Doctoral Poster Abstracts
History of Libraries & Library Science 1. Renata L. Chancellor Studies addressing the contributions of black librarians to the Library and Information Science (LIS) profession are not well documented in the scholarly literature. Library historian, Edward Goedeken contends that, “solidly researched biographies are lacking for nearly every major African American librarian in this century” (Goedeken, 1998, p.195). Moreover, there is a dearth of literature that explores the role African American librarians played in promoting civil rights in the American Library Association (ALA). This project contributes to a growing body of literature in this realm. The focus of this research is an historical study that examines the life and leadership behavior of E.J. Josey. As a leader of civil rights, Josey’s activism spanned over fifty years. Although he is most notable for introducing the historic resolution that disbanded segregation in four southern library associations, he has also held several key leadership positions that include presidency of the ALA and founder of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA). His influence on the policies of ALA is of great significance to the history and the future of the profession. The over arching research question explored is: How did Josey’s leadership transform the Library and Information Science profession? To answer this question, an historical approach is taken that includes oral history interviews and documentary research. Findings will be produced in a dissertation targeted to students, historians, librarians and researchers in LIS. 2. Cindy C. Welch In 1931 the American Library Association (ALA) announced it would create a national hour-long children’s radio program. Nearly ten years later after time, manpower and resources had been expended, ALA finally abandoned the project and no children’s program ever aired. ALA’s involvement can be seen as the convergence of cultural, economic and institutional factors including the desire on the part of radio network executives to capitalize on the gold mine that was radio and yet create an image of public service that would short circuit government attempts to regulate the industry; a sincere desire by many groups of the day (including libraries) to safeguard the mental and physical wellbeing of children in a time of great economic and social upheaval (the 1930s); and the public library’s involvement – both locally and nationally – with popular culture, especially as that culture affected children. This dissertation will explore the process of the ALA project - start to finish - while situating it within the wild and woolly days of the consolidation of the “American” (commercial) system of radio broadcasting.
LIS as a Profession 3. Stephanie A. Jones Nationwide, there is a critical shortage of school library media specialists. This is due to retirements, attrition, limited access to library education programs, increasingly rigorous certification requirements, and the small pool of qualified candidates (Shannon, 2004). This shortage has led libraries, library associations and schools of information science to intensify their recruitment efforts with the goal of increasing the number of qualified applicants of all ethnicities and abilities. Traditionally, the majority of school librarians have been teachers with several years of classroom experience who returned to college to earn the necessary certification required to enter the field. The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that motivate teachers to become school librarians. I am employing a qualitative research methodology using in-depth interviews to address the research question. It is hoped that the results of the study will aid in the efforts to recruit new school library media specialists.
Critical Perspectives of LIS 4. Ajit K. Pyati Faced with the increased commodification of information resources and services, today’s libraries need innovative technological solutions to protect the free flow of ideas. In response to this situation, a growing segment of the library profession is promoting open source software (OSS). The open source movement has generated a great deal of attention for its challenges to proprietary models of software development, as well as to traditional notions of property (Weber, 2004). An emerging movement within the library profession is considering open source software as a way to reduce dependence on proprietary software vendors, and to have more control in the development of technology in libraries (Frumkin, 2002). Despite the seeming match between OSS and library values of sharing and collaboration, little research has focused on understanding how and/or whether open source software can enhance library service ethics and goals. This study, using Weber’s (2004) and Raymond’s (2001) frameworks for analyzing OSS development, addresses this knowledge gap by examining the field of prominent OSS library projects, and conducting an in-depth qualitative case study of a successful library-based OSS project in Western Canada. Institutional, economic, political, and social factors are analyzed in relation to the project’s successes and shortcomings, in an effort to highlight best practices. Preliminary findings suggest that in addition to the collaborative, community-based ethic surrounding OSS, the organizational support structure is key to the project’s success, while a major concern is the continued growth of both the development and user communities Libraries & Society/Culture 5. Ellen M. Knutson Libraries are civic institutions. They occupy and important place in the life of any community. In this dissertation I explore the case of institutional change and development of the public library system and its relationship with the regional community in Bryansk, Russia since the early 1990s. Russia provides an interesting case because the rules of community changed in many ways with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Libraries had an opportunity to play a new role in the community, and in some places and to some extent were able to address the changing information needs of their communities, and to take advantage of new opportunities open to them because of the shift away from a more totalitarian society. Under the Soviets the library was well funded and designed to educate and create well-rounded Soviet men and women. It was also concerned with providing for such things as citizenship education, but it main concern was to propagate the ideology of the Communist Party. Some of these roles, functions, and structures that existed to make it a Soviet civic institution continue to exist today. I examine the ways in which the context and content has changed around and within these structures, functions and roles. In particular I focus on a few programs of the Bryansk Regional public library system: 1) the ecological information center created as a response to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, 2) the use of deliberative public forums to discuss pressing community problems; and 3) the activities around providing legal information to citizens of Bryansk.
Information & Society/Culture 6. Rowena Li This study examines the representation of a country’s degree of freedom on cross-culture web sites by using eight Power Distance indicators validated in Li’s study (2006). Power Distance (PD), identified by Geert Hofstede, is the first cultural dimension in his cross-cultural communication theory. It measures the extent of social equality. In high-power-distance countries, subordinates tend to be afraid of their supervisors and authorities, and supervisors tend to be autocratic. In low-power-distance countries, subordinates and supervisors are more likely to be closed together and interchangeable. The eight Power Distance indicators are Symmetric layout, Symbols of Nationalism or Religion, Authority Figures, Links to Information about the Leaders of the Organization, Security Barriers not Accessible, Managers Section Forbidden for Access, Special Titles Conferred on Members of the Organization, and Information Arranged According to the Management Hierarchy. This study further determines if there are any differences in representing degree of freedom on government agency web sites and on business entity web sites. A close cross-sectional examination of the web site design from 52 countries will be conducted by employing eight Power Distance indicators as a measurement. Five government agency web sites and five business organization web sites will be selected respectively for each country. This study will not only provide an insight into culture dimensions and web interface design, but also extend the study of cross-cultural communication to the field of human-computer interaction and culture usability. Information scientists, businessmen, web interface designers, sociologists, and anthropologists will find this research helpful in promoting understanding between cultures by examining web page characteristics. 7. Theodore P. Milas The theme “habits of mind and practice: preparing reflective professionals” calls LIS educators to explore what cognitive and practical habits may better prepare information professionals. One significant area where “habits” abide is the practice of knowledge management (KM). Many KM schemas envision meaningful organization of vast knowledge across multiple domains, but ongoing debate about their capacity to do so suggests these attempts fall short. Information science turns to other discourse communities, such as epistemology and semiotics, to enrich its approach. To rethink learning in LIS, this qualitative study proposes innovating KM schemas to reflect fundamental “habits of mind and practice” manifest in faith-based communities of practice (CoP). Exploring “practice as meaning in particular context,” this qualitative study aimed to balance Wenger’s duality of reification and participation processes. A content analysis of KM schema qua “hard” knowledge, across major world religions, revealed striking correlations between the conceptual components and spatial representation of knowledge in the mystical symbol systems of two religions commonly considered the most different – Hinduism (polytheism) and Judaism (monotheism). Subsequently, the researcher traveled throughout India, Israel, and Europe to locate communities that believe the schemas of Hindu cakras and Jewish sephirot represent ultimate reality. To connect reification of KM with the tacit or “soft” knowledge that informs their everyday life, the researcher intensively interviewed thirty-six mystics from a snowball sample acquired via covert participation in communal worship with the CoPs. Findings suggest ancient KM schemas may transcend culturally-specific knowledge representations and ethically inspire LIS educators and practitioners to reflect. 