Research and professional

My interests (research, scholarship and consultancy) fall into five main areas:

  • the historical and philosophical foundations of the information sciences, including the relations to the concept of information in the physical and biological sciences, and the idea of information science as a liberal art, and education and training for library/information science
  • aspects of information-related behaviour and information seeking: especially digital literacy, the ‘dark’ side of information, browsing and ‘creative’ information seeking, and personality factors in information access
  • subject specific information, especially scientific information, including aspects of knowledge organisation, such as thesauri and taxonomies
  • history of information provision and of the library/information sciences
  • information research methods for building qualitative conceptual understanding, including discourse analysis, content analysis, and historical analysis

    • A subset of my publications, exemplifying these areas, is here.

    I also have a strong interest in the link between theory and practice in the information sciences, stemming from my experience as a practitioner for twelve years in research information services in the pharmaceutical industry.

    Most of my work is individual scholarship, together with supervision of research students and masters dissertation students.

    I was programme director for the CoLIS 7 conference held in London in 2010, and am a member of the international advisory board for the CoLIS 8 conference to be held in Copenhagen in 2013. I believe that this series of conference encapsulates the best of academic research in the information sciences.

    I am a member of the UNESCO information literacy expert panel, a member of the peer review colleges for the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and for the UK Economic and Social Research Council, and an external evaluator for the Slovenian National Research Agency.

    I have acted as a consultant for a number of UK and international organisations, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Ciba-Geigy, Forensic Science Service, Health Development Agency, National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, Taylor and Francis, Clifford Chance, the BBC and News International. I have been a consultant /evaluator for the Open Society Institute’s Library Program and Information Program. This as led to a number of continuing collaborations with international information organisations, and with and academic LIS departments, particularly in Central Europe.

    I have carried out professional development training for a number of organisation, and I currently do so for Aslib, leading courses in information management and inoformation organisation.

    I am editor of Journal of Documentation, the leading European journal of the information science, and on the editorial board of Portal: Libraries and the Academy. In the past I have been on the boards of a number of journals, including International Journal of Information Management, Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences, Perspectives in Information Management, and ATLA: Alternatives to Laboratory Animals. I am particular interested, in theory and practice, in how the academic journal is developing in the new environment of digital content and open access.

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