Application Procedure, Terms and Conditions

H W Wilson Foundation Post-Graduate Scholarship

In Library and Information Studies

Tenable at the School of Informationand Library Studies, UCD

1.This Scholarship will offer opportunities for suitably qualified women and men to pursue one of the following post-graduate degrees at the School of Information and Library Studies (SILS) in University College Dublin (UCD):

  • a masters degree by research (MLitt);
  • a doctoral degree by research (PhD).

2.Applications are welcome from residents of any country, including non-EU countries. Applicants should note the residency requirements for the duration of the scholarship in point 14 below.

3.Applicants must comply with the entry requirements and application procedure for entry to the MLitt or PhD programme as determined by UCD. If examination results are not known at the time of application, the School may make a provisional offer of a scholarship on condition that the applicant’s undergraduate degree result is a first or upper second class honours or the equivalent. The School’s decision in these matters is final.

4.The scholarship supports research in an aspect of Library and Information Studies for which there is a suitable research supervisor in the School of Information and Library Studies. The decisions of the School on the suitability of the topic and the availability of a research supervisor are final.The research strengths of SILS are identified in paragraph 27. Some possible topics are listed in paragraph 28.

5.A successful applicant for the scholarship will be designated as an 'H W Wilson Foundation Research Scholar in Library and Information Studies' (hereafter referred to as a ‘scholar').

6.The scholarship will be awarded initially for one year, but subject to terms and conditions, is renewable for up to two additional years.

7.Where ethical issues may arise in their research, applicants will be required to submit to SILS a written statement to the effect that full consideration has been given to the ethical implications of the research proposal. This statement must further demonstrate the applicant’s proposed resolution of the ethical issues arising. SILS must receive written evidence of ethical approval by UCD’s Ethics Committee in the event of a successful outcome to this application, prior to confirmation of the scholarship. If a research project requires access to archival material in private custodianship or archival material with restricted access, written evidence of appropriate permission to consult such material must be furnished to SILS.

8.Applicants must supply the following details in their application:

(a) An outline of the research topic, using the headings in the evaluation criteria at point 11 below;

(b) A Curriculum Vitae that provides details of the applicant’s academic record and achievements;

(c) A signed statement that specifies the financial support available to the applicant;

(d) Names and contact details of two academic referees;

(e) Non-returnable original transcripts of the birth certificate and primary degree or other third level academic record;

(f) Applicants whose prior education has not been carried out through English must provide evidence that they satisfy the Minimum English Language Requirements for entry to UCD as described at

9.An Assessment Board will evaluate applications for the scholarship on the basis of their excellence, originality and potential. The Assessment Board will consist of the following three members:

(a) The Head of the School of Information and Library Studies, UCD or his / her nominee;

(b) The Director of Research in the School of Information and Library Studies, UCD or his / her nominee;

(c) A senior member of academic staff from a School of Information and Library Studies outside Ireland, e.g. a current or past External Examiner.

10.The Assessment Board reserves the right to short-list applications based on the applications submitted by applicants without contacting referees. It also reserves the right not to award the scholarship if the applications are not of a sufficiently high standard.

11.Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

(a) Description of the project for which the scholarship is being sought (no more than 500 words). This should include a brief outline of how the applicant sees his / her project developing from year to year;

(b) Location of the proposed project within the current state of research and bibliography in the area (no more than 400 words);

(c) Relative significance of the contribution that the proposed project will make to the area (no more than 400 words);

(d) Location of the proposed project within the research expertise of potential supervisors in SILS (no more than 100 words);

(e) Methodology (no more than 250 words);

(f) The applicant's record and academic achievements (no more than 100 words).

12.The scholarship will be awarded only to a full-time student who will engage full-time in research during the period of the scholarship.

13.The scholar may not undertake any other paid employment for the duration of the scholarship other than tutorial or demonstration work which is relevant to the scholar’s research, provided that this:

(a) does not exceed six hours teaching in any given week;

(b) is undertaken in SILS, UCD;

(c) has the support of the scholar's supervisor.

14.The scholar may not hold the H W Wilson Foundation scholarship simultaneously with another equivalent source of financial support, e.g. an Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences Post Graduate Scholarship. The decisions of the School on financial support are final.

15.The scholar is expected to maintain an actual presence within SILS or other designated UCD location during the period of the scholarship and to reside within a reasonable travelling distance of UCD. However, depending on the nature of the research, a scholar may benefit from spending part of the term of the scholarship away from UCD, for example if there is a need to carry out research in other locations or to use resources located at other research or archival institutions in Ireland or abroad. The scholar must obtain the prior approval of thesupervisor for absence related to their research.

16.The scholarship consists of an annual bursary of Euro 12,700 payable to the scholar, a contribution towards student fees of Euro1, 800, and an allowance for travel for research or conference participation of up to Euro 1,000 per annum. Payment of the conference grant is subject to recommendation of the travel by the scholar’s research supervisor and submission of evidence of travel and participation in the conference by the scholar to the supervisor.

