Dr Pauline Rafferty

Senior Lecturer
MA (Hons), MSc, PhD, PGCED, MCLIP Photograph of Dr Pauline Rafferty.

Contact

Email: pmr@aber.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)1970 622926
Fax: +44 (0)1970 622190

Responsibilities

Departmental Director of Teaching and Learning, Module coordinator

Teaching Areas

Undergraduate Teaching

Information Retrieval, Effective Communication, Dissertation supervision

Postgraduate Teaching

Information Retrieval, Dissertation supervision

Research

My current teaching and research interests are in the areas of image analysis, multimedia information retrieval and indexing, social tagging, and critical communication and information studies, particularly subject analysis, interpretation and semiotics; representations of knowledge, and classification theory; structuralist and semiotic approaches to modelling culture as “human sciences”. I am also interested in critical theory approaches to popular culture.

Biography

I joined the Department in January 2007. Before that I taught in the Department of Information Science, City University, London, and in the School of Information Studies and Department of Media and Communication at the University of Central England, Birmingham. My first teaching post was in the University of Northumbria. Before moving into teaching I worked in information research and media librarianship.

I read H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Roland Barthes, and golden age detective fiction. I listen to Steely Dan, The Blue Nile, Capercaillie and anyone singing Cole Porter, and I love the night train from London to Scotland, particularly when I end up in Kilchattan Bay.

Additional Interests

Professional Activities

Member of CILIP and ISKO

Staff Publications

Rafferty, P. (2011) Informative Tagging of Images: The Importance of Modality in Interpretation, Knowledge Organization, 38(4), 283-298

Foster, A., Rafferty, P., (2011). Innovations in Information Retrieval: Perspectives for Theory and Practice. London: Facet.

Vernitski, A and Rafferty, P. (2011). Approaches To Information Retrieval Research: From Theory to Practice, in A. Foster and P. Rafferty (ed.), Innovations in Information Retrieval: Perspectives for Theory and Practice (pp. 49-67).  London: Facet.

Rafferty, P. (2010), ‘Genre theory, knowledge organisation and fiction’, In: Gnoli, C., & Mazzocchi, F. (Eds.). (2010). Paradigms and conceptual systems in knowledge organization: Proceedings of the Eleventh International ISKO Conference (Rome, Italy, February 23-26, 2010). Advances in knowledge organization, no. 12. Würzburg: Ergon.(06.10.2.23/26), ISBN 978-3-89913-746-0 pp. 254-261.
 
Hughes, A.V and Rafferty, P. (2010), ‘Inter-indexer consistency in graphic materials indexing at the National Library of Wales’,. Journal of Documentation, (to appear)
 
Gaffney, M., and Rafferty, P. (2009), ‘Making the Long Tail visible: social networking sites and independent music discovery’, Program: electronic library and information systems, 43(4) pp.375 - 391
DOI: 0.1108/00330330910998039

Rafferty, P. (2009), Replicate, Modify, Challenge: The Relationships between Author-as-Consumer and Author-as-Producer in Popular Culture Genres, The International Journal of The Book, 6 (2), pp. 77-84

Rafferty, P. (2009), Informative Tagging of Images: The Importance of Modality in Interpretation in New Perspectives for the Organization and Dissemination of Knowledge: Proceedings of the IX Congress of the Spanish Chapter of ISKO, Valencia, 11-13 March 2009, Part 2: Representation of Knowledge: Quantitative Modelling, pp. 70-83. (Available: www.iskoix.org)

Inskip, C., MacFarlane, A., and Rafferty, P. (2008). Meaning, Communication, Music: Towards a Revised Communication Model. Journal of Documentation, 64(5), pp. 687-706. DOI: 10.1108/00220410810899718

Rafferty, P. (2008) Identifying Diachronic Transformations in Popular Culture Genres: A Cultural-Materialist Approach to the History of Popular Literature Publishing. Library History, 24(4), pp.262-272. DOI: 10.1179/174581608X381558

Conduit, N., & Rafferty, P. (2007). Constructing an image indexing template for the children's society: users' queries and archivists' practice. Journal of Documentation, 63(6), 898-919.

Rafferty, P. (2007). Review of Wootten, C. Developing Quality Metadata: Building Innovative Tools and Workflow Solutions, Oxford, Focal Press, 2007. In Multimedia Information and Digital Technology, 33(4), 26-28.

Rafferty, P., & Hidderley, R. (2007). Flickr and democratic indexing:dialogic approaches to indexing. Aslib Proceedings, 59(4/5), 397-410.

Rafferty, P. and Hidderley, R. (2005), Indexing Multimedia and Creative Works: The Problems of Meaning and Interpretation, Aldershot, Ashgate.