Sarah George is a Faculty Librarian at the University of Bradford. Her career as an academic librarian began eleven years ago, initially providing maternity cover for Engineering, Design and Technology, then gaining a permanent role covering Archaeology and Environment, and latterly Chemistry, Forensics and Integrated Science. Before becoming a subject librarian Sarah worked as a field archaeologist, a research assistant, a school librarian and a special collections assistant.
Sarah studied Biological Anthropology as her undergraduate degree, a Masters degree in Osteology, Paleopathology and Funerary Archaeology and an additional Masters in Information Studies. Sarah is a chartered librarian and Senior Fellow of the HEA. In addition to her daily role of supporting students and staff in Archaeology and Chemistry, Sarah is passionate about accessibility, diversity, good academic practice and in embedding information skills in places where few librarians have previously travelled. This has led to fieldwork in Mallorca with Environment students, to Orkney with Archaeology students and studying first year Chemistry alongside the students whom she supports.
Impact of work
Sarah has made a sustained, distinctive and outstanding contribution to the development and embedding of new, innovative and inclusive approaches to supporting students to become fully digitally and information literate. She has transformed the approaches to developing students academic practice by moving away from the traditional bolt on approach to study skills towards an integrated approach delivered collaboratively by academic librarians, subject academics and academic support staff.
Sarah's University-wide implementation of Plagiarism Avoidance for New Students (PANs) has had a positive impact and resulted in a significant reduction in cases of plagiarism. Her work has gained her internal and external recognition as an expert in good academic practice, involving students and academics in the production of teaching and learning materials. Her tenacity to enhance the academic practice of students is inspirational, and her leading work on accessibility is driving up standards, ensuring equality of experience, and benefiting the student body nationally. Sarah has initiated a national project investigating the impact on the learning of print-impaired students on reliance on texts in alternative format rather than resources being accessible off-the-peg.