17.The School attaches considerable importance to procedures for monitoring and renewing the scholarship. The scholar will be required to submit written progress reports to the School by 30th November and 31st May, respectively, following the initial date of the scholarship. These reports will be accompanied by a confidential and comprehensive evaluation from the scholar’s supervisor on the progress of the research. It will be the scholar’s responsibility to ensure that these reports are submitted on time. The Head of School will review the scholar’s report and supervisor’s evaluation and then take appropriate action.

18.The timely submission (not later than the stated dates) of these reports by the scholar and the supervisor are an absolute condition of holding and renewing the scholarship.

19.The Head of SILS will forward an annual report on the progress of the scholars to the H W Wilson Foundation.

20.The School stresses that if it receives an unsatisfactory report on a scholar’s progress, or if the reports are not submitted on time, the scholarship will be terminated and the scholar will be required to refund monies that have been paid to him/her. The H W Wilson Foundation will be notified of this occurrence.

21.The scholarship will automatically cease on the submission of the scholar’s thesis.

22.It will be the responsibility of the scholar’s supervisor to ensure that if the scholar leaves UCD, or is not dedicating sufficient time or effort to the project, the Head of SILS will be informed immediately.

23.The successful scholars will commence their research in September 2005 or January 2006.

24.All publicity, including public lectures, publications, print materials and press releases, television and radio advertisements, websites, film, video and audio recordings associated with or arising from the research undertaken by a scholar while in receipt of a scholarship must contain acknowledgment of funding received from the 'H W Wilson Foundation'.

25.The award of the scholarship is subject to receipt of funding by the School of Information and Library Studies in UCD from the H W Wilson Foundation. In the event of such funding being reduced or being discontinued, neither the School nor UCD will be under any liability to provide funding or to compensate a Scholar for any reduction or cessation of such funding.

26.The School of Information and Library Studies reserves the right to revise the Terms and Conditions of the scholarship at any time.

27.The following research areas provide the main focus for research in SILS:

  • Information Society and Individuals
  • Information Collections and Management
  • InformationPolicy and Institutions

28.The following possible research topics have been identified by staff of SILS:

  • The reconstruction of Ireland’s readership landscape, pre-Emancipation [1829] – the use of book subscription list data (details in Appendix A).
  • Institutional repositories in Irish Higher Education: implications and opportunities for E-Scholarship (details in Appendix B).
  • Implications of Web services for digital libraries in Ireland(details in Appendix C).
  • The bibliography of bad science(details in Appendix D).
  • Integrated models of information seeking and information retrieval(details in Appendix D).
  • Forms of life, language games, representation, and information retrieval(details in Appendix D).
  • The role of epistemology in LIS(details in Appendix D).
  • Information behaviour, information literacy and social inclusion.
  • Information behaviour, information literacy and E-government.
  • Information literacy in third level institutions in Ireland.
  • Information literacy in the workplace.

Note: These topics are merely indicative;applicants are encouraged to develop their own topics and research proposals.

29.While this advertisement relates directly to the H W Wilson Foundation Scholarship, it is intended to form a panel from which other research scholarships may be offered as additional funding becomes available.

Appendix A: Possible Research Topic

Possible Supervisor: Dr. Barbara Traxler-Brown, email Barbara.Traxler-Brown @ucd.ie

The reconstruction of Ireland’s readership landscape, pre-Emancipation [1829] – the use of book subscription list data.

The readership of fiction from the late eighteenth century [1790] to pre-1830 has formed a focus for intense research activity in recent years. In addition to the multi-volume History of the Irish Book, part of the documented experience of fiction reading for Ireland is available from the work of CardiffUniversity’s Editorial and Intertextual Research Centre.

While privately financed subscription editions were utilised for a number of literary genres, including poetry, much more frequent was the use of such finance for publishing specialized reference information works, from Encyclopaedia Britannica, to art reference, to specific denominational or regional information resources. Due to the public acknowledgement of subscribers in preliminary lists, considerable data is available for the identity, gender, status, occupation, and location of those subscribing, and this for decades prior to the first census survey of Ireland in 1821. While a number of regional census surrogates have been developed for Ireland, and the revised Dictionary of Irish Biography is forthcoming [2006], the collation, analysis, and exploitation of book subscription lists as a multimedia database resource still awaits.

Proposals are therefore invited from intending applicants for the H. W. Wilson Foundation Scholarship, within this, or a closely related, area of Book History-Print Culture.

Appendix B: Possible Research Topic

Possible Supervisor: Dr Judith Wusteman,

Institutional repositories in Irish Higher Education: implications and opportunities for E-Scholarship

Institutional repositories are

digital collections capturing and preserving the intellectual output of a single or multi-university community[1]

International interest and activity relating to institutional repositories is growing exponentially among universities and other educational institutions worldwide. In Ireland, the NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive has been functioning for some time[2]; DublinCityUniversity maintains an eprint test site[3] and other institutions are actively planning to develop such repositories. In addition, there are proposals for a national harvesting service[4].