8. Rebecca Miller Banner International collaboration through partnerships of professionals enables the spread of knowledge and innovations across national borders. The literature on international partnerships is primarily superficial, focusing on announcements of partnership launches and descriptive activity reports. A substantive analysis and evaluation of these endeavors is rare. Thus, little is known about the inner workings of international partnerships and the factors that influence their effective use. This omission may explain the failure of such partnerships to thrive, offering an important lesson in an age where the world is becoming more interconnected. This dissertation has addressed the knowledge gap through a case study of an international collaborative partnership: the American Bulgarian Library Exchange. Through this federally-funded project, public librarians in Colorado and Iowa are paired with colleagues in Bulgaria, with the intent of stimulating professional development in both groups. The case study examined the interactions between the participants to identify factors that affect the sharing of professional knowledge. Data collection and analysis using a naturalistic perspective occurred from September 2005 to September 2006. Multiple qualitative methods were implemented: individual and focus group interviews, observation, participant journals, and e-mail collection. The diffusion model of Katz, Levin and Hamilton (1963) provided a theoretical framework for interpreting the communicative interactions of the participants. The findings demonstrated that personality characteristics, a common profession, occasional face-to-face communication, reliable electronic communication channels, and linguistic sensitivity were important contributions to the success of this partnership. Further studies with different professions are recommended to test these findings. 9. Jennifer L. Pecoskie The experience of pleasure reading provides opportunity for meaning making in everyday life and as such is significant to the discipline of Library and Information Science. Reading is often acknowledged as personal process and is not seen in its wider scope as a relevant social endeavor. This research focuses on the connection between reading and the social realm in the context of adult self-identified lesbian and queer women readers. Within this qualitative thesis research study I aim to preserve the perspectives and voices of participants’, therefore I employ open-ended interview methods for data collection and to-date nineteen interviews are complete. All interviews are audio-recorded and subsequently fully transcribed and detailed field notes completed. The data are analyzed using a grounded theory approach to examine emerging themes. For these lesbian and queer readers pleasure reading provides opportunity not only for information gathering but provides the impetus for learning from their interactions with the text. Following this, the reading experience acts as a teaching tool for participants. Much of the learning by participants focuses around the participant’s wider social world or social realm, and this realm includes themselves in the world, other individuals, and community interactions. This way the interactions with the book allow for participants to connect with community via the reading experience. This study, which integrates both socially-based reading research and studies of marginalized populations, extends previous research on pleasure reading by examining it in the context of a group of readers who have not yet been studied.
Social/Community Informatics 10. Shimelis G. Assefa The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is a huge knowledge source with millions of concepts and relationships between the concepts. One of its components, the Semantic Networks (SN) is a graph-theoretic structure created to unify the millions of concepts in the Metathesaurus (Meta) of the UMLS. The current UMLS release (2006AC) contains more than 1.3 million concepts and 6.4 unique concept names from more than 100 distinct vocabulary sources. The SN has 135 semantic types onto which the more than 1.3 millions of concepts are assigned to. These semantic types are again tied to each other by 54 semantic relations. The current relations in the semantic network are divided into two types namely isa and associative. With thesaurus and ontology gaining greater acceptance as knowledge representation tools, the adequacy of these tools to consistently specify knowledge and allow desired reasoning/inference is always an issue of research in natural language processing and understanding. Much of the research in this area mainly focuses on the structure and relationships of the concepts themselves. By taking a different perspective, this research aims to investigate the relation types of the SN themselves. The analysis focuses on the associative family of relations in the SN which has 5 classes in its own viz. physical relation, spatial relation, functional relation, temporal relation, and conceptual relation. This research is part of a result of the proposal towards a dissertation and based on psychological theory of semantic relations and tree models of similarity and association, results and findings were presented. 11. Frank P. Lambert This poster presents one part of my dissertation, specifically findings of the online community information (CI) needs of Southwestern Ontario residents using an online CI facilitator known as mycommunityinfo.ca (MCI). MCI does not follow the traditional online CI model of an organized fixed link directory that requires substantial human intervention and expense to build and then maintain. Instead, MCI relies on a nearly infinitely scalable Google Search Appliance to crawl, index and then provide true single window access to a substantial number of local community and Ontario provincial and Canadian federal government Web sites that are updated and maintained by their respective sponsoring organizations. MCI users employ natural language querying to meet their CI needs instead of having to formulate queries that must match the metadata used by the designer of a CI directory or rather than rely on a potentially ineffective point-and-click paradigm. Over 730,000 online query submissions collected by MCI from August 2005-July 2006 were cleaned and the top 100 queries submitted through five MCI search bars were analyzed and categorized using grounded theory. Preliminary results show that CI needs are more diverse and specific than has been previously reported. Additionally, external variables, such as the time of year, seem to have an effect on CI seeking. MCI’s approach to facilitating access to CI not only provides extensive unobtrusive data that contributes to the understanding of CI needs but it also holds the promise of being a fully sustainable method of providing online CI. 12. Chi-Shiou Lin This poster presents the conceptual framework and preliminary findings of a dissertation research on the conceptualization of Web-based government publications. “Government publications” – traditionally physical/tangible things, have become mainly a conceptual unit for librarians and agency staff to distinguish and select Web contents for long-term retention. Existing state-level digital depository programs often focus on preserving only Web contents qualified as “government publications.” Questions arise, however, regarding what counts as “publications” – and who gets to decide and how. Current state laws and library selection policies often define “government publications” in broad and vague language, and the selection of Web content for inclusion in the digital depositories is often left to selectors’ discretion. The conceptualization of “government publications,” thus, is an excellent case to examine how the social and the technological interact to give shapes to the amorphous Web contents; how the institutional arrangements among state libraries and agencies restructure or reproduce themselves in response to the dynamic Web environment. Genre theory informed the study’s conceptual framework. It suggests “government publications” are a form of social institutions. Librarians’ and agency staff’s conceptualizations are social cognitions addressing certain socio-rhetorical situations regarding the forms, substances, and communicative purposes of government information. Phenomenology and grounded theory inspired a two-tier methodology to explore conceptualization-as-interpretations (as noun) versus conceptualization-as-processes (as verb). The former uses phenomenology to compare librarians and agency staffers’ perceptions of government publications (conceptualization-as-interpretations), while the latter uses grounded theory to examine how genre perceptions 13. Airong Luo Recent years have seen an increasing use of collaboratories in scientific work. A collaboratory is defined as “an organizational entity that spans distance, supports rich and recurring human interaction oriented to a common research area, and provides access to data sources, artifacts and tools required to accomplish research tasks.” Researchers hypothesize that collaboratories hold great promises to benefit scientists from developing countries by enabling them to reach remotely located experts, instruments, and databases. However, there has been no research that systematically collects data to confirm or disconfirm this. Thus, the study examines: the ways collaboratories facilitate or hinder scientists from developing countries to participate in communities of practice and collegial communication, and to reach resources. 50 participants from both developing and developed countries in eight collaboratories.were interviewed. The research finds that collaboratories facilitate developing country scientists to engage in communities of practice and informal communication with scientists in developed countries. However, barriers are keeping scientists from realizing these benefits. The barriers include: (1) limited travel funding restricts developing country scientists to have personal contacts with other collaboratory members, making them isolated; (2) being out of touch hinders developing country scientists from obtaining timely information important for their research work; (3) information technologies such as instant messenger and web forums are not widely adopted, and informal communication does not occur as often as expected. These results may add to our understanding of the distinctive qualities of distributed work, where the collaborative partners are from countries with different social and technical infrastructure 14. Eric T. Meyer Digital photography has rapidly replaced film-based photography in specialized photo-centric professions such as photojournalism, advertising, scientific photography, police forensic photography, and others. Evidence shows that a variety of tendencies and tensions accompany this shift, and that professions using purely digital techniques are heavily dependent on information technologies as part of their computing package. However, there is currently very little research that considers both the social and the technical dimensions of digital photography as an information technology. This study addresses this gap in the literature. This project examines the computerization of scientific photography among marine mammal researchers. Scientists studying marine mammals use photo-identification to identify individual animals (whales, dolphins, etc…). These researchers use photographic techniques to identify individual animals in the field and to create catalogs for population studies, and have recently widely switched to digital photography as a technological replacement for film. They report that the change has fundamentally altered how they do their scientific work. The strategy for examining ways in which these scientists’ work practices, communication patterns, relationships, and behaviors have changed is Kling's Socio-Technical Interaction Network (STIN) strategy. STIN integrates the social and technical to develop a nuanced understanding of technology and extends Actor-Network Theory. STIN methods used in this study include personal interviews, laboratory and field observations, and document research. By engaging the STIN strategy, this research may help to develop this relatively new model for understanding the role of technology in society, and will also contribute to an understanding of scientific communication practices.
