LIS Student Achievements: 2023/24 (by Dr. Alison Hicks)

Congratulations to Library and Information Studies (LIS) students who have been rocking the professional world with all their amazing achievements this year! We are extremely proud of all the many ways in which our students contribute to the field and thank all the many people who make this possible, including UCL staff, professional mentors, award juries, peer reviewers and more.

To begin, it’s been another bumper year for prizes and bursaries, with UCL students receiving several prestigious awards for research and professional development. Congratulations to Oona Ylinen (MA, 2023), who was awarded the Sherif Prize for her dissertation research on international Resource Description and Access (RDA). Oona presented her work at the Sherif annual meeting and is the sixth UCL student in the last seven years to receive this award. Current student, Emily Peart, has been awarded both the 2024 BIALL Student Award and a Music Libraries Trust bursary while we were over the moon that the Rowena Macrae Gibson bursary to attend the 2023 LILAC conference was awarded to current students, Sae Matsuno and Amelia Haire. The 2023 Alan Hopkinson Award to attend the IFLA congress in Rotterdam was awarded to Huzefa Ghadiali (MA, 2022), while current student, Tessa Roynon, received a special mention in the 2023 Anthony Davis Book Collecting Competition.

A huge congratulations also to current and previous students who have published on their dissertation topics over the year, including Brooke Cambie (MA, 2022) who published her research on sexual assault in public libraries in Public Library Quarterly and Maud Cooper (MA, 2021), who published her studies on the information literacy practices of emerging artists in the Journal of Information Literacy (Vol. 17, No.2). Well done, also, to current student, Sarah Pipkin, who published her coursework exploring public perceptions of Special Collections Libraries in the Journal of Library Administration (Vol.64, No.3), and Andy Lacey (MA, 2022), who published his coursework exploring literacy programming in prison libraries in Library and Information Research. Two students were further invited to present cataloguing coursework at the School Library Association’s New Development in School Libraries conference, including Núria Solé-Bonet (MA, 2023), who presented on Engaging Students in Reading Series through Effective Cataloguing and Tessa Roynon (current student) on Adapting Dewey for a Secondary School Library. Beyond coursework, several students participated in UCL Arts and Humanities grant-funded projects this year, with current student Sae Matsuno and Catherine Drewry (MA, 2022) publishing findings from their study of LIS education and EDI in the Journal of Information Science. Current students Joel Davie, Katherine Knight and Emily Peart participated in a Changemakers project designed to leverage AI to reduce the barriers to student engagement with advanced technology topics.

Finally, well done to students who have been appointed to professional committees, including current Naoise Standing, who has been appointed as a committee member on ARLG London and South East as well as the CPD25 Task Group for the M25 Consortium, and Amelia Haire, who has been appointed as Secretary for the Neurodivergent Library and Information Staff Network. Congratulations, also, to current student, Isabel Evans, whose voluntary work in UCL’s Special Collection was recognised in the Observer in May.