A study of the implications and opportunities for e-Scholarship in Ireland posed by institutional repositories is timely and important. There are numerous angles which a PhD could explore, most of which could have an Irish angle. They include:

  • Author self-archiving in Ireland
  • Implications of e-scholarship on the journal in Ireland
  • Web metadata standards
  • XML, and other formats, for submission, storage and presentation
  • Implications of institutional repositories for Irish university libraries and their users
  • Open Access and the OAI in Ireland

Background reading

  • Crow, R. The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper:
  • van der Kuil, A andFeijen, M The Dawning of the Dutch Network of Digital Academic Repositories (DARE): A Shared Experience:
  • DAEDALUS - A JISC FAIR Project

Appendix C: Possible Research Topic

Possible Supervisor: Dr Judith Wusteman,

Implications of Web Services for Digital Libraries in Ireland

For too long, libraries have been isolated from the rest of the information world by the use of systems and formats that are library-specific. Web Services offer the chance to break out from that isolation by the deployment of more universal methods, software standards and formats.

The term Web service[5] refers to the use of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and standards such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), REST (REpresentational State Transfer), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and related technologies to enable the seamless interoperability of Web-based applications. Web services go beyond the functionality of simple Web pages; they provide dynamic application-to-application functionality that can be remotely invoked. For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as application-oriented services.

Some Web service standards have already emerged in the library world. For example:

  • OAI-PMH[6] (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting)

enables data providers to make metadata about resources available to other service providers.

  • SRW/U[7] (Search and Retrieval Web/URL Service) is a collection of Web service-based protocols, combining HTTP and an XML version of Z39.50 that provides a standard syntax for Internet search queries and responses.
  • Both Google[8] and Amazon[9] have implemented Web services that enable software developers to interact with their sites through standard protocols. Such services are having an increasing impact on library services.

In addition, an industry-wide initiative, by vendors and library service organizations,

was launched in June 2004. VIEWS[10] offers the exiting prospect of standard connectivity within and between library systems via the development of standard Web services.

A study of the implications and impact of Web Services on digital libraries would be of great use and interest to the library community. The research could concentrate on the implications for the Irish library community or could have an international perspective.

There is potential for a tie-in with the IVRLA (Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive). The latter is “a project to digitise research material in print, graphic, audio and video format from four separate repositories in University College Dublin (the Library, the Archives Department, the Department of Irish Folklore and the Department of Modern Irish), and to provide an interactive web-based interface for researchers”.[11] Material from IVRLA could be used as a test-bed for ideas.

Depending on the interests and skills of the candidate, this project could involve practical programming. Alternatively, it could concentrate on a qualitative study of the implications and impact of Web services.

Background reading

  • Vasudevan, V. A Web Services Primer:
  • Collins, J. An Analysis of the Future Adaptation and Use of Web Services:

Appendix D: Possible Research Topics

Possible Supervisor: Dr Ian Cornelius,

1.The Bibliography of Bad Science

The considerable resources of bibliometrics and citation studies allowthe construction of pictures of the sciences and communicate newknowledge, but they fail to discriminate between good and bad science.The cumulative record offers no corrective for work based on falsepremises, faulty, inadequate, or outdated data, bad reasoning, or anyother failure in methods of enquiry. The journal peer review system ismeant to ensure the validity of the scientific record but it is knownthat erroneous work slips through that filter. The claim of theinformation professions and businesses to connect people to theinformation they need is jeopardized by the publication of badscience. There is a project that could alleviate this situation by:

  1. determining the incidence and character of bad science in thepublished record
  2. determining the incidence and character of bad social science
  3. examining current corrective mechanisms
  4. through analysis and experimentdetermining what measures could beincorporated into the bibliographic record to offer readers updating onwork labelled as 'bad' isolating it from the processes of retrieval.

2. Integrated models of Information Seeking and Information Retrieval

There are several models of the retrieval and seeking processes.Recently Jarvelin and Ingwersen (The Turn, Springer, August 2005)haveproposed an integrated model. There is a project that would:

  1. examineand analyze the claims of the Jarvelin & Ingwersen model
  2. discussalternative integrated models and the sustainability ofclaims about integrated models
  3. examine the operationalizability of such models.

3. Forms of Life, Language Games, Representation, and InformationRetrieval

There is a claim by David Blair (1990 and 2005 forthcoming) that ananalysis of the arguments by Ludwig Wittgenstein about Language gamescan inform and advance our understanding of information retrieval.There is a project to analyze Blair's claims. Such analysis could contrast Blair's claims with alternative claims about the character oftexts and the supremacy of context. Applicants should note that this is a difficult project.