LIS Student Achievements: 2022/23 (by Dr. Alison Hicks)

It’s been another successful year for our amazing cohort of LIS students- congratulations to each and every one of our students who have all contributed in so many ways to our thriving academic and social environment this year. We look forward to seeing where your career takes you!

To begin with, congratulations to all our prize winners -it is very exciting to see students’ hard work and thought being rewarded by the broader profession. Heading the list of awards this year is Catherine Drewry (MA, 2022), who was awarded the Sherif Prize for her dissertation work assessing the capacity of the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO) ontology as a gold standard for modelling biomedical information. Catherine presented her work at the Sherif annual meeting and is the fifth UCL student in the last six years to be awarded this prize. Congratulations also go to Andrew Frampton (MA, 2022), whose MA dissertation was awarded the E.T. Bryant award for a valuable contribution to music librarianship. The list continues with Matthew Bland (current student), who was awarded a BIALL Professional Studies Bursary; Brooke Cambie (MA, 2022), who was awarded the BIALL Conference Bursary; Lucy Dodge (current student) who was awarded the Rowena Macrae Gibson bursary to attend the LILAC conference, Douglas Knight (current student), who was awarded a Music Trust Bursary to attend the IAML conference, Louise Savage (current student), who was awarded a bursary for the Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference, and Naoise Standing (current student), who was awarded not one but three bursaries, including the Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference bursary, the Academic Libraries North Conference bursary, AND the UK e-Information Group residential bursary for the CILIP Conference. WOW! Lastly, well done to Frankie Marsh (MA, 2020), who was awarded the Journal of Information Literacy’s inaugural Ross Todd Award for Best Research Paper for her dissertation research in April 2023.

Secondly, well done to students who have published their dissertation research in various professional journals this year. Alex Hewitt (MA, 2022) published his dissertation research into affect, emotion, and information literacy in the Special Critical information Literacy Issue of the Journal of Information Literacy (2023), while Ella Burrows (MA, 2022) had her dissertation work examining digital literacy, activism and Instagram published in the regular issue of the Journal of Information Literacy (Vol.17, No.1). This year also saw the publication of Madeleine Ahern’s (MA, 2021) dissertation research into managing works of art in non-art libraries in Collection Management.

Students have further been presenting dissertation and coursework at various conferences, including the CILIP Annual Meeting 2022, where Imogen Loucas (MA, 2022) presented on sustainability and libraries, and the LILAC conference where Naomi Smith (MA, 2022) and Kristabelle Williams Pearce (MA, 2018) were invited keynote speakers, and Andy Lacey (MA, 2022) presented on his dissertation research examining the information literacy practices of the homeless. Students have also presented at the Critical Approaches to Libraries conference, including Jess Jordan (MA, 2021), who presented on best practices for decolonisation in academic libraries, Kris Massengale (MA, 2021), who presented on IFLA LRM, queer theory and Marxism, and Naomi Smith (MA, 2022), who presented her dissertation research on critical approaches to library technology policies. Brooke Cambie (MA, 2022) presented her dissertation research into sexual harassment in public libraries at a CILIP Scotland event to celebrate WINspiration, Feminism and Libraries, while Huzefa Ghadiali (MA, 2022) presented his information literacy dissertation research at the BOBCATSS conference in Oslo.  August also sees presentations from Andrew Frampton (MA, 2022) and Meg Webb (MA, 2022) at the IAML conference in Cambridge.

Lastly, UCL students have also been giving back to the profession through committee work. Andy Lacey (MA, 2022) has been appointed as the Public Library representative for the Information Literacy group, while current student Lucy Dodge has joined the ARLIS Cataloguing and Classification committee. Current student Ellen Woolf helped to launch the ECLAIR Early Career Library and Information Resource Community where she also holds the Digital Coordinator role.