Information Policy 15. Jinfang Niu Most researches needs to collect data. Once a data set is collected, it is often the case that it can not only serve the research intent of the initial data collectors, it is also useful for other research purposes of other researchers, or for decision making and teaching. In addition, sharing data make it possible for other researchers to replicate, verify and build upon the original research results. It is a general consensus that data sharing is a highly desirable norm of science, and that data sharing will avoid repeated data collecting effort and save funding, facilitate scientific openness, communication and progress. However, open and free data sharing is far from ideal, even for publicly funded research data. I am working on a research project trying to identify the barriers keeping researchers from sharing their research data, and applying social psychology theory and economic modeling to design some incentive mechanisms to motivate researchers to share data and provide sufficient documentation. I have built up a conceptual model for boosting data sharing and documentation, reviewed the incentive and barriers in data sharing policies, done a survey on the grantees of the National Institute of Justice. The next step is to design a lab experiment and a field experiment to test the effectiveness of the incentive mechanisms. This poster will focus on the introduction of the conceptual model, data sharing policy review and findings from the survey. The only major U.S. federal law passed by Congress specifically to protect information privacy (i.e., identifiable personal data) within federal executive agencies is the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552(a)). The Privacy Act, however, does not provide sole guidance to agencies on how to maintain confidentiality and security of personal data. Additional laws passed by Congress, along with actions taken by U.S. judicial and executive branches also affect information privacy confidentiality and security practices. Typically, evaluations of these practices focus upon individual policy outputs and the results essentially provide independent and at times contradictory efforts at addressing protection and enforcement issues. This research project provides a broader approach to the evaluation of information privacy practices within federal executive agencies by assessing multiple policy outputs using fair information practices (FIPs). FIPs typically consist of data guidelines, or principles developed to address information privacy practices in commercial and government transactions and several variations of FIPs are recognized by the federal government. Very little research to date, however, has been conducted on the effective use of FIPs to evaluate information privacy practices within executive agencies. This research project utilizes an iterative multi-method approach for evaluation of information privacy practices and presents data collected from policy analysis, outputs assessment, surveys, and FIP assessments. The FIP assessments include a comparison of multiple sets of FIPs. Results of this research will further development of evaluation approaches within the federal policy environment.
LIS Education & Programs 17. Mazhgan Nazarova Service learning originated from an American democratic tradition of community service and has developed as an important teaching and learning methodology in American secondary and higher education since the 1980s. Since 2000, the course Introduction to Networked Information Systems (INIS), offered in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), has included a significant service learning component. Students work in teams to develop and install computer networks to meet the needs of various community-based organizations, in both the Champaign-Urbana and East St. Louis areas of Illinois. While much research has been conducted on outcomes of service learning as assessed at the conclusion of a course incorporating service learning, little work has been undertaken to explore possible relationships between service learning and subsequent career development. Such research is of particular interest in a graduate professional field, such as library and information science, where students seek employment in the field upon completion of their master’s degree. The proposed research will survey graduates of GSLIS who completed the INIS course to determine their self-assessment of outcomes from the course and how these relate to their subsequent career choices. A survey methodology is used as a data collection method for the research which will assist to gather data from a large sample of respondents (333 students) as a basis for understanding how a service learning experience may relate to the students’ subsequent outcomes and especially career development. Findings can suggest hypotheses that can be investigated in future research using other methods. Looking at the cohorts over time will give a chance to see if there is an immediate impact or an impact taking place over period of time.
LIS Faculty & Students 18. Marina A. Pluzhenskaia Interdisciplinarity is one of the most prominent features of modern higher education. It can be achieved through collaboration between different educational units or through building multidisciplinary teams of instructors in one unit. The latter is the way followed by the most of the ALA accredited LIS schools. As of 2003, there were 315 out of 758 full-time faculty members at 56 schools with doctorates in 34 disciplines other than LIS (ALISE Statistical Report, 2003). Though the topic of the visible presence of faculty members with non-LIS doctorates in LIS schools draws attention of many LIS educators, little is know about actual “disciplinarity” of research and teaching patterns of these “migrants”. This study focuses on one of the most important scholarly activities -- publishing. Data on all works by ALA accredited LIS schools’ faculty members with LIS- and non-LIS Ph.D.s, published since 1995 to date and indexed in the ISI Web of Knowledge has been collected. The disciplinary categories assigned to the publications and the number of citations to the indexed works, both from LIS and other disciplines, was counted. The disciplines of the citing publications and their frequency distribution have been identified. The preliminary analysis leads to the conclusion that (1) faculty members with non-LIS advanced degrees are actively involved in LIS research; (2) LIS publications attract scholarly interest of researchers from a wide range of disciplines; and (3) LIS educators with non-LIS advanced degrees show more multidisciplinary publishing patterns than their colleagues with LIS doctorate.
