Work-In-Progress Posters
History of Library Science and Information Science
In Library and Information Science (LIS) literature, the concept of “use” is very rarely defined conceptually or operationally, in spite of its ubiquity, even as an operationalized concept in empirical research. More often, use is treated as a primitive concept: an indefinable term so basic to the theoretical framework at hand that it need not be explained, nominally or operationally. The research presented in this poster session (my dissertation), utilizes discourse analysis methodology as informed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Discourse Theory (DT) to examine the construction of the use concept in the professional and scholarly literature of librarianship, library science, information science, and library and information science from 1876-2006 to demonstrate that the diversity of application and understanding of use in LIS contradicts the treatment of use as an irreducible concept. In order to provide a frame of reference for the discussion, I have divided the years between 1876-2006 into several broad periods in the development of LIS: the professionalization of librarianship (1876-1927), the establishment of the disciplines of library science and documentation in America (1928-1947), the establishment of information science and information theory (1948-1967), the merger of information science and library science to create library and information science (LIS) (1968-1993), and the impact of technology on information science, librarianship, and LIS, especially as represented by the prominence of the Internet and World Wide Web in LIS research and practice (1994-2006).
LIS as a Profession
New librarians’ perceptions of the profession are important in that they provide some indication of the state of the field, the role of library school education in molding professional identity, and how first year experiences affect librarians’ identity and future plans. Through qualitative analysis, this study explores how novice academic librarians adjust their perceptions of librarianship from their initial decision to attend a library school graduate program through completion of their first year of professional work. This will be done in the hope that understanding the ways in which librarians come to define their professional identities will build a better understanding of the state of the profession. Three qualitative research methods are proposed to gather data: (1) one-on-one, face-to-face, open-ended interviews; (2) document analysis of participants’ “statement of purpose” letters submitted during the graduate school application process; and (3) personal reflection upon the researchers’ own experiences as new librarians. The researchers interviewed two novice librarians for the pilot study. Six categories were derived from the data that represent phenomena material to the adjustment of perceptions of librarianship: (1) Deciding Upon a Career; (2) Experiencing Graduate School; (3) Continuing Education; (4) Defining the Work; (5) Evaluating the Work; and (6) (Re)Imagining the Future. Full implementation of the study (through interviewing until redundancy has been reached) will allow for further observation and for potential modification of these emerging categories.
Philosophy, Values and Ethics of LIS The purpose of this research is to theoretically frame the discourse in LIS concerning users in terms of Heidegger’s Being-in-the-world. This notion is a fundamentally important departure from Cartesian mind/body, subject/object distinction. Heidegger identifies the artificial nature of seeing the world “out there” and me “in here,” in this body. From this perspective, the human being is bei the world, which translated means “amid” or “alongside.” In other words, she is not a consciousness encapsulated in a body looking out into the world. Neither is she reducible to her physical components (the body). Lifeless, unconscious matter cannot be said to be “at home” in the world as humans are. Likewise, the human being is not a somehow separate inhabitant of a physical body. By addressing the user as Heidegger’s Dasein, and Sartre’s being-for-itself, researchers avoid problematic reduction of the user to a set of behaviors or a model of cognition or as simply a physical entity. I do not propose that these ontologies are superior to every theoretical approach to user studies. My purpose is to discuss the advantages of using them to expand upon user studies. Utilizing existentialist philosophy, we have discourses allowing us to conceptually situate the user in such a way that its being is addressed as one within a world, with a past, facing a future, and not simply a cog in the wheel of information technology or a manifestation of behavior stripped of meaning, emotion, and cognition.
4. Heather Hill This research is intended to better understand what may be a growing phenomenon – the commodification of the public library. With only a cursory examination of the topic, it appears that a commodified business-model may be being adopted without forethought into potential implications of such a shift. It is possible this shift in focus may be detrimental to the notion of the library as a public good and could possibly work to eliminate the public library’s place in the public sphere. Before active criticism can commence, this study is necessary to evaluate what is being stated in the literature. This research will also be integral to understanding how this trend has developed and changed (or not) over the years. The questions this research seeks to answer are: How prevalent is the rhetoric of commodification in the literature on public libraries? How long has this been a trend – is it a new or old phenomenon? Has the use of this rhetoric increased, decreased or remained steady over time? What trends are being advocated, i.e. overall commodification of the library, commodification of certain aspects of the library (value-added services), or commodification as it relates to libraries’ relationships to the parent organization, to the public or to both?
