People in Department

Prof Paul Sturges OBE
Emeritus Professor of Library Studies

Congratulations to Professor Paul Sturges, Emeritus Professor of Library Studies, Department of Information Science, Loughborough University, on the award of OBE for services to Libraries in the UK and Overseas in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2010.

Interests and experience

Prof Sturges was also awarded the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)'s Medal at the closing ceremony of the annual congress in San Juan, Puerto Rico, August 18th 2011, for 'Significant contributions to IFLA, and international leadership in upholding IFLA's core values of freedom of access to information and freedom of expression'.

Chair of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)’s Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) core activity (2003-2009).

2000-2002 was Project Leader for a project funded by Resource (now MLA) on Privacy in the Digital Library Environment.

1997-2001 developed Guidelines for Public Internet access facilities on behalf of the Council of Europe.

Has also worked on African library and information-related issues since 1984. Book available on-line, The Quiet Struggle: information and librarioes for the people of Africa, 1998.

Current research

Exploring and discussing aspects of intellectual freedom, through a series of conference papers and journal articles on topics including the rationale for intellectual freedom, tolerance and freedom of expression, the role of transparency in combating corruption and comedy as freedom of expression.

External activities

Fellow of CILIP (FCLIP)

Professor Extraordinary, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Frequent speaker at international conferences and participant in seminars and workshops.

During 2009 spoke at conferences and workshops, and carried out consultancy in nearly 20 different countries, including Croatia, Austria, Russia, Norway, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Italy and Vietnam. Various presentations in Britain during the year were on topics including, Comedy, Information Literacy, Children's Information Rights, and Information History.

Selected publications

• ‘Simple but effective LIS research: why we need it, and how we can do it. Library and Information Research 32, 100 (2008) pp.29-34.
• ‘Comedy as freedom of expression.’ Journal of Documentation, 66, 2, (2010) pp.279-293.
• ‘The cell phone as appropriate information technology: evidence from The Gambia’. With Jasmine Harvey. Information Development, 26, 2, [2010], pp.148-159.
• ‘Information literacy as a human right’. With Almuth Gastinger. Libri, 60 (2010), pp. 195-202.

Publications: [Details]

Contact details

Email: r.p.sturges@lboro.ac.uk