Geographies of Information

2019 – 2020 marked the centenary of UCL Department of Information Studies. To celebrate the creation of the first School of Librarianship in the UK, the Honorary Research Fellow and Curator Dr Alda Terracciano worked in collaboration with members of staff, students and alumni to create an exhibition on the history of the department and the role that teaching and research has played in the creation of an international, professional workforce over the past decades.

This launch event took place online and included presentations by the Dean of Arts and Humanities, Professor Stella Bruzzi, and the Head of the Department, Professor Elizabeth Shepherd, a short introduction and virtual tour of the exhibition with the exhibition Curator, Dr Alda Terracciano, and conversations with project participants, including alumni and students.

You can see our Centenary Website here. 

During the centenary year, the curator explored archive material held at UCL Special Collections and the British Library and led a group of 11 students in a series of oral history sessions with former members of staff and alumni to explore key issues faced by information professionals in their jobs, including records management and publishing, engagement of different communities of practice, development of digital humanities, and uses of artificial intelligence, to mention just a few. Due to Covid-19 disruptions the exhibition has now been re-designed for the digital space and these areas of critical enquiry have been situated alongside historical documents in a 3D online environment to facilitate the dialogical dimension of the exhibition and link the past to the present in interactive ways.

The UCL Department of Information Studies is an international centre for knowledge creation and transfer in the fields of librarianship, archives and records management, publishing, information science and digital humanities. We are the only department in the UK which brings together in one place degrees in library and information studies, information science, archives and records management, publishing, and digital humanities.