5. David L. Scott In modern American society, librarians are often the professionals one turns to when help is needed fulfilling personal information needs. Public library patrons ask for assistance in finding reading material, help for their homework and medical information. Rarely is a librarian's information-seeking expertise put to use locating and disseminating expressly political information or viewpoints. In fact, the American Library Association Code of Ethics limits a librarian's political involvement to intellectual freedom and censorship issues, ignoring the fact that librarians are the ideal professionals to gather and distribute accurate information about any and all political candidates and issues. This is in stark contrast to one of the founding concepts of the public library, which is that it would be at the heart of American participatory democracy, actively informing the electorate. This study will examine the reasons for this change in professional values and discuss the ethical arguments both in favor of and against a more aggressive involvement by librarians in politics. Through the historical analysis of librarianship's philosophical grounding, dissection of the codes of ethics of libraries and librarians and analysis of surveys and interviews with library professionals, I hope to provide a framework that would allow librarians to use their skills to have a positive impact on the democratic process.
Information and Society Generally, people should access physical location of museum to enjoy art-pieces. However, for people in small areas or rural, it is not easy to be there to enjoy art solely. In case of books, more and more books are available through the online if we pay or are available for lending. Unlike library, museum is in beginning stage in digitalization. With some limitations, there is possibility to reduce art-related divide through museum digitalization. Here, we are trying to espouse art-divide problem in this age and exploring ways to reduce it.
7. Kristene Unsworth This interdisciplinary project informs my dissertation proposal. My topic is located in the crossing of information policy, specifically issues of personal privacy and surveillance; classification theory; and use of information in national policy decision making. The right to privacy, the ethics of data collection, and the use and manipulation of data are all issues that are of great importance as government agencies attempt to collect more and more information in the name of national security. Historically, perhaps some of the most well organized and pervasive systems of data collection outside of the US were conducted under the auspices of the KGB in the Soviet Union and the Ministry for State Security (MfS) in the former German Democratic Republic. This phase of my research looks specifically at the use of classification structures by the East German secret police to categorize individuals they perceived to be threats to state security. To do so I am employing methods based on Foucaultian Discourse Analysis. This includes a critical examination of the dictionary of terms used by the Ministry of State Security as edited by Suckut in 1996. In addition, I will analyze personal autobiographies and actual MfS reports available through the Federal Commission for the Archives of the Ministry of State Security of the former German Democratic Republic (BStU) website. In an era where interesting bits of information about individual actions are categorized and classified it is important to look at past examples of uses of personal information as evidence in national security issues.
Social/Community Informatics Community Informatics (CI) is a field of study and practice devoted to understanding how information processes and technologies are used to help communities achieve their goals. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) recently launched a new Community Informatics Corps (CIC) program. This built upon a tradition of providing information technology (IT) services to the community through Prairienet – a community information network in East-Central Illinois region since 1993, as well as on extensive experience in working closely with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago and a number of organizations in East St. Louis area. The aim of the CIC at GSLIS is to enrich our understanding of CI by bringing in the knowledge and experience of people who have often been excluded from the affairs of the academy. Our aim is to recruit and mentor a cohort of Latina/o, African-American, and other students interested in a career that enables them to contribute to their communities and to learn from them. Students in the CIC have the opportunity to focus their coursework on social entrepreneurship and community library and information services, so that they are prepared to apply what they have learned to the creation of innovative information services implemented within and across a range of community-based and public interest organizations. In addition to providing general information on the CIC at GSLIS, the poster describes the CIC curriculum which combines weekend, evening, and summer courses offered at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago, online and hybrid courses, and courses offered in Urbana-Champaign. Courses include “Professional Research in Action”, “Community Information Systems”, "Inquiry-Based Learning", "Change Management", "Introduction to Networking", and structured practical engagement experiences. It also presents ongoing collaborative CI activities across universities (e.g., Michigan, Penn State, Toronto). Finally, it describes research on the impact on careers in LIS as a result of CIC program experiences.
