Southampton web specialist awarded information science honour

Senior Software Developer Christopher Gutteridge has been recognised for his outstanding contribution to IT innovation by the UK eInformation Group (UKeiG).

The Systems, Information and Web programmer, who has spent two decades at the University of Southampton since first undertaking a degree in Computer Science, was presented the UKeiG’s Jason Farradane Award at the Internet Librarian International conference in London on Wednesday 18th October.

Chris has been instrumental in pioneering open data services at the University of Southampton and has been involved in many projects over the years that have information at their core. The Jason Farradane Award recognises his contribution to the profession and for pioneering new and innovative ways to derive value from information.

Chris says, “I’m delighted to have been honoured with this accolade. The opportunity to work on innovative and interesting projects is what has kept me working at the University for 20 years, and I hope to keep Southampton at the forefront of advances in information science for many years to come.”

Chris is a member of the Web and Data innovation team in iSolutions, the University’s IT department. The team works closely with Electronics and Computer Science to provide innovative services for the University.

Early in his career, Chris was the lead developer of the EPrints platform, an open-source software package building repositories that met the needs of libraries and enabled them to support researchers in green open access archiving. The flexible system was adopted by universities across the country and to date the registry of open access repositories contains 645 active EPrints repositories, of which 121 are in the UK.

Chris next turned his attention to open data and was recognised with the Times Higher Education award for Outstanding ICT initiative of the Year in 2012. He has since founded data.ac.uk as a place to stimulate discussion between UK universities on the subject of open data. Recent creative uses of data have also included using LIDAR data to create a detailed replica of his home town of Ventnor, Isle of Wight, in Minecraft.

Chris was presented the Jason Farradane Award by UKeiG Chair David Ball on the second day of the library innovation conference at Olympia London.

The UKeiG is a forum for information professionals, users and developers of electronic information resources. It promotes the effective application and management of electronic information, offering a range of resources including seminars and workshops.