Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Intute wins the Jason Farradane Award 2007

The 2007 Jason Farradane Award, sponsored by Sage Publications went to Caroline Williams and the Intute community network. Intute is a free online service created by university subject specialists, with over 100,000 links to academic content on the Web, as well as a suite of virtual training tutorials and Internet information services.

The nomination describes Intute as "a great example of the UK library community taking a long-term pioneering role in the Internet information environment, developing a national service through collaboration, which has grown to become well respected and highly used worldwide." Intute has demonstrated extraordinary longevity in Internet terms.

Its origins lie in the 1996 Electronic Libraries Programme (a former winner of the Jason Farradane award). Later, the individual subject services were federated into the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). However, it wasn't until 2003, when MIMAS at Manchester University Computing took on the service and appointed Caroline Williams as Executive Director, that it begun to mature into a single organisation with a unified culture, interface, technological platform and identity. One of the great achievements of Caroline Williams as executive director has been to create organisational strategies and systems that enable distributed teams to run a unified and coherent service.

The awards committee felt that this nomination strongly upholds the spirit of the Jason Farradane award in developing a product or service that has made a significant impact on the availability and accessibility of information. Intute's model of shared services has made the UK a world leader in delivering Internet services for education and research on a national level.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

UKeiG Awards: PIONEERS IN INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SCOOP TOP AWARDS

UKeiG are delighted to announce today the winners of the Strix and Jason Farradane Awards, which will be presented at the Online Information conference and exhibition at London's Olympia in December. The awards are sponsored by The Journal of Information Science, published by SAGE, the world's largest, independent academic publisher.

Both awards celebrate achievement in the broad field of information management. The 2007 Strix Award, created in honour of Dr Tony Kent, is made to Mats Lindquist, senior executive officer at the National Library of Sweden.

"We're delighted to award the tenth annual Strix Award to Professor Lindquist, "said Adrian Dale, editor of The Journal of Information Science and Online Information conference chairman. "In the world of practical full text information retrieval he is one of the "giants", wholly in the spirit of Tony Kent's contribution in chemical information".

Professor Lindquist won the Strix Award for his key role in the development and significant improvement in accessibility to an information service through the business development of Paralog AB and its TRIP retrieval system. The Award also recognises his sustained contribution over many years to the field of information retrieval.

The Jason Farradane Award, which recognises brilliant work in information science, is made to executive director of Intute, Caroline Williams and the Intute community network. Intute is a free online service, created in partnership with university subject specialists, with over 100,000 links to academic content on the web, as well as a suite of virtual training tutorials and internet information services.

Adrian Dale praised highly the winners. "Intute is a great example of the UK library community taking a long-term, pioneering role in the Internet information environment. Through effective collaboration, they have developed a national service which now has a global reputation."

Intute's origins lie in the 1996 Electronic Libraries programme, where a number of librarians and researchers won JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funding to develop their ideas for new Internet gateway services. The service has thrived as it has always actively pursued exploring original ways of working online, as a community. Intute has also innovated with new technologies - such as Web 2.0 - but always against balanced judgements about their relative value to education and research.

The Awards will be presented at the Online Conference to be held from 4 - 6 December at London's Olympia: the Jason Farradane Award at 14:00 on Tuesday 4 December and the Tony Kent Strix Award at 09:30 on Thursday 6 December.

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Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Call for Nominations for the UKeiG Awards

There is still time to nominate a colleague for one of these awards:

The UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award and the UKeiG Jason Farradane Award

UKeiG is now seeking nominations for these two prestigious awards, presented annually at the December Online Information Meeting in London. Both awards are sponsored by The Journal of Information Science, published by Sage Publications and both honour achievement in the broad field of information management.

The UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award is presented for an outstanding contribution to the narrower field of information retrieval, while the UKeiG Jason Farradane Award recognises brilliant work in information science. The deadline for both awards is Friday 14th September 2007. Details of the individual awards together with the addresses to which nominations should be sent are given below and at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/awards/index.html.

UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award

Nominations should be for achievement that meets one or more of the following criteria:

  • development of, or significant improvement in, mechanisms for the retrieval of information, either generally or in a specialised field;
  • development of, or significant improvement in, accessibility to an information service;
  • a sustained contribution over a period of years to the field of information retrieval; for example, by running an information service or by contributing at national or international level to organisations active in the field;
  • a major and/or sustained contribution to the theoretical or experimental understanding of the information retrieval process;
  • a major contribution to fostering the education, training and/or general awareness of the importance and the technicalities of information retrieval.
Key characteristics that the judges will look for in nominations are innovation, initiative, originality and practicality.

Nominations should take the form of a short description (no more than 3 sides of A4) of the work in question, together with full contact details of both the nominee and the nominator. Do not forget to include any documentation, references or URLs which may support the nomination. Nominations should reach the judges by Friday September 14th 2007.

Nominations will be judged by a panel of experts, and the statuette of an owl will be presented to the winner during the annual Online Information Meeting in London in December.

The Tony Kent Strix Award is presented in memory of Dr Tony Kent, a past Fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists, who died in 1997. Tony Kent made a major contribution to the development of information retrieval and information services both in the UK and internationally, particularly in the field of chemistry. The name Strix was chosen both to reflect Tony's interest in ornithology, and the name of one of the last and most successful information retrieval packages which he created.

Past winners have been Stella Dextre Clarke (2006); Jack Mills (2005); Professor Cornelis Joost (Keith) van Rijsbergen (2004); Dr Herbert van Sompel (2003); Malcolm Jones (2002); Professor Peter Willett (2001); Dr Martin Porter (2000); Dr Donna Harman (1999); Professor Stephen Robertson (1998).

Nominations for the 2007 Award are now invited, and should be sent with full supporting documentation to:

Alan Gilchrist
32 Friar Road
Brighton
BN1 6NH
UK
Tel: 01273 705226
E-mail: cura@fastnet.co.uk

UKeiG Jason Farradane Award

Nominations should be for achievement that meets 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 can or has become an exemplar to others;
  • raising the awareness of the value of information in the workplace;
  • development of a significant new information product or service;
  • development of a product or service that has made a significant impact on the availability and accessibility of information.
Key characteristics that the judges will look for in nominations are innovation, initiative, originality and significance.

Nominations should take the form of a short description (no more than 3 sides of A4) of the work in question, together with full contact details of both the nominee and the nominator. Do not forget to include any documentation, references or URLs which may support the nomination. Nominations should reach the judges by Friday September 14th 2007

Nominations will be judged by a panel of experts, and the award will be presented to the winner during the annual Online Information Meeting in London in December.

Jason Farradane graduated in chemistry in 1929 at what is now Imperial College and started work in industry as a chemist and documentalist. He was instrumental in establishing the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) in 1958 and the first academic courses in information science in 1960 at the precursor of City University, where he became Director of the Centre for Information Science in 1966. 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. The IIS first presented the award in 1979, to Jason Farradane.

Previous award winners have included University of Warwick Library for The Learning Grid; Michael Koenig; Bruce Royan; Michael Keen; Newcastle University Library; Sandra Ward; Phil Williams and Phil Holmes.

Nominations for the 2007 Award are now invited, and should be sent with full supporting documentation to:

Christine Baker
Piglet Cottage
Redmire
Leyburn
North Yorkshire
DL8 4EH
Tel & Fax: 01969 625751
E-mail: cabaker@ukeig.org.uk

The closing date for nominations is Friday September 14th 2007.

Notes:

UKeiG is an established professional group for all information professionals, users and developers of electronic information resources. The Group encourages communication and the exchange of best practice and knowledge across all sectors; and offers an e-journal, a mailing list, an annual programme of training courses; and an array of awards and bursaries. UKeiG is a Special Interest Group of CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE. Registered Charity No. 313014.

SAGE Publications (www.sagepub.co.uk) is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore

TheJournal of Information Science is an international journal of high repute covering topics of interest to all those researching and working in the sciences of information and knowledge management. The Journal seeks to achieve a better understanding of the principles that underpin the effective creation, organization, storage, communication and utilization of information and knowledge resources. It also seeks to understand how policy and practice in the area can be built on sound theoretical or heuristic foundations to achieve a greater impact on the world economy. http://jis.sagepub.com/

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