Intellectual Freedom and Censorship The purpose of this study is to investigate pre-censorship of foreign English language children’s books that are distributed in the United States. Children’s authors and illustrators from Canada and the United Kingdom have complained of the pressure to make changes to their work to meet American cultural norms. Changes to text, illustration, and content have been documented. In some instances these changes were unauthorized. Some scholars have asserted that these types of pre-publication changes represent “pre-censorship” and that the stripping of foreign culture from these books often makes them indistinguishable from American books. Some scholars view these changes as especially harmful to the cultural identification of Canadian children whose reading materials have been purged of Canadian specific identifiers. Others disagree and view these changes as a move towards a larger global culture, representing the point of view of a new generation less focused on nationalism. The opinions of publishers and editors are mixed on this topic as well. The methods used to investigate this phenomenon will include qualitative in-depth interviews with those whose works have been censored as well as interviews with Canadian editors and publishing elites supplemented by secondary historical analysis.
LIS Faculty, Students African American doctoral students have not been the focus of study in Library and Information Studies; however, several hundred Black men and women have obtained Doctor of Philosophy degrees in the field since the first doctoral degree was granted at the University of Chicago in 1930. This descriptive and exploratory study examines the abstracts of doctoral dissertations written by African American women who graduated from LIS programs from 1994 through 2004. The researcher seeks answers to the following: (1) What did this group of doctoral students state as their purpose for conducting the chosen research? (2) Do the dissertation abstracts explicitly address some aspect of the African American experience in Library and Information Studies? (3) Do the abstracts reveal that the dissertations are related in ways other than or in addition to having a focus upon African American themes and issues? It is hoped that this research, once it is completed, will lead to increased knowledge about the research pursuits of a specific group of minority students in LIS doctoral programs. This knowledge may be useful for helping to formulate recruitment and retention strategies in LIS graduate programs (both Master’s and doctorate).
11. Linda R. Most The market for new faculty members in Library and Information Science (LIS) is growing as a wave of senior faculty will soon retire. This article presents an exploratory study of recent LIS doctoral students’ teaching preparation experiences. It describes and justifies the qualitative methodology used, and reports the results of focus groups conducted among junior LIS faculty members at a large research extensive university. Participants contributed their memories and opinions of their graduate experiences of preparation for teaching and their responses were coded into five categories of experiences. They identified the following factors as key to their preparation for teaching:
These preliminary responses will be used to shape a large-scale study of the same questions.
Research Methods Periodically LIS scholars report on the state of research in librarianship in general and practitioner research, in particular. These reviews, some more extensive in journal coverage than others, focus on topics addressed, methodologies used, and quality of the research. At the January 2003 ALISE meeting, we presented the findings of our review of the 1998-2002 published librarianship research (1). We decided to update that analytical review for two reasons: to look at more recent literature (2003-2005), and to use refined methodological criteria to evaluate these studies. From a purposive sample of 23 LIS journals we have mined 401 research articles. 206 articles were randomly selected for this in-depth analysis. A checklist of 34 factors was applied in our analysis of these research articles. These project and report factors include authorship, topic, location and setting, type of research, data collection methods, type of data analysis, statistical techniques, and components and quality of the report itself. The data collected were statistically analyzed to produce summary data and to provide an opportunity to discover any significant associations among the many variables. Such analysis will support comparisons of practitioner and academic scholar research. The descriptive data has enabled us to document the status quo in recent practitioner research. These findings can be used to explore recent patterns or trends in library practitioner research and they provide a basis for comparisons with earlier reported findings and assessments. Research questions addressed in this study and initial findings will be presented. 1. Hildreth, Charles R. "How Are They Going About It? A Comparison of Research Methods Used by LIS Academic and Practitioner Researchers." Peer-reviewed and juried paper presented on January 22, 2003 at annual meeting of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), January 21-24, 2003, Philadelphia, PA. (Available at: http://myweb.cwpost.liu.edu/childret/)
