News

We are pleased to announce that ISKO UK, as part of its grants programme, has awarded a conference grant to Asha Dulanjalie Palihakkara to present a paper at the upcoming conference of the International Society for Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (ICCCBE) in Montreal, Canada. Asha is a second-year PhD student at the University of Nottingham and will be presenting a paper titled “Semantic web for BIM-based automated project management and control: a review”. Asha's research focuses on the application of semantic web technologies and ontologies for construction progress monitoring, an area in civil engineering that intersects with knowledge organisation. 

For some years, ISKO UK has been a partner in the organisation of the Tony Kent Strix Award for Information Retrieval along with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group and the British Computer Society Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BCS IRSG). The award is now presented by the UK electronic information Group (UKeiG) 

We are now looking for a member of ISKO UK to sit on the judging panel for the award  (see list of past winners). It is a very rewarding position to be in as it is gives the opportunity to review high quality applications from all over the world. Apart from being an ISKO UK member, the main requisite is to be interested and knowledgeable in the field of Information Retrieval. The incoming representative will be briefed by Stella Dextre Clarke who has held the position for many years and is now stepping down. Anyone one interested should contact the ISKO UK Chair at chair@iskouk.org in the first instance.

We are happy to announce that Osma Suominen from the National Library of Finland will join us at the ISKO UK Meetup on the 8th of October 2024 to discuss what's new in Skosmos, an open-source, web-based SKOS browser and publishing tool designed to access controlled vocabularies for indexing, information retrieval and vocabulary development. Join our meetup.com group to be notified when registration opens.

Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp has just announced its call for speakers for 2024.

The deadline is 31 December this year, and  four events are planned in 2024 – including the newly-introduced Boot Camp BASICS event, which welcomes brand new taxonomists and knowledge managers. 

Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp' organisers are always looking to showcase the very best insights and practices in taxonomy and related work. They welcome  contributions from taxonomy practitioners, content strategists, technologists, knowledge engineers, researchers, developers, information architects, product managers, and more. And, while taxonomies are at the heart of their annual virtual series, they cover a vast range of topics around knowledge and information management too.

This year, for the first time,  there is a single joint winner of both
the Tony Kent Strix Award and the Jason Farradane Award, namely Martin
White FBCS FRSC, HonFCLIP, Principal Analyst at SearchReseach Online.

The Jason Farradane Award is presented in recognition of an outstanding
contribution to the library and information science profession.

The Tony Kent Strix Memorial Award is given in recognition of an
outstanding contribution to the field of search and information retrieval.

You are warmly invited to attend the free presentation and celebration
on the afternoon of Tuesday 5th  December 2023, when Martin will give a
special free Zoom lecture as part of the  programme below. The event is
free but please note you must make a booking in advance. For further details and registration, please go to:

https://www.cilip.org.uk/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1800137&group=201314
<https://www.cilip.org.uk/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1800137&group=201314>

As announced at the last Meetup on Information Governance by Noeleen Schenk, the ISKO UK Meetup team is taking a break for the winter and will come back with a new programme in the spring of 2024.

Meanwhile we thank all who have supported our events by attending and participating in the discussion.

The ISKO UK Meetup team.

Slides covering the whole programme are available here.  

Delegates and ISKO members will be able to access the video-recordings by the end of September.

The entire ISKO UK 2022 and 2023 Meetup Playlist is now available on YouTube. To receive notifications for future events please subscribe to Knowledge Organisation London group on Meetup.com.

"Knowledge Organization and Information Discovery: Improving User Experience, Quality and Trust", the 7th biennial ISKO UK Conference. The conference will take place on 24-25 July 2023 at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and online.

The objective of the conference is to promote discussion and understanding about the benefits of knowledge organization and the way it can encourage user engagement and interaction with information.

Contributions are invited in the form of extended abstracts. See details and submission instructions at https://www.iskouk.org/conf2023/cfp.

The Tony Kent Strix Award is given in recognition of an outstanding practical innovation or achievement in the field of information retrieval in its widest sense. This could take the form of an application or service, or an overall appreciation of past achievements that have led to significant advances. The award is open to individuals or groups from anywhere in the world.

Nominations must be for a major, sustained or influential achievement that meets one or more of the following criteria:

Science: The advancement of our understanding of information retrieval methods, experimentation and evaluation, at either the theoretical or the practical level. The scope includes approaches as diverse as linguistic, probabilistic, fact-checking or artificial intelligence applied to search.

Service Delivery: The development and management of systems, networks or services:

• Enhancement of the mechanisms/technology/standards underpinning information products or services
•  Establishing an innovative information resource or service
•  Innovations leading to improved accessibility/usability of information resources.

Education and organisational infrastructure: The provision of leadership in education, training, community development and/or collaboration to advance information retrieval at local, national or international level.

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Submissions must include:

•  The name, institutional address and qualifications of the nominee
• A brief biography - (maximum one A4 page)
•  A selective bibliography - (key publications relevant to the nomination)
•   A justification for the nomination - (maximum one A4 page) showing clearly which of the award criteria the nominee meets and how they are met
•   Additional material - letters of support, for example. (Letters from previous winners would be especially valuable).

It is possible that the Award Committee will request additional information from the nominators for those nominees considered suitable candidates for the award.

An unsuccessful nomination from previous years may be reconsidered provided the nominator updates it, if necessary, to reflect the current extent of the candidate's achievement.

 Nominations for the 2022 award must reach the judges by 6 pm GMT on Friday 30^th September 2022.

Please email to: John Wickenden – Hon. Secretary UKeiG secretary.ukeig@cilip.org.uk

and copy in: Gary Horrocks - UKeiG administrator info.ukeig@cilip.org.uk and Sue Silcocks – Hon. Treasurer UKeiG treasurer.ukeig@cilip.org.uk

For more information about UKeiG, the Tony Kent Strix Award and previous winners of this prestigious international award please visit: https://www.cilip.org.uk/members/group_content_view.asp?group=201314&id=712682