March 21st, 2012 - 19:48pm

Returning this year was Louis Georgiou from Code Computer Love who again covered CMS with some current examples. PushOn kindly sent Mark Mayne this year to cover Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Gary Byrne from The Reading Room kindly dropped by to explain the do’s and don’ts of pitching to clients. Gary also volunteered to come back a few weeks later to give some tips on applying for jobs in the industry. This was an excellent, amusing talk that ticked all the right boxes.

MMU’s own developers Dave Scott and Derren Wilson came over to talk about their experiences with web databases and CSS respectively. Derren inspired us all with series of simple, helpful tips for CSS3. Richard Clark of HTML5 Doctor fame gave us the basics of HTML5, again with some nice tips and advice.

A big hit with the students was Andrew Disley, Freelance Front-end Web Developer. Andrew came in to talk about hosting. Again, Andrew provided a wealth of tips, links and career advice. Excellent. Andrew has also helped further by running the Geekup job board which has already led to employment for a couple of students.

This year we have also had the opportunity to attend other events. This includes sessions such as Paul Rouke’s Usability 101 session at MMU’s Business School hosted by our friends David Edmundson-Bird and Brendan Keegan. This later led to us hosting a session on Usability sponsored by our friends at Sigma featuring Paul Rouke once again. We are looking forward to doing more with Sigma in the future. Watch this space.

David and Brendan also ran another successful ProDevDay and the Search and Social School.

We also got the chance to attend Get stylish with CSS3, run at Madlab on Edge Street in Manchester by standards-next. Speakers included our good friend Chris Mills (from Opera), Jake Smith from JP74, Mike Byrne from Fudge, and Patrick Lauke also from Opera.

I was also personally able to attend the New Adventures in Web Design conference in Nottingham. An excellent day out in the company of some great speakers. We’ll be looking forward to the next one, and will be encouraging more students to attend.

We also sneaked in a couple of extra sessions, which included a first hand demonstration from our friend Donal Fitzpatrick on using a screen-reader. Donal, a lecturer at Dublin City University who is blind, took us on a tour of his pet hates by demonstrating some of we will call ‘the more frustrating’ sites that he has to use. An amusing and insightful demonstration.

Finally, in December we hosted a talk by Andy Clarke that heralded the launch of his new book, Hardboiled Web Design. Andy is not only one of the best speakers on the web design conference circuit, but he is also very generous. Walking in with bags full of training and conference DVD’s, and web design books that we have now made available to the students for loan.

A huge thank you to our guest speakers. Thank you all for your continued support. Here’s looking to 2011/12.

June 22nd, 2011 - 08:17am

The Department of Information and Communications’ annual PGR symposium will be held on the 5th May 2011

The event will host 18 speakers from around the UK and Europe presenting original research on public libraries, public information, archives and records, online behaviour, and innovation.

The full programme is available at http://infosymposium.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/programme.pdf.

Please email joanne.d.bates@stu.mmu.ac.uk to register.

April 15th, 2011 - 11:28am

The next issue of ‘Library Management’ includes two contributions from Professor Jennifer Rowley. The first article explores the importance of innovation strategies. The second article, co-authored with Subnum Hariff, Clore Fellow, and Partnership and Access Manager at Bolton Libraries, offers case studies on the branding of UK public libraries.

March 2nd, 2011 - 15:16pm

‘Being an information innovator’, by Professor Jennifer Rowley, has recently been published by Facet Publishing. This book is designed for all information professionals and managers who wish to understand and engage creatively with innovation to achieve success and to realise the professional and social benefits of entrepreneurial action in their organizations.

March 2nd, 2011 - 15:15pm

Olivia Walwyn’s Masters research on ‘The Value of Therapeutic Reading Groups organised by Public Libraries’ has recently been accepted for publication in the international academic journal, ‘Library & Information Science Research’.

March 2nd, 2011 - 15:14pm

Bob Glass recently presented research findings on Information Literacy Audits for Masters students at the recent BOBCATSSS 2011 Conference in Szombathely, Hungary (http://www.bobcatsss2011.com/). His paper, entitled “Are emerging LIS Graduates Information Literate?” was co-written with Jill Griffiths. Bob says. “BOBCATSSS is a really valuable and dynamic student led LIS Confernce with takes place in a different European City every year. This year’s conference was certainly one of the best attended with over 250 delegates from all over the world. The educational and networking possibilities are endless”.

For more information contact Bob at n.r.glass@mmu.ac.uk

February 23rd, 2011 - 08:57am

Evangelia Koundouraki has been awarded a PhD for her thesis “The European Commission: A Study of Information Processing in Policy-Making“.

Anne Littlewood has been awarded an M.Phil for her thesis “Knowledge Institutions: Evaluating a Methodology for the Creation of Information and Knowledge Management Strategies in Higher Education”.

Additionally, Bernice Hyman has been awarded an MA for her thesis “Developing the criteria in setting up a non-standard library collection”.

February 22nd, 2011 - 12:29pm

Student web design competition – Re–design of www.ico.mmu.ac.uk

Sponsored by www.oreilly.com.
For student’s of The Department of Information & Communications only.
Students are required to provide a design for the main index pages of www.ico.mmu.ac.uk.
The deliverable is a single html file and external style sheet with any accompanying images.
PHP may be used.
The coding should use HTML5 and may use CSS3 elements.
The design should work with all modern browsers (progressive enhancement).
All code must validate.
The design should consider good practices in web design (semantic code etc), web usability and accessibility.

Deadline – 1st June 2011

The Prize from www.oreilly.com

£100 of ebooks to the wining student. On top of that, the winning student from each University will be entered into a prize draw to win an 8GB iPod touch.

The prize draw will take place on the 31st June 2011.

February 21st, 2011 - 18:14pm

This was featured in the January MMU – The Staff Newsletter:

A competition to design a poster for a drive-safe campaign aimed at pedestrian safety, sponsored by Greater Manchester Police and other public sector authorities, has been won by a web design student.
Steve McKinney who is studying web development in the Department of Information and Communications explains: “The campaign was aimed to appeal to both on- and offline audiences and highlights the increasing numbers of pedestrian injuries and deaths being caused by inattention, particularly due to the rise in hand-held entertainment systems such as iPods and smart phones.”

Organised by the public relations company Tangerine PR and social media sister agency Juice Digital, the multi-layered DriveSafe campaign addresses the fact that pedestrians are often overlooked when it comes to road safety communications as attention usually focuses on drivers and bikers.

“It was stimulating and challenging to design to a specific brief aimed at raising awareness of an increasingly worrying issue,” says Steve. “In the end, I followed what’s always been promoted on my course and concentrated on readability and legibility.”

Senior lecturer Richard Eskins, said: “Steve is a talented and hard-working web designer. It was typical of him to ‘give it a go’ and it has paid off handsomely as this is something he can add to his already growing portfolio in preparation for graduating this year.”

Steve was awarded an annual travel pass – a real bonus in these cash-strapped times he says!

Full PDF: http://www.mmu.ac.uk/about/publications/mmyou/125.pdf

February 21st, 2011 - 18:11pm