Martin White

Martin White has been a Visiting Professor at the Information School since 2002 and is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the School. He specialises in information management and information retrieval and lectures on enterprise search in the INF6060 module.

A chemist by training Martin started work as an information scientist in 1970, using 10,000 hole optical coincidence cards to undertake literature searches. He began using computer-based information retrieval services in 1975 and in 1981 worked as a member of the development team for DECO, the first UK enterprise search software application.

Much of his career has been spent in high-technology market research but in 1994 he joined a knowledge management consultancy. One of the projects he worked on in 1996 was an assessment of the potential of intranets in organisations, and this led him to set up Intranet Focus Ltd. in 1999. His most challenging intranet project was with the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC in 2001 where he started work the day before 9/11. 

Many of his clients have been multi-national organisations with complex information management and information discovery challenges. His particular area of interest is in finding solutions for organisations working in multiple languages, especially in the pharmaceutical and high-technology sectors.

Martin has written ten books. His two most recent books, 'a History of Enterprise Search 1938-2022' and 'Workarounds: the benefits and the risks' are published on University of Sheffield Pressbooks Network. In 2023 he closed down Intranet Focus Ltd and set up SearchResearch.com for which he acts as Principal Consultant.

Martin is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (USA). He is also a member of The Search Network.

Martin is also an organist and has been fortunate to have played for services in a number of cathedrals in the UK.