Collection Development 19. Giyeong Kim Serial collection decision-making involves consideration of the local library environment, the serials’ characteristics, and the use of the serial titles. Two methodological approaches are used to build a decision model to explain and predict the inclusion of each title in a collection: statistical model construction using empirical data, and a survey of medical serials’ librarians to triangulate the constructed models. For the statistical analyses, serials’ characteristics data were taken from three bibliographical databases: Ulrich’s, Journal Citation Report, and Science Citation Index. This data was then augmented to include subscription information and local library environment information from an academic medical/health science library. Factor analysis, logistic regression, and structural equation modeling were used to construct theoretical and empirical models using 14 independent variables and five factors with the serials titles’ current holdings status as the dependent variable. The models are statistically significant and explain over 90% of the dependent variable’s effect size. Importantly, the model selected is parsimonious and yet has strong predictive power when indicating the likelihood that a candidate serials title will or will not be held by the library. There is a 95% prediction accuracy rate for whether individual titles will or will not be included in the collection. Confirmatory survey data from 35 collection management librarians at medical libraries across the United States produced results which support the statistical models and provide reasonable explanations for the decision criteria. Applications of the model are suggested since this methodology can be used by other libraries to construct serials’ decision models. Licensing 20. Xiaohua Zhu While academic libraries in most countries are struggling to negotiate with publishers and vendors individually or collaboratively via consortia, a few countries have experimented with a different model, national site licensing (NSL). Because NSL often involves government and large-scale collaboration, it has the potential to solve many problems in the complex licensing world. However, not many nations have adopted it. This study uses the comparative case study research method to explore the seemingly low levels of adoption. The cases include the Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP), the United Kingdom's National Electronic Site Licensing Initiative (NESLI), and the United States which has not adopted NSL. The theoretical framework guiding the research design and data collection is W. Richard Scott's Institutional Theory which utilizes three supporting pillars – regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive pillars – to analyze institutional processes. In this study, the regulative pillar and the normative pillar of NSL adoption – an institutional construction and change – are examined. Data were collected from monographs, research articles, government documents, and relevant websites. Based on the analysis of these cases, a preliminary model is proposed for the adoption of NSL. The factors that support the adoption of NSL include: the need for new institutions, a centralized educational policy-making system and funding system, supportive political trends, and the tradition of cooperation. The factors that may prevent a country from adopting NSL include: decentralized educational policy and funding, diversity and the large number of institutions, the concern for the “Big Deal,” and the concern for monopoly.
Electronic Reference Service 21. Lili Luo Chat reference is a reference conduit completely based on real-time electronic interaction. The fundamental principle stays the same across all reference services – assisting users in fulfilling their information needs. But when it comes to the process of how reference services are conducted, chat reference has set itself apart from email-based or face-to-face reference. The difference exists in so many aspects that general reference competencies do not suffice any more and the need for a specific body of competencies has become inevitable. A two-stage study was conducted to determine the essential competencies and effective training techniques for chat reference. Two surveys were launched to glean chat reference practioners’ input and generated a total of 883 responses. In the competency survey, 21 essential competencies were identified, among which “the ability to refer users to other resources/services when necessary” received the highest rating, indicating that chat reference librarians are expected to be more flexible when handling users’ questions. In the survey of training techniques, respondents reported that “gaining hands-on experience” and “reviewing chat transcripts” were the most effective training they received, suggesting the design of chat reference training should focus on practice-based learning. Furthering the research, statistical analysis will be conducted to determine if there is any significant difference between different demographic groups’ responses, and finally a framework of chat reference competencies and training will be developed to benefit the professional preparation of chat reference librarians.
Children’s Services 22. Kara Reuter In recent years, national studies have found (1) strong associations between the amount children read during free time and their reading achievement in school and (2) a decline in reading for pleasure, especially among young people. Literacy researchers theorize that low motivation and poor literacy achievement in children might stem from an inability to select the right books, arguing that book selection strategies are a part of successful literacy development. Against this backdrop, this study investigates children’s selection of books for recreational reading in a public library over the summer. Using a multiple case study design, the study collected interview, observation, and diary data with a diverse sample of twenty 7- to 9-year-old children and their parents during three library sessions. Using a grounded theory approach, the researcher is now analyzing the data collected to produce a holistic model of book selection. The analysis builds on LIS models of information behavior, including Wilson’s interdisciplinary model and Bates’ berry-picking model. However, because LIS research has not often studied information behavior in recreational contexts, the study also draws upon reader-response theory in education and uses-and-gratifications theory in communications. By extending LIS models of information behavior to a recreational setting, this research will contribute to the development of an expanded understanding of human information behavior. Furthermore, a better understanding of children’s processes of book selection will suggest ways in which librarians, educators, and information systems designers can support children in selecting engaging reading material to encourage the practice of lifelong reading.
Serving Multicultural Populations 23. Timnah C. Card This study is a qualitative analysis and local adaptation of an audiobook club for young non-native English speakers. The original program has been popular with ethnically diverse youth in Berkeley, CA, for the past several years. Now a smaller library in central Illinois is attempting to adapt the program for a semi-rural, mono-ethnic population of Spanish speaking youth of Mexican descent. To ensure that this adaptation fills the needs of the minority patrons, a system of cooperative, ongoing design is being developed among the mainstream, middle class library staff, the minority youth, and other adults associated with the process (such as local community leaders and Spanish-speaking volunteers of Mexican descent). This study documents the structure of the program at its original sites in California and then investigates the process of cooperative adaptation in Illinois, using elements of cultural Marxist and cultural geography theory, among others, to illuminate how power structures are identified and moderated among the participating groups throughout the first season of the Illinois program.
Children’s/YA Literature 24. Colette L. Drouillard What was found were primarily adult perceptions of young reader’s responses; only a small minority came from young readers themselves. This poster presents an overview of the themes that became apparent as I analyzed those studies that discuss how young readers respond to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and the methods used to draw these conclusions. The findings identify three categories of research methodologies as those most frequently utilized and six themes of young reader response. 25. Sarah Young Park In the United States, white adults write children’s books about Korean adoptees. In South Korea, non-adopted Korean nationals write children’s books about Korean adoptees. These children’s stories are produced in different cultural, social and economic conditions, and the authors from both nations use the literature as an ideological battlefield to glorify or criticize Korean adoption and promote their respective notions of race and nation. Through an informed understanding of Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and Critical Race Theory, my dissertation research goal is to compare, contrast and critically analyze how children’s literature in the United States and South Korean imagine the Korean adoptee experience through both form and content. In doing so, I seek to understand and illustrate the asymmetrical and colonial relationship between the two countries. My study is unique because it is the first critical analysis of both Korean and American children’s books portraying Koreans, and one of few dissertations on Korean adoption. Children’s literature has always been an ideological battleground where adults war to win the attention, loyalty, and attitude of child readers. The books from both the sending and receiving countries portray a “double vision” of Korean adoptees. They must be investigated and analyzed so as to intervene in the larger dialogue regarding both policy-making and the types of books produced, selected and read regarding transnational and transracial adoption. In so doing, adults can make better informed choices when producing and selecting books that will shape children’s identities and thus, our future world.
Reading & Literacy 26. Xinyu Yu This study examines 3-to-5 year-old preschoolers who participate in reading picture books at public libraries and a preschool. Picture books provide children with meaning and an experience united in words and illustrations. The study is theoretically based on Erwin Panofsky's levels of meaning in works of art, pre-iconography, iconography, and iconology. Together with unobtrusive and participant observations in public libraries and the preschool, this study employs surveys with parents and interviews with children in order to understand whether 3-to 5-year-old children find distinct levels of meaning in images of picture books, and factors that influence their visual perception. The 30 surveys with parents that were completed describe their children’s background involving demographics, socioeconomic status (SES), reading picture books with the child, criteria of selecting picture books, and related information activities. With parents' consents, 30 children participated in small group interviews or individual interviews with an average length of 15 minutes and answered questions starting Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Two award-winning picture books were selected in interviews with all children participants. In the qualitative data analysis children’s responses from interviews were coded and classified into perceptual and interpretive attributes, and conducted in content analysis. The survey results were coded in SPSS. The results show that young children start developing basic concepts that associate with the depths of meaning and relate information from their personal experience or prior knowledge.