Distance Education in LIS Online Education There is little research on the efficacy of blended methods of online learning where the majority of the education occurs online but differing amounts of face-to-face interaction occurs. The purpose of this research is to explore the implications of increasing face-to- face interaction in online Library and Information Science programs. The research involves the University of North Texas, SLIS, Nevada distance education master’s programs conducted in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2007. Two of these programs increased the amount of face-to-face interaction during the two year program of study. Researching this model may provide evidence to support or repudiate that increasing face-to-face activities has a positive effect on human communication interactions that promote effective learning and the building of sustainable communities of librarians. The theory of social presence and the community of inquiry model will be central to the research. A central element of education and learning is social interaction, and the social presence theory developed by the work of Short et al, provides the first known definition of social presence: “The degree of salience of the other person and the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships”. The community of inquiry model assumes that learning occurs within the community through the interaction of three core elements: cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence. (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer, 2000) The proposed question for this work in progress is:
14. Kyoungsik Na Today online learning is a major educational innovation which deserves significant research attention. Yet, while there is a large body of research comparing online learning with face-to-face learning, fewer studies have focused on variation among different forms of online learning, especially within the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) education. The study will examine information richness based on the mode of delivery, and compare two different modes in online education: text-based only and audio/visual augmented. In order to do so, the combination of media richness theory (MRT) and dual coding theory (DCT) were employed as a theoretical framework. MRT developed by Daft and Lengel (1984) assumes that written media works better for unequivocal messages while face-to-face media works better for equivocal messages in organizations. DCT concludes that one could save and retrieve information much easier when dual coded because of the availability of two mental information processing in memory by two separate, but interconnected memory systems: one visual and the other verbal (Clark & Paivio, 1991). By combining these two theories together this study outlines research exploring information richness of the different mode of delivery in LIS online education. Further, it uses learner motivation, learning outcomes, learner satisfaction, and degree of interaction to determine what type of mode of online education is most educational, enjoyable, and participatory. It proposes an online survey to measure information richness of the different mode of delivery and the relation between students’ learning behavior and the mode of delivery in online learning. Finally, it will discuss the results of the research for LIS online education. References
Continuing Education in LIS This report details the role Dr. Jessie Carney Smith and the Fisk University Library played in training academic librarians in the areas of Black Studies and ethnic genealogy from 1972-1979. As Head Librarian at Fisk for over 40 years, Dr. Smith's work has not only powerfully impacted her immediate academic community but has also played an influential role in academic librarianship and African American history. Returning to Nashville in 1965, Dr. Smith encountered a college community in transition. The South was coping with the sharp growing pains of integration, particularly in the realm of higher education. By the 1970s, shouts of "Black Power!" not "We Shall Overcome" were being heard on college campuses and rapidly developing Black Studies programs started gaining national attention. Academic librarians, challenged with overhauling library collections, often found themselves lacking the expertise to meet the demands of this 'new' field of scholarship. Noticing the increased interest in Black Studies, Dr. Smith applied for and was awarded a grant to prepare librarians in the area of Black Studies Librarianship. Dr. Smith has exemplified visionary librarianship by developing programs and processes that educate and empower librarians to respond quickly to societal shifts. Using a blend of archival research and oral history, Visionary Librarianship offers a look at a replicable training model to help today's librarians address the changing face of ethnic studies in academe.
Reference and Information Services While information literacy programs are being developed in colleges and universities, most formal programs deal with general education requirements in humanities and social sciences. The development of information literacy in the science and engineering is challenging. The ALA/ACRL/STS Task Force on Information Literacy for Science and Technology has developed separate standards for information literacy in Science and Engineering/Technology that require students "demonstrate competency not only in written assignments and research papers but also in unique areas such as experimentation, laboratory research, and mechanical drawing". [1] Leckie and Fullerton (1999) surveyed science and engineering faculty at two Canadian universities. Survey results suggested that: instruction needed to be course related; librarians must be flexible in the types of instruction provided; librarians need to liaison with faculty; and the development faculty workshops and reviews should be included in an instruction program. The research associated with the poster examines what science and engineering librarians are doing to remote information literacy to faculty and students in Canada.
