B C, Before Computers: On Information Technology from Writing to the Age of Digital Data – Stephen Robertson

From an information technology perspective my career has seen some remarkable developments. I started out using 80-column cards at university in 1967 and then 10,000 hole optical coincidence cards at the start of my career in 1970. But did you know that the size of an 80-column card was the same size as US bank… Continue reading B C, Before Computers: On Information Technology from Writing to the Age of Digital Data – Stephen Robertson

Announcement of the Karen Sparck Jones Award for 2020

The winner of the 2020 Microsoft-BCS/BCS IRSG Karen Spärck Jones Award (to be presented at ECIR 2021 next year) is Dr. Ahmed Hassan Awadallah, Principal Research Manager at Microsoft AI Research in Redmond, WA, USA. Dr Jochen Liedner is the IRSG representative on the Awards Committee if you have any recommendations for the 2021 Award. Note from the Editor – This BCS/IRSG Award is… Continue reading Announcement of the Karen Sparck Jones Award for 2020

Announcement of Strix Award for 2020

The UK electronic information Group (UKeiG) has announced that the winner of the 2020 Tony Kent Strix Memorial Award is Ian Ruthven, Professor of Information Seeking and Retrieval at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde. Professor Ruthven leads the Strathclyde Information School Research Group (SISRG). SISRG operates across the boundaries between… Continue reading Announcement of Strix Award for 2020

And finally from the Editor….

The dramatic growth in scientific publishing during 2020 has lead to a number of discussions about open access publishing and open access to research services. A recent paper in Science provides a good introduction to the topic of open access if you are not entirely familiar with it. In my view there is a barrier… Continue reading And finally from the Editor….

Editorial

I’m looking forward with interest to three virtual search events in November.  The Search Solutions 2020 Tutorial Day take place on 24 November followed by the Search Solutions conference itself on 25 November. Then on the afternoon of 26 November comes the Strix Annual Lecture. The decision has now been taken to run ECIR 2021… Continue reading Editorial

Search Solutions 2020 24/25 November

The Search Solutions conference will take place virtually on Wednesday 25 November. The programme can be found on the conference website. The conference will be preceded by a day of workshops on Tuesday 24 November. With the Strix Award event taking place on Thursday 26 November it will be quite a searching week.