Information Needs & Behaviors/Practices 27. Jenna K. Hartel This poster focuses on the relationship between time and information behavior. It presents the findings of a scientific ethnography that documented information phenomena in the hobby of gourmet cooking. Twenty fieldwork outings were conducted in the homes of gourmet hobby cooks from Boston and Los Angeles. A semi-structured interview and photographic inventory captured the life-context of the hobby, its information activities, and home-based information environment. Interview transcripts (20) and photographs (400) were analyzed using grounded theory and NVivo7 software. The poster displays how gourmet cooks experience three temporal arcs: linked streams of activity through different periods of time. They pursue a long-running hobby career that evolves over many years or an entire life. For shorter periods they explore culinary subjects to deepen ability and knowledge. Finally, they perform numerous hands-on cooking episodes that generate an edible outcome. Temporally unpacking the hobby and its information behaviors leads to three important insights: 1.) Information behaviors differ per arc, 2.) The information behaviors at each arc likely interact in complex ways, and 3.) Holistic information behavior research in any context should extend beyond short-term time frames to consider a broader range of time spans and their association information phenomena 28. Timothy P. Hogan Managing treatment for chronic health conditions is an information-intensive activity. Although numerous studies have examined the role of either information or treatment in the lives of the ill, researchers rarely study the two together. The purpose of my dissertation is to further our understanding of these two aspects of chronic disease by examining them in relationship to one another. Holding that the work involved in managing treatment is performed mostly outside the health care system, in people’s homes, my research is grounded in an insider’s viewpoint on illness (Conrad, 1987) and accentuates everyday life. This perspective foregrounds the diverse resources and activities, many of which are information-based, that are associated with treating chronic disease. In line with the naturalistic paradigm of inquiry, I visit the homes of people living with HIV/AIDS, conduct in-depth interviews, gather artifacts, and observe how they treat their condition and use treatment-related information. To date, I have recruited 25 informants (N) and am interpreting my data inductively, through iterative, comparative analysis. Preliminary analysis shows that informants experience the treatment of HIV/AIDS and additional health conditions as a dynamic process. They rely on a range of ‘technologies’ to help them be practical and bring the treatment process under their control. Information internal and external to the individual is gathered and used selectively, depending on the situation at hand. In this poster I will present a brief literature overview, description of my methods, and some key findings and themes that have emerged from my ongoing analysis.
Information Needs/Behaviors of the Public 29. Nora J. Bird The World Wide Web has the potential to link a science or health information seeker to a large number of useful documents. The research focus in Information Science has been relevance matching, i.e. creating systems that match user and document characteristics to meet information seekers’ needs. This is, however, simply a first step beyond which documents are actually read and used to build new knowledge. My dissertation research will examine whether a framework devised for work with school students might be applied to the understanding of everyday life information seeking adults encountering and learning from participant selected Web material. The two proposed studies will examine learning in quasi-experimental situations where Web users are asked to describe the knowledge that they have about one of two topics, genetically modified food and food safety. After Web searching and choice of resources, they are asked to state what they learned. The knowledge statements of the participants will be examined to see if changes in substance, amount, structure, title, and extent of topic knowledge can be detected. An assumption that is often made in science education and adult science literacy that learning is enhanced when the sources used are of high quality will be a secondary focus. The Web Quality Evaluation Tool will be used by the participants to judge the quality of the Web resources that they encounter. Effects on learning will be examined. Implications for the design of educational Web resources and digital library collection development will be explored.
Information Needs & Behaviors/Practices 30. Leanne J. Bowler Adolescents, on the cusp of adulthood, face complex information problems. To solve these problems they must negotiate an exploding world of information and communications possibilities, where the difficulty may not lie in finding information but in filtering it and integrating it into a cohesive whole. To do this, one must first make sense of it, an act that assumes a level of understanding about one’s own information needs, goals and abilities – a kind of self-knowledge. This knowledge, called metacognitive knowledge, is focused, controlled and reflective. Do adolescents possess metacognitive knowledge? How mature are their metacognitive abilities – what are the strengths and where are the gaps – and how do these abilities relate to the information search process? This poster presents research in process that is attempting to answer these questions. Framed by Kuhlthau's Information Search Process (ISP) model, the goal of the study is to uncover themes and patterns in the metacognitive knowledge of ten adolescents, ages 17 to 18, as they as they search for, evaluate and use information to complete an inquiry-based school assignment, using any variety of information sources. Results from a pilot study recently undertaken will be presented. 31. Soojung Kim A recent trend in information searching research is task-based information searching, which views a user’s task as a central factor for understanding information-seeking behaviors and designing IR systems. To empirically investigate the role of tasks in information searching particularly in business domain, this study analyzes librarians’ database selection process from the perspective of business information seekers’ work tasks. The first part of the study developed an inventory of 30 business tasks and 130 associated questions that need to be answered to accomplish each task through content analysis of Harvard Business School case studies and other published materials. The second part of the study, which is in progress, will explore the influence of task on database selection by conducting a survey among business librarians in academic institutions. Nine sets of survey questionnaires based on the identified business tasks/questions were sent out to 45 librarians at the top 50 business schools on August 4, 2006 and the data collection will be over on September, 29. Analysis is being conducted to identify 1) the characteristics of questions that influence the database selected and the selection criteria, 2) the relationships among tasks, questions, types of information needed, database selection criteria, and selected databases, and 3) the relative importance of tasks in the selection process of the appropriate database. The findings will help librarians, database vendors, and system designers establish better practices that take users’ ultimate tasks into account in reference work, indexing, and task-based information system design to tailor services/systems to users’ needs directly 32. W. John MacMullen This work employs a multi-methods approach combining prospective randomized controlled experiments with broad contextual analysis (including observations, concurrent verbal reports, document content analysis, workflow analysis, and interviews) to investigate the nature and extent of variation in human-curated annotations of the scientific literature that employ the Gene Ontology (GO), a standardized cross-organism controlled vocabulary. Data obtained to date include nearly 4,000 GO annotation instances generated in two prospective studies by 33 scientific curators from 11 model organism databases (MODs), and approximately 20 hours of audio recordings from related observations and interviews. The studies also yielded approximately 650 pages of manually-annotated paper articles and associated intermediate notes. While annotation quality is of great importance to the genomics community, very little is known about the types and amounts of GO annotation variation in MODs. The results of this work should provide a greater understanding of the nature of differing approaches to curation by individual curators, and inform the development of organization- and organism-independent measures of GO annotation quality. The main research questions addressed are: 1) How significantly do curators differ in annotation outcomes? 2) Do differences in curators’ educational-, training-, and research backgrounds influence their GO annotation performance? 3) Do differences in curators’ personal annotation behaviors influence their GO annotation performance? In previous work, six measures of GO annotation quality were defined and parameterized. The individual and consensus GO annotations generated in the experiments will be evaluated with the following facets: consistency, reliability, specificity, completeness, accuracy, and validity. 33. Valerie M. Nesset This poster will present preliminary findings from a three-month qualitative research study conducted in Winter 2006 with 12 grade-three students (aged 8 to 9 years) as they undertook a project on Canadian animals in winter. The findings originate from data that includes pre- and post-project questionnaires and self-evaluations completed by all of the school’s grade-three students, audiotapes of the teacher’s classroom instructions throughout the project, one-on-one in-depth interviews with the teacher, the 12 students and some of their parents, field notes and videotape of the children looking for and using information as they worked on their projects, screen capture of their navigational moves and conversation during Internet search sessions, as well as documents produced by the 12 students, namely journals and the working copies and final versions of their projects. This research is one of a few studies that investigate the information behavior of younger elementary school children. It is significant in that recent cognitive research has established that there are considerable and rapid intellectual changes throughout childhood, meaning that studies and/or models outlining the information-seeking experiences of older students and adults might not identify, explain or address the unique information needs of younger elementary school students. Thus, the findings of this study, while providing insight into the barriers faced by children when seeking information, how they use information in an educational context, and how they can be helped to better exploit the information resources available to them, also will inform an information behavioral model specific to grade-three students.