17. Eileen McElrath Studies show that faculty members question the accuracy, reliability and sufficiency of Web resources for research. “Faculty members in the language and literature fields tend to be the least satisfied with the Web overall, and, specifically, were less satisfied with its content and accuracy” (Herring 216). Undergraduate students, on the other hand, report that the Web provides them much information that they use to complete assignments. The information needs and behaviors of humanities researchers have been studied extensively in the library and Information Science field. We know that humanities researchers consult colleagues and print source material for references. Citations from books and journals are gleaned for future searching while bibliographies are used less frequently. Book reviews, personal collections, and library catalogs reveal secondary sources. “Humanities researchers place a strong emphasis on the importance of physical access to libraries and collections, to browse and to take advantage of association and serendipity” (East 35). Question: Are there websites of value for humanities researchers? The purpose of this study is to find web-sites of value for humanities researchers, especially faculty and students, and the reference librarians who serve them. One condition necessary was that the sites be free of cost. The study employs a content analysis of the annotated lists of librarian-evaluated free websites published in Reference & User Services Quarterly from 1999 to 2005 to determine the ones of value for Humanities researchers. Findings to date include approximately 30 websites of value for Humanities researchers. References
Electronic Reference Services The objective of this research study is to develop an understanding of the factors that students say influence their choice of reference service delivery mode. Specifically, once a student has made a decision to seek assistance at a library, how do students decide whether to seek online electronic reference assistance or to go to a physical library and ask for assistance in person? In Phase I of the study twenty students will be interviewed about their reasons for choosing virtual reference, their experience with virtual reference, and their perceptions of how virtual reference compares to face-to-face reference. Students’ responses will be analyzed to draw out the important considerations for them. This analysis will guide construction of a survey to be administered to a different group of students in Phase II of the study. Three research questions (RQ) are addressed. RQ1: Given that a decision was made to get assistance from a library, what do students report as their reasons to use a particular service delivery mode? RQ2: How can the reasons given for choosing a particular service delivery mode be classified? RQ3: How do students say the service delivery modes compare?
Young Adult Services A preliminary study is being formulated to find out existing practices. The study will try to find out what kinds of services are currently being provided to high schools by their local public libraries, and if school libraries are influencing public library use at all. What are these libraries doing to help each other, who is doing it, and how and where is it being done? Other variables that will be examined are type of library, location, community size, technology, availability of resources, and librarian level of education. For this study, both high school and public libraries will be asked to complete a survey including both informational type and open-ended questions. Survey analysis will provide an overview of current practices, and could lead to further studies regarding the success of the various projects enumerated. This, in turn, may lead to creating best practice models for high school/public library interactions.
Serving the Aged This paper reports the rationale and experimental design of an ongoing research project that aims at developing effective strategies for public libraries to provide computer training for older adults. RATIONALE: As society moves forward into the information age, older adults are at risk of being left behind, since their adoption of computers lags significantly behind other age groups with fewer than 22% of older adults age 65+ going online, and half that percentage of African-Americans participating. To narrow the generational digital divide, it is important to develop computer training mechanisms that can effectively promote the learning and use of computers by older adults – especially those who belong to ethnic minority groups –given the growing importance of computer literacy for access to health care information. The author argues that public libraries should play a central role in providing not only access to but also training for computers. DESIGN: The core experimental design is a 2 x 2 completely randomized between-subjects factorial design. The two factors are class condition with two levels (individual vs. group) and practice condition with two levels (individual vs. group). Participants are older adults age 65 and above who have no or little prior experience with computers. Participants are recruited from patrons of the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System in Maryland. Data will be analyzed using ANOVA and followed by ANCOVAs to assess the influence of prior knowledge and other demographic variables such as education to see to what extent such variables mediate or moderate performance.
Serving Multicultural Populations The role of family storytelling of immigrant families is particularly important, because “children may view their home language as lacking respect and cultural value, causing them to replace the home language with the school language (Agosto, 2001, p.38).” However, research about family storytelling of immigrant families is rare, especially addressing Korean American families. This study will be conducted using interviews. The researcher will interview thirty Korean American couples (or single parents) with children between ages 2 to 12. The parents must be Korean-born, so that they feel more comfortable speaking Korean compared to English. The interviewees will be asked the following questions:
More questions will be added as the research develops.
Serving Disabled Populations To date, distance library research has primarily focused on effective service delivery (library instruction, access, technology applications) with only limited examination of the information seeking behaviour of distance learners. Additionally, while LIS literature provides a clear picture of the “typical” distance learner (female, aged 35-49, employed full-time, married, with a family, part-time student), there is little research on distance learners who do not match that “typical” profile. Learning Disabilities (LD), lifelong neurobiological disorders affecting information processing, are present in approximately 10% of the population. Although descriptive statistics of LD post-secondary students are not easily attainable, research confirms that throughout North America more learning disabled students are pursuing post-secondary education. The implications of this documented trend, juxtaposed with the use of computer assisted learning technologies in higher education, suggest that students with learning disabilities could be engaged in distance learning and may find distance education a supportive learning environment. This anecdotal speculation has received very little attention through formal research. Within this context, how the learning disabled student experiences information seeking in the distance environment becomes an important question for exploration. The lack of research investigating the information seeking behaviour of distance learners and the lack of research on atypical distance learners, especially learning disabled students, represents a significant and critical gap in LIS literature. The proposed study presented in this poster seeks to provide insight on this unstudied phenomenon.
