I’m pleased to announce that full proceedings of The Difference that Makes a Difference 2011, the workshop on the nature of information organised by David Chapman and Magnus Ramage with help from many other members of SIRG, are now available. They can be found on the workshop website. The workshop was held on the 7th-9th September 2011, at The Open University in Milton Keynes.
The proceedings include an abstract, presentation slides and audio recordings (podcasts) for keynote and other speakers in each of four main sessions, on the themes of “What is information?”, “Understanding with information”, “Engaging with information” and “The impact of information”, plus podcasts of rapporteur summaries and panel discussions for the four main sessions, and the closing plenary discussion. In total there were 25 speakers at the event, from disciplines including philosophy, systems theory, ICT, ecology, physics, linguistics, computing, public policy, semiotics and sociology.
Seminar, Wednesday 19th October, 2pm. Library Seminar rooms 1 & 2.
Amanda Spink
Professor of Information Science, Loughborough University
Abstract: This talk will provide an overview of the field of information science and discuss trends in the field moving forward. The presentation includes a discussion of the major research areas, schools, journals and conferences associated with information science. Currently, the major issue for the field is the growing nexus between computer science and psychology. As information science is a field concerned with the human use of information, it both draws upon and is influenced by fields associated with computer science and technology, as well as psychology and the social sciences. However, being a small field with limited scholarly impact, the long term future for information science is probably limited as “information” is becoming increasingly the purview of many fields related to technology and psychology. For example, there is a shift under way in cognitive and computer science to conduct research into the human aspects of Web and information retrieval, which has been a key area of information science.
Professor Spink is an international leader in information science research with 340+ publications and 6 books. Her research focuses on developing theories and models of information behaviour and she has over 20 years experience in information science in the United States, Australia and the UK. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/people/ASpink.html