Jason Farradane Award

The Jason Farradane Award is made to an individual or a group of people in recognition of outstanding work in the information profession.

Criteria

The Award is given in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the information profession, by meeting one or more of the following criteria:

raising the profile of the information profession within an organisation or field of endeavour in a way which has become an exemplar to others;
raising the awareness of the value of information in the workplace;
demonstrating excellence in education and teaching in information science;
a major contribution to the theory and practice of information science or information management.

The 2011 Award

The 2011 UKeiG Jason Farradane Award has been awarded to the United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR). Founded in 2007, UKCoRR is a professional membership-driven organisation managed for and by those staff working throughout the UK as Open Access repository administrators and managers. UKCoRR facilitates communication between the membership and fellow information providers, LIS professionals, the research community and scholarly publishing stakeholders by providing a collective voice that can speak on members' behalf to publishers, funding councils, institutions, and other relevant community stakeholders.

The Award is made in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the information profession in keeping with the Council's mission to promote repository management and administration as a recognised and respected profession, provide a forum for discussion, and promote the exchange of best practice, experience, and development opportunities; UKCoRR encourages members to stress the value of information, in particular open access to research information, and supports improvements to the speed and functioning of the research process itself.

The nomination notes that the achievements and success of UKCoRR are "even more astounding given that, at present, there is no subscription charge and the committee works on an entirely voluntary basis. It is one of the un-sung heroes of Open Access in the UK and therefore deserves this award for its contribution to the information profession."

The presentation was made during Online Information 2011 (National Hall, Olympia - 29 Nov - 1 Dec).

About Jason Farradane

Jason Farradane graduated in chemistry in 1929 at what is now Imperial College and started work in industry as a chemist and documentalist. After working in research at the Ministry of Supply and the Admiralty during World War II, he first made an impact with a paper on the scientific approach to documentation at a Royal Society Scientific Information Conference in 1948.

He was instrumental in establishing the Institute of Information Scientists in 1958 and the first academic courses in information science in 1963 at the precursor of City University, where he became Director of the Centre for Information Science in 1966. Of Central European origin, his commitment to science was reflected in the name he created for himself - a combination of Faraday and Haldane, two scientists he particularly admired. On the research side his main contributions lay in relational analysis, which can now perhaps be seen as providing a precursor to work in the area of A.I., and the concept of information. He saw information science as a step towards understanding and better organizing ourselves.