23. Susan Burke Over 5,000 households with household members identified as having a physical, mental, or emotional condition that impairs participation in activities were surveyed on use of the public library. Respondents were asked about their experiences with barriers to use and efforts by public libraries to be useful to people with disabilities. They were also asked if people in the household used the public library to borrow materials for people with disabilities. Data were collected by the Current Population Survey in October 2002. These data will be analyzed and implications and conclusions for public libraries will be presented.
Children’s/YA Literature This study compares how the history of the Sino-Japanese War is reflected in American and Chinese school textbooks and juvenile literature. I have observed a curious contrast in the amount of information about the Sino-Japanese War available for American and Chinese young people, and the uneven treatment of World War II atrocities, particularly the Holocaust and Japanese wartime atrocities in China, in literature for an American young audience. The Sino-Japanese War, which became part of WWII after the Pearl Harbor attack, is the collective memory of contemporary Chinese. Despite a consensus on the shaping power of WWII, most American school textbooks and juvenile literature have skipped Chinese experience during WWII. One purpose of this study is to reveal some of the missing pieces in a mosaic representation of Chinese (American) culture and experience by American juvenile literature. Another purpose is to inform how Chinese juvenile literature may work towards a more accurate, balanced, and sensitive information source. Questions that guide my research are: Why is there only scant information in US publications about WWII history in China? What has contributed to this historical amnesia? In contrast, what has contributed to Chinese public memory? What is the quantity and quality of the information about WWII provided to Chinese youth? How does it change over time? Is it possible to tell stories about the Sino-Japanese War when historians are still contending over many issues? What is the relationship between the information that has been provided for Chinese youth and their own perspective?
25. Annette Y. Goldsmith In Ways of seeing, Berger (1972) proposed that there are different ways to perceive visual messages, and indeed, fields as diverse as anthropology, art history, communications, and popular culture use a variety of visual methodologies. How to choose the most appropriate visual methodology for an examination of the book jackets of young adult novels with HIV/AIDS content is considered here. This work-in-progress grew out of a larger project to update Gross’s (1998) content analysis of young adult novels dealing with HIV/AIDS. Forty-five young adult novels published between 1995 and 2005 were read. All the books are for readers aged 11-19, with the main character in that same age range, are available in English, and feature at least one character with HIV/AIDS. Of the thirty-three books in which HIV/AIDS is integral to the story, about half (seventeen) of the jackets show manifest content in text or illustration. Ten books are set in the U.S., five in Africa, and two in Europe. Ten of the covers have a photographic style, and seven are more painterly. Of the protagonists, nine are female, six are male, and in two instances there are protagonists of both genders. A purposive sample of five jackets representative of setting, style, and protagonist’s gender will be examined. ALISE attendees are invited to vote for their preferred methodologies. References
26. Jamie Campbell Naidoo Research indicates that it is important for children to encounter accurate and positive representations of diverse cultures in the books they read. Such encounters prepare them for the culturally pluralistic world in which they live. Culture is comprised of many facets including ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and family composition. Families are almost always portrayed in children’s books as nuclear despite the growing diverse family structures among which include same-sex households. Children’s books with lesbian and gay characters, particularly same-sex parents, have always been the targets of censors because of their risqu subject matter. Until recently, the majority of the children’s literature with homosexual characters was comprised of novels. However, an increasing number of picturebooks of varying quality has appeared. Numerous studies have examined the representation of gays and lesbians in young adult novels while entirely overlooking the presence of this minority group in children’s picturebooks. This investigation fills that void, providing an overview of the history, content, and quality of picturebooks which include homosexual characters. The study is framed within the quantitative inquiry of visual and textual content analysis, as well as a qualitative inquiry of semiotic analysis to discern the social messages of picturebooks with lesbian and gay characters.