Scholarly & Scientific Communications 34. Jennifer L. Campbell-Meier The development of an institutional repository (IR) is one of the more complex projects that librarians may undertake. While many librarians have experience managing large information system projects, IR projects involve a larger stakeholder group and require support from technical services, public services and administration to succeed. While the growth of IRs has been slower in the United States than in Europe, a survey by Lynch and Lippincott (2005) found that more than 40% of the 97 doctoral universities surveyed had developed an institutional repository. While only 178 colleges and universities participated in the survey, many of the respondents were developing or interested in developing an institutional repository. With more than 4,000 degree granting institutions in United States, an increase in the development of repositories is expected with technology and process improvements (Pocket Guide, 2005). This study investigates the factors influencing the development of institutional repositories at academic institutions. A comparative case study analysis approach will be employed to gather and analyze data, and provide a detailed account and analysis of academic institutional repositories. By identifying how institutional repositories are developing and the challenges that they face, a developmental framework can be identified for libraries, providing a generalized view of IR development to improve the process for future adopters. 35. Jihyun Kim This dissertation investigates the factors affecting faculty members' self-archiving behavior, which is defined as making research materials publicly accessible on the Internet. Several empirical studies have examined academic authors' self-archiving behavior. However, faculty members' motivations for publishing their materials on the Internet and how they make such decisions as what versions to deposit and where to place them are not known. The guiding research question for the dissertation is: “What factors motivate faculty self-archiving behavior?” Examining motivational factors that influence the decision to self-archive will contribute to the literature on the transformation of scholarly communication as well as the practices of disciplinary and institutional repositories. The research design involves triangulation of survey and interview data of faculty members sampled from 17 Carnegie Research Universities with DSpace Institutional Repositories (IRs). The sample is also stratified by academic discipline due to existing evidence of variation based on field. Results from pilot surveys of IR contributors and non-contributors at one university indicated that faculty members used personal web pages and research group web sites most frequently for self-archiving. Most respondents were unclear about copyright; however, publishers’ PDFs of refereed articles were more frequently self-archived than the faculty member’s final versions. Faculty members who planned to contribute to their university’s IR believed more strongly in open access to materials and scored higher on a scale for altruism. These findings and others were used to generate hypotheses now being tested in a larger survey and follow-up interviews which investigate these factors in greater detail. 36. Yi Shen This study investigates meteorologists' current usage and evaluation of existing information and communication technologies (ICT) in performing research tasks and the current relationship between their ICT use and content characteristics of their research outputs. Three major research questions are addressed: 1. What are the major research-related purposes of using networked ICT tools as perceived by research meteorologists? 2. What are the current relationships between research meteorologists’ self-reported ICT use and the self-reported characteristics of their research content? 3. How satisfied are research meteorologists with existing networked ICT applications for different aspects of their research tasks? To answer the second research question, two hypotheses are established and tested. They are: 1. Greater frequency of networked ICT use is associated with greater data integration in research analysis. 2. Greater frequency of networked ICT use is associated with greater intra- or interdisciplinary research. This study surveyed research meteorologists in three NOAA funded research institutes based at universities in June, 2006. The major findings and conclusions of the survey are reported. Follow-up interviews with a selective sample of meteorologists provided suggestions on the development of objective measures for two characteristics of research: data integration and interdisciplinarity; and identified several important barriers to doing large-scale data integration and interdisciplinary research in today’s scientific and technological environment. The theoretical implications and practical implications from these findings are discussed. The limitations of the current research and suggestions for future research are presented.
Organization of Information 37. Carol L. Chau The University of Iowa, School of Nursing conceived of Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC) in 1987, introducing it in 1992. This professional classification system, an information tool, lists patient care activities associated with nursing interventions, based on nursing diagnoses of patients. However, although NIC is currently in Phase IV of development, “Use and Maintenance” (McCloskey 2004), having been in development for almost 20 years, indication from initial survey of hospitals in New York State demonstrates that adoption of NIC is neither universal nor uniform. This research is a qualitative instrumental case study of one Nursing department currently using NIC in hospital setting, conducted in two phases: I. Environmental scan of New York State hospitals currently using NIC via survey (completed). II. One hospital selected for in-depth case study: Semi-structured interviews with Director of Nursing, CIO, Hospital Administrator, Nurse Managers, and RNs (ongoing); Participant Observation of major specialty nursing floors (i.e. Pediatrics, Surgical, Medical, etc) (ongoing); and Collection of archival data of NIC (completed). An information tool/classification system developed for use needs to be used to have value. The process by which this occurs is the institutionalization of tool into the field of practice. This study encompasses the institutionalization process of professional classification system to include issues of: Academia vs. Practice; classification vs. standardization; transparency vs. surveillance; and role of licensing body. Contributions from this research lend to: 1. Professional classifications as genre for study 2. Academia-Practice dichotomy 3. Prescriptive model for adoption of information tool 4. NIC literature 5. Institutional Theory. 38. David A. Jank The use and representation of historical artifacts in conjunction with information services has been studied in a variety of information service environments. The design and layout of exhibits in museum settings may also be viewed from the context of knowledge organization and representation. Ontologically, information representation techniques in these settings resemble the knowledge organization practices in traditional information services environments. Epistemologically, such techniques also exhibit historiographic elements in their attempt to enhance the interactive learning environment of museum-based information services. These patterns are particularly evident in living history exhibits, which require a heightened awareness of provenance and adherence to organizational protocols that must remain true to the historical period of time they are designed to depict. The living history exhibits in the Colonial Williamsburg historic restoration are examined here in terms of knowledge organization and historiography, grounding these observations in established paradigms such as the nature of a work, network information structures, semiotics, and signs, while simultaneously considering the nature of interactive learning environments represented by museum settings. Several models are then proposed that can ultimately be used to conceptually map the information structures at work in the living history exhibitions at Colonial Williamsburg.
