated for the award by Diane H. Sonnenwald, Emerita Professor of Library & Information Studies at University College Dublin and received unanimous praise and support from the Strix judging panel. "Similar to the memorable Dr Tony Kent, the work by Borlund is original and innovative, and has had a significant impact on information retrieval (IR) research and applications. Her approaches are analytical and practical, and her devotion and dedication to users and interactive information retrieval (IIR) are outstanding. Within the IR community, Borlund is known for her innovative contributions to IR user studies, evaluations and test design, including strong, novel methodological contributions to IIR evaluation. In particular, she is recognised for the development of her IIR evaluation model which uniquely employs simulated work task situations. Borlund developed the IIR evaluation model as a doctoral student by taking up the challenges of the calls put forward by Professor Stephen Robertson (recipient of the first Tony Kent Strix Award in 1998) and Micheline Hancock-Beaulieu, in their iconic 1992 paper on IR systems evaluation." The Award was presented by Doug Veal (Strix Chair) and David Ball (UKeiG Chair) and accepted by Dr Andrew Macfarlane on Professor Borlund’s behalf on the afternoon of Friday November 23rd, 2018 at the Geological Society, Piccadilly, London. "I’m very pleased and very, very honoured to receive the Tony Kent Strix Award. It’s a privilege to join the past recipients who I have admired and respected since I was a student." For more information about Professor Borlund please refer to: https://www.cilip.org.uk/members/group_content_view.asp?group=201314&id=745466

Her 2019 Strix lecture is entitled: "Evaluation of information searching" Abstract: My Tony Kent Strix Memorial Award 2018 acceptance talk introduces the research area of interactive information retrieval (IIR), which is concerned with how people search for digital information. More specifically, the presentation addresses methodological issues of IIR evaluation in terms of what it entails to study users' use and interaction with IR systems, as well as their satisfaction with retrieved information, by presenting the IIR evaluation model. Central to this model is the employment of simulated work task situations as assigned search tasks, which has become a standard way of testing users’ interaction and satisfaction in IR. Though this approach of assigned search tasks appears simple and easy to employ it is in fact challenging, and wrong use may have implications for evaluation results, therefore strengths and weaknesses will be discussed.

Full programme details:

• 1.30 Registration

• 2.00 Douglas Veal - Chairman's welcome

• 2.10 Introductory presentation – Dr Andrew Macfarlane

Sender vs Recipient Orientated Information Systems Revisited

Abstract: Belkin and Robertson in 1976 reflected on the ethical implications of theoretical research in information science and warned that there was potential for abuse of knowledge gained by undertaking such research. In particular, they identified the domains of advertising and politics that posed particular problems. Recent events in global information systems have demonstrated that their fears were justified. Information science theories have been used in conjunction with empirical evidence gathered from user interactions that have been detrimental to both individuals and society. It is argued in the paper that the IR community should find ways to return control to the user where at all possible, and ways to achieve this are considered. Specifically, we argue that information systems such as search technologies should be designed with the recipient of information in mind, not the sender of that information.

• 2.45 Questions & Discussion

• 3.00 Tea & coffee

• 3.45 The Tony Kent Strix Annual Memorial Lecture

• 4.30 Questions & discussion

• 5.00 Meeting closes

*** This is a FREE event, open to everyone, BUT advance bookings ARE required ***

Please book your ticket online here.

The Tony Kent Strix Award was inaugurated in 1998 by the Institute of Information Scientists. It is now 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). The Award is given in recognition of an outstanding practical innovation or achievement in the field of information retrieval.