Last week saw UKeiG
Chair, Martin White, involved in the presentation of our two most prestigious
awards: the UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award and the UKeiG Jason Farradane Award. On
Monday 30th November Martin joined the Strix Committee Chair, Doug Veal, at the
RSC "Celebrating the history of chemical information" meeting to
present the Tony Kent Strix 'Owl Trophy' and a
certificate to Professor Michael Lynch, while Wednesday saw him at the CILIP
stand in the exhibition area of Online Information 2010, presenting the UKeiG
Jason Farradane award to Dr Shawky Salem.
Michael Lynch’s
nomination for the UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award was based on the first two award
criteria, which the judges felt made a strong case. The nomination stated that his
main contribution to a theoretical understanding of the information retrieval
process was an extended analysis of the role of frequencies of occurrence of
database characteristics on the efficiency of database searching. This
approach, named variety generation, was first developed in the design of
screening systems for chemical substructure searching, but was then shown to be
applicable to increasing the efficiency of processing for a range of text-based
phenomena, including compression, sorting and signature searching. In
terms of the second criteria, the development of, or significant improvement
in, mechanisms, a product or service for the retrieval of information, it was
felt that, whilst at CAS Mike Lynch carried out some of
the first experiments anywhere in the world on the use of computers for the
creation and searching of both textual and chemical databases, work that led to
the first version of the CAS Registry Service, the world’s premier
information resource in chemistry. His work at
Shawky Salem’s citation for
the UKeiG Jason Farradane Award makes reference to his unique role in the ILS
Profession in his region, as a part of a team working together to promote
advocacy for the Profession and to provide wider access to information, and a
“perfect use of electronic resources”, so as to enrich cultural
activities in both the Arab World and Canada. More specifically highlighted are
the development of the first Arabic Edition of Dewey Decimal Classification
(DDC) in 1982; the creation of a
new department, Knowledge Management and Informatics (KMI) in Beirut Arab
University (BAU) in 2002; supervision and discussion of over
18 PhD and 21 MA thesis in Alexandria University and other Universities in
Egypt; his creation of the grant with IFLA, the SSCG (Shawky Salem Conference
Grant), and of the Prize for KMI (Knowledge Management and Informatics) with
the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in Egypt; and – of
course – his writings.
Further information about both award winners, and the
awards, can be found at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/awards.
_________________________________
Chris Armstrong - [log in to unmask] for
UKeiG -
www.ukeig.org.uk
_____________________________
UKeiG is a Special
Interest Group of CILIP
Registered Charity Number:
313014