Metadata & Semantic Web 39. M. Cristina Pattuelli The use of primary source materials, such as letters, diaries, photographs, and other historic documents, is recognized as key to supporting inquiry-based history and social studies education. Extensive digitization of library, museum, and other cultural heritage collections has created a tremendous opportunity for fostering new instructional practices. Yet, searching and selecting digital primary sources appropriate for the classroom can be difficult and time-consuming. Libraries have only recently begun to recognize the need to offer tools and services that facilitate educational use of these resources. This study describes the design of a domain ontology applied to a collection of digital learning objects derived from historical primary sources at the UNC University Library [http://www.lib.unc.edu/]. A source of semantic metadata to support content annotation and concept-based retrieval of the learning objects, the ontology will also provide a visual semantic roadmap to facilitate the search process. Typically, knowledge engineers, sometimes in collaboration with domain experts, develop ontologies. Excluded from the ontology design process is the end-users’ perspective. It is believed that a more effective ontology is one that incorporates the mental model of its intended community of users. Toward that end, a series of semi-structured interviews have been conducted with 5–12 grade social studies teachers in North Carolina and the findings have been employed in the design of the ontology. Interestingly, a core of upper level categories that provides the foundation for the conceptual structure of the ontology reflects PMEST, Ranganathan’s category system. Further users studies are planned to validate this ontology model before its implementation.
Knowledge/IR Management 40. JiHwan Park In the United States, white adults write children’s books about Korean adoptees. In South Korea, non-adopted Korean nationals write children’s books about Korean adoptees. These children’s stories are produced in different cultural, social and economic conditions, and the authors from both nations use the literature as an ideological battlefield to glorify or criticize Korean adoption and promote their respective notions of race and nation. Through an informed understanding of Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and Critical Race Theory, my dissertation research goal is to compare, contrast and critically analyze how children’s literature in the United States and South Korean imagine the Korean adoptee experience through both form and content. In doing so, I seek to understand and illustrate the asymmetrical and colonial relationship between the two countries. My study is unique because it is the first critical analysis of both Korean and American children’s books portraying Koreans, and one of few dissertations on Korean adoption. Children’s literature has always been an ideological battleground where adults war to win the attention, loyalty, and attitude of child readers. The books from both the sending and receiving countries portray a “double vision” of Korean adoptees. They must be investigated and analyzed so as to intervene in the larger dialogue regarding both policy-making and the types of books produced, selected and read regarding transnational and transracial adoption. In so doing, adults can make better informed choices when producing and selecting books that will shape children’s identities and thus, our future world.
Information Retrieval Theory & Practice 41. Ying-Hsang Liu The proposed study is designed to provide answers to a fundamental question: how useful are manually created indexes for complex search topics in the biomedical domain for different kinds of information seekers? Specifically, we explore the usefulness of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for obtaining relevant documents for topics in genomics. This research addresses three questions: 1) How do searchers make use of MeSH descriptors when searching complex biomedical questions? 2) Does domain expertise or search experience affect the usefulness of the MeSH terms? 3) What is the relationship between searchers’ perception of descriptor usefulness and the search outcome? In the experiment we use a corpus and a set of relatively difficult topics originally created for the 2004 Genomics Track in Text REtrieval Conference (TREC). Four types of searchers will participate: 1) search novices; 2) search experts; 3) domain novices; and 4) domain experts. Searchers use two different types of bibliographic record to accomplish the task: one includes MeSH terms and one does not. The order of the two experimental conditions, searchers and search topics will be controlled by a Graeco-Latin squared balanced design. The search performance will use relevance-based precision/recall measures based on correctness judgments provided by TREC and the time spent for each search session as a measure of search efforts. The results will advance our understanding of the usefulness of domain-specific indexes created by human effort and will provide guidelines for the design of real-world information retrieval systems for different kinds of information seekers.
Information Systems & Technologies 42. Dinesh Rathi Telephone based support system has been are very popular but with the advent of internet, email based help support systems are emerging as a major element of customer support systems. Using machine learning and other methods, the aim of the current research is to make help system more efficient and effective by automatically identifying the problem resolution domain, to understand problem patterns and finally automatically routing the new problem emails directly to the domain expert for their direct intervention. In most current e-mail support systems, when users send an email to help desk for problem resolution, the email joins the queue with other non-resolved emails. Many times user problems resolutions are initiated by a non-domain expert in the user help services. In this first triage of problems few are resolved while many are not. The problems that are not resolved by the non-domain expert require escalation and re-direction of the problem to a domain expert, thus leading to inefficiency in problem resolution management. The study is being conducted on three years of data from help desk that contains over 10,000 emails. The poster provides visual representation of the process and pilot study results of the problem domain identification using clustering technique generated by Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, generation of the temporal patterns using Hidden Markov Model and routing the incoming email using classification algorithm. The poster also presents the evaluation criteria for problem domain identification and routing.
Information Retrieval Theory & Practice 43. Jin Ha Lee A major issue in current music information retrieval (MIR) research is the paucity of empirical studies of real-life music information seeking and retrieval processes. Particularly, our current understanding of real-life queries is astonishingly poor. There is no comprehensive analysis of the information features employed by users in natural language queries; furthermore we lack sufficient knowledge of the distribution and usage of these information features across queries expressing different needs. Through an empirical investigation of real-life queries, this study aims to contribute in gaining a fully theorized understanding of how people make use of various information features in queries asking for music information. This is crucial for informing the design of future MIR systems regarding the selection of potential access points, as well as establishing standardized tasks and test queries for the evaluation of MIR systems and techniques that reflect the real-life music information seeking behaviors of users. The main objective of the study is to find the general patterns in the kinds and accuracy of information features that characterize the queries for particular needs. Queries are collected from the Web and systematically coded by content analysis. The prima facie relevance of features to particular needs is identified based on the empirical association between the needs and features measured by their co-occurrence. Queries with known answers are further examined qualitatively to determine the accuracy of selected features for insights into their relative importance. This poster presents the analytic framework for this study and preliminary findings of the query analysis.
Users & Users of Information Systems 44. Derek L. Hansen Online support communities fill a unique niche in the information landscape, providing access to rare expertise and practical know-how. However, much information of potential benefit is largely inaccessible and does not lend itself to reuse. To overcome these problems, several online support communities have augmented their existing email-based conversations with collaboratively authored knowledge repositories in the form of a Wiki. These repositories serve the same function as a traditional FAQ document, but are more collaborative and comprehensive. I present an empirical examination of a successful online technical support community (css-discuss) to better understand the new challenges and opportunities afforded by these repositories. A mixed method approach was taken including a grounded theory analysis of content and interviews, as well as quantitative analysis of behavior traces. I describe social and technical factors leading to the community's successes and failures. Key among these has been the tight coupling of the conversation and repository, which has created a continuous flow of feedback between the two. I highlight some community needs that are particularly well supported by these repositories. These include the sharing of distributed, hard to compare knowledge and keeping the discussion on topic. I also describe specific information genres that exist within the repository and how they contribute support the community needs. In the second portion of this dissertation work, which is not presented in this poster, I use an action research approach to explore how these repositories can be tailored to meet the unique needs of online medical support communities. 45. Vandana Singh The research aims to establish an understanding of the community of users of open source software who actively engage in collaborative problem solving. Several online support discussion forums for different open source software were investigated. The study explored the types of questions posed, responses given, percentage of questions answered, the kinds of additional media used, patterns in responses and questions, etc. Over 100 instances of collaborative problem solving process were collected. The data analysis used a grounded theory approach and multiple categories of help-giving techniques, questions and alternative media used were developed. Statistical tools were also used to analyze the quantitative element of the data. Along with the results of this study this poster will also highlight similarities, differences and inferences between this study and other well studied help-giving contexts like reference interviews (face to face and via email), support over the phone, and face to face technical support at help desks. Our results indicate that there are multiple types and levels of detail that are required by the problem solvers. Participants need to learn the skills of how to ask for help productively. These multiple levels of detail have to be documented by the help seeker in order to get quicker response and a helpful solution. Also it was found that there was a variety of additional media were being creatively appropriated and used to better facilitate these problem solving processes. Each of these had specific advantages and disadvantages.