27. Sarah Young Park The Korean War is a sensitive and painful topic for many Koreans and Korean Americans. It was one of the most traumatic periods in modern Korean history and left indelible scars on the Korean conscience. In both memory and literature, the Korean War remains relatively silent compared to the discussions and books about other war periods, such as slavery and the Holocaust. However, since 1991 several children’s books addressing the Korean War have been published for English-reading audiences. Given this emerging presence, I investigate the ways in which the aesthetic aspects of both illustrations and narrative reconstruct memories and tell stories about the Korean War. I look particularly at the specific aspects of fleeing southward to escape communism and its effects on family. I analyze the literature and illustrations to understand how this moment in history is reconstructed, whose points of view and voices speak, and to what extent the stories reveal the trauma of leaving ones hometown and being separated from family. I also look at the authorship and background of illustrators and other external factors that may influence the way these stories are told and illustrated. This research is particularly relevant because one major consequence of the War – that is, the separation of families – still impacts millions of Korean and Korean American families today. Understanding the retelling of this historical moment in children’s books helps explain how the Korean War shaped and continues to shape contemporary Korean and Korean American society.
28. Stephanie D. Reynolds The written word has the power to promote physical and emotional healing, to change attitudes, to foster intellectual growth, to empower, and to motivate. All of these objectives are possible with fiction literature when a connection between the reader and the literature occurs, with the author perhaps, or with one of the characters. The aim of my dissertation research, Growing Up is Hard to Do: Young Adult Literature as Therapeutic Process, is to explore how the experience of reading fiction impacts 14- to 15-year-old girls (the dependent variable), and how that experience changes based upon four reading-related activities (the independent variables): journaling, blogging, a personal interview, and a focus group session. Each participant will reflect upon works of her own choosing that she has recently read; no new readings will be assigned. The data collected will be evaluated using content analysis and reader response theory with the goal of developing a relational analysis tool to be used and tested with future research projects. The previously read literature that the participants choose to focus on will also be evaluated using content analysis.
Information Literacy and Instruction Virtual reference service offers librarians an opportunity to empower users by encouraging the acquisition of information literacy skills. Librarians have long sought to achieve this goal at the physical reference desk. By employing sophisticated strategies, librarians can encourage learning in the online environment as well. Seven specific practices, based on theories of metacognition, active learning, and social constructivism can be identified and analyzed through an analysis of virtual reference transcripts. While previous studies have examined incidents of instruction in virtual reference transcripts, this study offers a significant addition to the literature of virtual reference by using educational theory to identify specific strategies for instruction. The results of this study can be used to both establish best practices of online reference instruction and inform staff training.
30. Patricia Montiel Overall National Science Foundation statistics indicate that Latino students are among the least prepared to succeed academically in science. A promising instructional approach that integrates information literacy and science literacy is teacher and librarian collaboration. This approach to develop science information literacy may ensure success for Latino students in science. Although teacher and librarian collaboration is recommended in professional guidelines for school librarians for improving instruction, no formal assessment of collaborative practices exists. This research develops an instrument which would be the first valid and reliable tool for measuring teacher and librarian collaboration. (An informal scale exists but it was never validated.) The proposed instrument (TLC-I) will use a Likert-type scale to assess practices among teachers and librarians. These panels will help develop the instrument. The three panels will review a pool of items from previous research in an iterative process with each panel reviewing items selected by the previous panel. Pilot testing will occur prior to distribution in two school districts participating in a larger study. The larger study will 1) confirm findings from previous research on the relationship between actual teacher and librarian practices and practices proposed in a theoretical model of teacher and librarian collaboration, and 2) assist in assessing the extent to which these collaborative practices occur and their effect over time on Latino students’ achievement in science information literacy. Development of the tool has the potential to advance theory and knowledge of effective methods for improving instruction in information literacy and science literacy for Latino students.
Information Needs and Behaviors/Practices A connotative message is an inherent and essential feature of an image. Since connotative meanings of an image can be used to achieve more meaningful retrieval results, this study investigates users’ connotative needs during the image search process. Related studies of this study have attempted to examine user’s connotative needs by analyzing verbal descriptions or queries. Although verbal descriptions are a traditional and convenient way to explore users’ needs, words have some limitations in describing images, particularly connotative meanings of an image. In this context, this study aims to investigate the utility of the semantic differential as a complementary tool for analyzing users’ connotative needs. First, this study explores how the semantic differential illustrates the relationships between an expected image, which is expressed before starting a search under a given task, and a selected image, which is judged as appropriate from among a group of potentially relevant images for the given task. Secondly, this study examines how the semantic differential illustrates socio-cultural backgrounds which may affect the way people retrieve connotative messages of images. Although this study is based on a small set of data, the results demonstrate that the semantic differential can be used to explore users’ connotative needs which are inadequately represented in verbal expression. In addition, the results are encouraging and demonstrate the plausibility of utilizing the semantic differential for image representation and retrieval. This study also proposes and discusses a subsequent study entitled “Utilizing the Semantic Differential to Achieve User-Centered Image Representation.”
