NEWS
Early career grants and bursaries
THERE are a number of grants and awards available to early career professionals from UKeiG.
The UKeiG Early Career Award for CILIP members at the start of their career offers £1,000 for an “extraordinary and inspira- tional enterprise” in the profession. There are also bursaries for post graduate re- search; opportunities to apply for study and travel grants; and a bursary to help attend a conference.
Advice on completing applications is avail- able by emailing
info.ukeig@
cilip.org.uk, and full details about the awards and bursaries can be found at
https://bit.ly/2EKqhgl.
Recycle your
IP wrappers Did you know the plastic wrapper that Information Professional is delivered in is easy to recycle?
Although most kerbside recycling schemes do not accept the plastic wrapper, there are plenty of easy and convenient alternatives. Simply take the wrapper to your local major supermarket and add it to their plastic bag recycling collection point. Most “stretchy” plastic bags can be recy- cled at these points and supermarkets accept all bags, not just there own. To find out more visit about which types of plastic bags and wrappers can be recycled at supermarkets visit
https://bit.ly/2TjOnbL.
Broadcast archive funding issue
BBC Wales has said it cannot spend more money on running the country’s National Broadcast Archive.
The archive at Wales’ National Library has been offered 160,000 recordings from the BBC’s Cardiff headquarters. These have all been digitised and are no longer required by BBC Wales, which is also offering ongoing support worth £400,000 until 2023. A further £20,000 a year for three years and £40,000 in kind will be offered from 2024 – however the Welsh Government has asked for more. The Welsh Government refused to commit £1m to the project over fears about its long term viability.
14 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Incendiary DCMS report highlights digital literacy
THE Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee’s Disinformation and Fake News: final report is filled with headline-grabbing findings and conclusions mostly relating to one company. The word Facebook appears 333 times in the report compared to Twitter’s 24 mentions. The bulk of the report looks at how Facebook data has been accessed and used by third parties like AIQ and Cam- bridge Analytica.
It also looked at Facebook’s business model and an alleged Facebook tactic in which: “Facebook used its users’ data to persuade app developers to create plat- forms on its system, by promising access to users’ data, including access to data of users’ friends… those developers that became successful were targeted and ordered to pay money to Facebook. If apps became too successful, Facebook is alleged to have removed the access of data to those apps, thereby starving them of the information they needed to succeed.” The committee suggested that the company behaved like a “digital gang- ster”. It also said Mark Zuckerberg had shown contempt towards the UK Parliament by not appearing before the committee and not responding person- ally to invitations to do so. The final chapter of the 100-page
report relates to digital literacy. “The majority of our witnesses stressed the need for greater
digital literacy
among users of social media,” the report said, adding: “We cannot stress highly enough the importance of greater public understanding of digital information – its use, scale, importance and influence.” To help the public understand the power of information, it called for greater transparency, not just for individuals be- ing able to see what information social media companies hold on them but also how companies are leveraging that data. It said: “Just as information about the tech companies themselves needs to be more transparent, so does information about their algorithms” and it called for a new independent regulator with pow- ers to “access tech companies’ security mechanisms and algorithms, to ensure they are operating responsibly.” It called for a united strategy. “We rec- ommend that the Government ensures that the four main regulators (Ofcom, the ICO, the Electoral Commission and the Advertising Standards Authority) produce a more united strategy in rela- tion to digital literacy.” The committee also reiterated a call for digital literacy to become “a fourth pillar of education, alongside reading, writing and maths”.
ISKO conference – humans and artificial intelligence
THE interaction and balance between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) in knowledge organisation is the theme for this year’s ISKO Conference. The two-day event takes place at City, University of London on 15 and 16 July, and bookings are now open. The biennial conference is titled The Human position in an Artificial World: creativ- ity, ethics and AI in knowledge organi- sation.
The conference will consider practical solutions as well as the theory behind
the creation, development and delivery of knowledge organising systems, ranging from controlled vocabularies, classification systems, metadata schemas through to ontologies and taxonomies. There will be a keynote presentation from Professor Neil Maiden of Cass Business school. The conference will feature a mix of practical and theoretical sessions; and opportunities to network with colleagues from across sectors. For more information about the con- ference visit
www.iskouk2019.org
March 2019
News
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