Human–Computer Interaction 46. Gilok G. Choi In a virtual world, users experience compelling illusions, allowing them to become a part of an electronically generated environment. In spite of the importance of users’ perceptual experience, only limited consideration has been given to the users’ experiences when they interact with the virtual interface. This research is therefore to investigate the impact of interface design on the sense of presence and the playfulness. In particular, this study attempts to examine whether the degrees of presence and playfulness are enhanced by navigational affordances supported by a sign system. A controlled experiment with between-subject factorial design will be conducted to examine the effects of a sign system on users’ perceptual experience. Forty participants will be asked to accomplish two sets of 7 comparable tasks with and without a help of signs (total 14 tasks). Upon completion, participants will be asked to complete a post-test questionnaire on the sense of presence on 1-to-7 Likert type scales. For the two sessions of trial, two virtual universities were constructed with ActiveWorlds (http://www.activeworlds.com). ANOVA repeated measure and Correlation analysis will be used for the data analysis. Bibliometrics-Informetrics-Webometrics 47. Simon L. Aristeguieta Trillos The objective of this study is to describe the citation patterns of the information and library science journals listed in the 2005 JCR Social Science Edition. There are fifty five journals in the subject category under examination. Ten were selected following the 2005 impact factor (IF) ranking. Journal’s citation patterns will be described by their connections to other journals. Social network analysis and bibliometric mapping software will be used to visualize the nodes and the strength of their relationship according to the number of citations. This study will supplement the professional literature on bibliometric and network analysis identifying what are the patterns of citation and literature usage in the field of information and library science. 48. M. Cameron Jones How is writing a computer program like writing a research paper? Both involve creating something new, but also build on something old by amassing, selecting, and combining existing work. In scholarly writing this is done explicitly through citations and implicitly through the influence of the ideas of other scholars as well as our own lived experiences. In writing code programmers explicitly reference other systems and code libraries through APIs, calling conventions, and including various pre-written and reusable software components. Implicit re-use is done by copying and perhaps refining code fragments, or using algorithms or design patterns. Failure of a scholar to cite appropriately is plagiarism; failure of a programmer to link appropriately means the program will crash. Software engineering uses various methods to analyze and to improve code quality and the code development process. This research investigates whether it is appropriate or useful to treat code as text, and if approaches and methods derived from bibliometrics, including citation analysis, have something new and useful to contribute to this endeavor. Various questions of code dependency in computer applications are considered, including: what are the types of dependency that exist in code? How can we analyze attribution in programming? What are the patterns of dependency among projects? Are these patterns similar to the structure of citations in scholarly writing? Are there differences in dependency patterns between different coding communities, environments, or programming languages? What can we learn about the complexity and long-term stability of an application in light of its dependencies?
Digital/Virtual Libraries 49. Ming-Hsin Chiu The dynamic role of Internet and IT not only creates a new type of library— digital library, but also creates new jobs as well as emergent demands for professionals with strong technical knowledge and library skills. Due to the short history of digital librarianship, project-based work nature and a lack of mentors, digital librarians often feel isolated and uncertain in their recently formed digital collection units and in the larger academic library culture. In order to become fully functioning members, they must discover an effective route to make sense of a changing environment and acquire social and technical knowledge and skills for an assuming role. This exploratory study employs Dervin’s Sense-Making framework and focuses on the proactive and user-centered nature of newcomer organizational socialization. It investigates four dimensions of organizational socialization, including (1) situation: situations that lead to the needs for socialization information seeking; (2) gap: questions in situations which information needs arise; (3) bridge: information seeking tactics used to acquire socialization information; and (4) outcome: positive and negative outcomes of information acquisition. The prediction nature of Sense-Making adds values to both human resources management in academic libraries and to curriculum to better prepare future digital librarians. Semi-structured Sense-Making interviews with newcomer digital librarians will be conducted. Library Websites and human resources documents will be reviewed to aid understanding of existing effort in newcomer orientation and socialization. It is hoped that by the end of data analysis, a holistic model regarding newcomer digital librarians’ organizational socialization experiences will be developed.</ 50. Jeanne T. Holba Puacz Digitization projects that focus on rare or historic material abound in academic libraries and archives. Public library participation in such projects has, traditionally, been much more limited. A 1997 study of large public libraries found that only 14.2 percent of the surveyed libraries were involved in a digital project (Scally, 1998). Encouragingly, an Institute of Museum and Library Services survey in 2002 found that 30 percent of large public libraries reported digitization activities. Unfortunately, only 8 percent of small public libraries reported any digitization projects and IMLS speculated that digitization might not be a practical endeavor for small public libraries (IMLS, 2002). The next generation of this IMLS study, with data collected in 2004, found that more public libraries were pursuing digitization; however, the vast majority of small and mid-size public libraries, 82.4% and 80.4% respectively, had not undertaken any digitization projects in that year (IMLS, 2006). This study investigated current digitization projects at small, medium, and large public libraries and examined whether public libraries are continuing to embrace the technology of digitization. The study considered project size, availability of digital images, policies, and funding. Data concerning digitization projects was collected by examining the availability of digital content and supporting information from the Web sites of a randomly selected sample of small, medium, and large public libraries. This data was evaluated to identify trends in the existence, extent, and limitations of digitized content from public libraries.
Administration & Management 51. Diane L. Velasquez The research is based upon the public access computer and the changes it has wrought in public libraries upon the organizational structure. This is survey based research aimed at Midwest Public Library Directors of large systems (serving a population of over 25,000). The survey information will be triangulated with qualitative semi-structured interviews of library directors from the same population. The research is trying to see what if any impact the personal computer has created in the public library's organizational structure and how it is dealt with within the library. 52. Mary E. Wilkins-Jordan Public libraries are facing a crisis. The needs of public libraries are changing rapidly, the expectations of service are increasing, and the funding is decreasing. Added to these problems is the number of library managers who are getting ready to retire, taking with them their knowledge and experience in leading public libraries. There may not be sufficient staff available with training and experience in leading libraries to success. Complicating the issue is that the competencies that were good enough twenty years ago, or ten years ago, or even five years ago are not going to be sufficient to provide excellent library service to communities five, ten, or twenty years in the future. There is not currently one standard, generally accepted set of standard competencies new and future leaders can use to guide their own learning. There have been a number of formal training sessions for library leaders, but their success rate is essentially unknown. Without a set of competencies to guide development for these librarians, without a set of goals to achieve, and without a system of evaluation to measure the results of this training, it is still left to the individual librarian to piece together their own training. Development of a set of competencies that can be used for training public library leaders is an important first step in this process. In this study, I will use standard competency development strategies to create a set of competencies for public librarians who want leadership positions
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