Dr Sophie Rutter
BA (SOAS, London), MSc (Sheffield), PhD (Sheffield)
Information School
Lecturer in Information Management
+44 114 222 2659
Full contact details
Information School
Regent Court (IS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
- Profile
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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
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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
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Journal articles
- 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
- The visual representation of germs: a typology of popular germ depictions. Visual Communication. View this article in WRRO
- 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
- 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
- Academic libraries’ stance toward the future. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 19(3), 485-509. View this article in WRRO
- 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
- Extending McKinsey’s 7S model to understand strategic alignment in academic libraries. Library Management, 40(5), 313-326. View this article in WRRO
- 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
- Communicating Handwashing to Children, as Told by Children. Health Communication. View this article in WRRO
- Using classroom talk to understand children’s search processes for tasks with different goals. Information Research, 24(1). View this article in WRRO
- How the information use environment influences search activities: a case of English primary schools. Journal of Documentation. View this article in WRRO
- 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
- How do children reformulate their search queries?. INFORMATION RESEARCH-AN INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC JOURNAL, 20(1).
Conference proceedings papers
- Complex search task: How to make a phone safe for a child. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 1798 (pp 34-36)
- 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.
- Shefleld submission to the CHiC interactive task: Exploring digital cultural heritage. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 1179
- Search or browse? Casual information access to a cultural heritage collection. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 1033 (pp 19-22)
- 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
- Teaching activities
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I have taught on the Information and Knowledge Management, Information Retrieval, HCI and Research Methods modules.
- Professional activities
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Editorial board membership
- Pakistan Journal of Information Management & Libraries
Journal and conference reviewing
- Library and Information Research
- CHI (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)
- Online Information Review
- Journal of Information Management
- iFutures
- Pakistan Journal of Information Management & Libraries