Dr Sophie Rutter

BA (SOAS, London), MSc (Sheffield), PhD (Sheffield)

Information School

Lecturer in Information Management

s.rutter@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 2659

Regent Court (IS)

Full contact details

Dr Sophie Rutter
Information School
Regent Court (IS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP

Profile

After completing a degree in Art and Archaeology at SOAS, University of London, I worked in industry for several years as an online publication coordinator for Donovan Data Systems (1993-1999), a project manager for Futura Interactive (2000-2001), and as the web and communications manager for the Port of London Authority (2001 - 2006). I returned to study for an MSc in Information Management at the University of Sheffield, and then stayed on for a PhD on children’s information seeking.

During my PhD I worked on three research projects at Sheffield (Future of the Academic Library, Investigating Interlending, and Cultural Heritage in CLEF) and was also a visiting research intern for a search literacy project at the University of Nottingham. In 2018, I moved to the University of Leeds as a research fellow in communication design working on a co-design project with children (Lifting the Lid on Bacteria). I joined the Information School at Sheffield as a Lecturer in 2019.

University Responsibilities

Deputy Research Ethics Coordinator
Research seminar organiser
Module Coordinator INF6060 Information Retrieval: Search Engines and Digital Libraries

Research interests

I am interested in how environment influences the way people interact with, and use, information. My research so far has been broadly focused on school children, information seeking and health communication.

More specifically I have examined how the primary school environment influences how children and teachers use search technologies and search for information. I have also worked with primary school children to co-design handwashing communication. Recently I have been working on a project that examines the effectiveness of different types of images in communicating information about handwashing.

Publications

Journal articles

Rutter S, Stones C, Wood J, Macduff C & Gomez-Escalada M (2020) Effectiveness and efficiency of persuasive space graphics (PSG) in motivating UK primary school children’s hand hygiene. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(7). View this article in WRRO
Stones CM, Stark J, Rutter S & Macduff C (2020) The visual representation of germs: a typology of popular germ depictions. Visual Communication. View this article in WRRO
Rutter S, Toms E & Clough P (2019) Representing search tasks in an information use environment : a case of English primary schools. Journal of Documentation, 75(6), 1370-1395. View this article in WRRO
Cox AM, Pinfield S & Rutter S (2019) The intelligent library: Thought leaders’ views on the likely impact of Artificial Intelligence on academic libraries. Library Hi Tech, 37(3), 418-435. View this article in WRRO
Cox A, Pinfield S & Rutter S (2019) Academic libraries’ stance toward the future. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 19(3), 485-509. View this article in WRRO
Rutter S, Macduff C, Stones C & Gomez-Escalada M (2019) Evaluating children’s handwashing in schools: an integrative review of indicative measures and measurement tools. International Journal of Environmental Health Research. View this article in WRRO
Cox AM, Pinfield S & Rutter S (2019) Extending McKinsey’s 7S model to understand strategic alignment in academic libraries. Library Management, 40(5), 313-326. View this article in WRRO
Rutter S, Blinzler V, Ye C, Wilson ML & Twidale MD (2019) Search tactics used in solving everyday how-to technical tasks: Repertoire, selection and tenacity. Information Processing & Management, 56(3), 919-938. View this article in WRRO
Rutter S, Stones C & MacDuff C (2019) Communicating Handwashing to Children, as Told by Children. Health Communication. View this article in WRRO
Rutter S, Clough PD & Toms E (2019) Using classroom talk to understand children’s search processes for tasks with different goals. Information Research, 24(1). View this article in WRRO
Rutter S, Clough PD & Toms E (2018) How the information use environment influences search activities: a case of English primary schools. Journal of Documentation. View this article in WRRO
Wakeling S, Rutter S, Birdi B & Pinfield S (2018) Interlending and resource sharing in UK public libraries: A mixed methods study. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 50(2), 168-185. View this article in WRRO
Rutter S, Ford N & Clough P (2015) How do children reformulate their search queries?. INFORMATION RESEARCH-AN INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC JOURNAL, 20(1).

Conference proceedings papers

Rutter S, Blinzler V, Ye C, Twidale MB & Wilson ML (2017) Complex search task: How to make a phone safe for a child. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 1798 (pp 34-36)
Rutter S (2014) Primary school children's single topic search over multiple search sessions. Proceedings of the 5th Information Interaction in Context Symposium on - IIiX '14, 26 August 2014 - 30 August 2014.
Hall M, Villa R, Rutter SA, Bell D, Clough P & Toms E (2013) Shefleld submission to the CHiC interactive task: Exploring digital cultural heritage. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 1179
Villa R, Clough P, Hall M & Rutter S (2013) Search or browse? Casual information access to a cultural heritage collection. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 1033 (pp 19-22)

Teaching activities: I have taught on the Information and Knowledge Management, Information Retrieval, HCI and Research Methods modules.