Philip Hider

Teaching and Research Staff

Professor Philip Hider

BSc(Hons), MLib, PhD, FCLIP, AALIA

Professor in Library & Information Management
Wagga Wagga
Building 5, Room 314

Professor Philip Hider was Head of the School of Information and Communication Studies, and before that the School of Information Studies, from 2008 until 2023. He holds an Honours degree in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics, a Masters of Librarianship from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and a PhD from City University, London. Philip worked at the British Library from 1995-1997, and in Singapore from 1997-2003. He publishes and researches in the areas of information organisation, retrieval, and architecture, and served on the Australian Committee on Cataloguing from 2004-2009. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and an Associate Member of the Australian Library and Information Association. Philip served as the inaugural Head of the CSU Virtual Campus from 2014-15, as the Acting Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education from June 2015 until July 2016, as the Deputy Presiding Officer of CSU’s Academic Senate from 2018-2020, and as the Associate Dean Research of the Faculty of Arts and Education from 2020-21. He was also seconded on a part-time basis to the Australian Government's Office for Learning and Teaching in 2016. The second edition of his best-selling text, Information Resource Description, was published in 2018.

Philip's research is primarily located in the field of information (and knowledge) organisation, and in cognate fields such as information retrieval and information architecture. It examines the way information resources are described and categorised, and how these descriptions and categorisations (i.e., metadata) can be used to retrieve resources in optimal ways. Philip has conducted research in and for a range of institutions, including the National Library Board of Singapore, the National Library of Australia, the State Library of Victoria, the State Library of NSW, and the Australian government's Office for Learning and Teaching, generating well over $1M of grant income. He has published over 100 scholarly articles, most of them as lead author, in a wide range of Library and Information Studies journal, and co-leads CSU’s Libraries Research Group. He currently serves on several editorial boards, including those for the Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association and the Journal of Documentation, and leads an ARC Linkage Project investigating the codesign of public library spaces.

Philip has been involved in the teaching of Library and Information Studies (LIS) for many years. His text, Information Resource Description, is used in many information and knowledge organisation courses around the world. He has also published various papers on the teaching of both information organisation and LIS more generally, and previously conducted many short courses on different aspects of library cataloguing.

Philip has supervised the following research students to completion:

Bodhinayaka, Dilini. PhD. 2024. "Commencing undergraduate students' prior understanding of academic libraries in Sri Lanka."

Coe, Mary. PhD. 2022. “How readers make sense of active e-book indexes.”

Khan, Arif. PhD. 2022. “An exploratory prioritisation of key elements in library and information science practicum supervision.”

Bacic, Marijana. PhD. 2020. “A study of undergraduate student uptake of library discovery tools."

Gao, Lily. PhD. 2014. “Information seeking and use of Chinese offshore students studying in Australian university programs.”

Burford, Sally. PhD. 2010. “The practice of Web information architecture in large organisations.”

Ruthven, Joan. DInfoMgt. 2009. “Characteristics, preferences, and needs of adult Internet users in a New South Wales public library environment.”

Philip has served on various professional committees, such as the Australian Committee on Cataloguing, and is currently a member of the Subject Analysis and Access Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. He also has a lengthy consulting record and has written many book reviews for The Electronic Library and other journals.