Information Needs and Behaviors/Behaviors of the Public This poster presents an Information Credibility Assessments Framework which characterizes the kinds of credibility assessments people make when they interact with information objects or sources. Four levels of credibility assessments are identified: conceptual, heuristic, contextual, and interaction. These levels range from abstract and broadly perceived credibility assessments (conceptual) to credibility assessments that are specific to particular information objects (interaction). The conceptual level refers to how the individual defines credibility and related concepts. Heuristics include general rules of thumb which individuals use to make decisions regarding credibility. The contextual level involves social, environmental and situational factors which bound the credibility assessment. Finally, the interaction level refers to credibility assessments based on specific characteristics of the information source or object. These levels can affect each other, and any or all of these levels may influence a particular decision to accept or reject information. This framework emerged from a qualitative study in which we investigated college students’ credibility assessments in everyday life information seeking activities. Twenty-four college students from three different educational institutions kept Web-based information seeking diaries, recording one information seeking activity per day for ten days. Those activities included work, school and personal life concerns and involved a range of information channels (e.g., the Internet, books, newspapers, humans, etc.). Using the diary data, a semi-structured in-depth interview was conducted with each participant to examine their goals, tasks, strategies, and decisions. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze the transcribed interviews and to develop the framework.
33. Brian Kenney Our understanding of human information behavior in general, and information seeking in particular, arises from the many empirical studies of specific professions, social roles, or demographic groups. This work-in-progress looks instead to a group of fictional texts to help us understand information seeking, defined as the purposive seeking of information in relation to a goal (Spink & Cole, 2004). It is guided by two questions: What can crime fiction tell us about information seeking? How does the behavior in these texts relate to how information scientists have conceptualized information seeking? This poster will present key elements in the research: the theoretical framework for using literary texts as evidence; the creation of a sample of texts to support a multiple case study approach; the analysis of the texts; and a comparison of the findings with existing concepts. Analysis is in two parts. Part one looks at the big picture, using narrative analysis to understand the broad roles that information plays in the narratives: the patterns, themes, and temporal organizations. Readers’ responses, through guided discussions with reading groups, will further define these roles. In part two, content analysis using NVivo7 software will be used to code the texts, based in part on the concepts and terms derived from part one. A meta-analysis across the cases/texts will be developed through a meta-analytic schedule. This schedule will then be compared to an integrative model of information use based on empirical research (Spink & Cole, 2006). References
Information Needs/Behaviors of Specific Groups Americans have long valued their right to privacy, but many U.S. teens do not seem to recognize when they have given it away. The proliferation of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook provide ample opportunity for teens to bring their private lives into the public sphere; this raises the question, do they recognize private information, public settings, and the risks involved or do they care? Popular thought suggests that teens’ only consideration of privacy is whether their parents are looking over their shoulder (Duffy, 2006). Barnes (2006), however, finds that undergraduate students recognize that private information exists, but they appear not to recognize Facebook as a public setting. Do teens similarly recognize that at least some information is private, but do not recognize public settings? This research seeks to determine through an exploratory survey how teens define private information, identify public settings, and whether they associate risk with sharing private information. In addition, this study will seek to determine the influence of age, gender, technical acumen, and level of education on these beliefs. By understanding the teen perspective on the boundary of private information and identifying their sense of risk, parents, educators and information professionals will have the opportunity to prepare for the needs and expectations of this generation. References
35. Jenny S. Bossaller Outreach through partnerships and working through other community agents may be the most effective means to reach people who are outside of the traditional population that frequents the library. The illiterate or functionally illiterate poor are an example of traditional non-users of the library. The purpose of this research is to examine relationships between nonprofits, governmental agencies, and other volunteer groups who have worked with the library as literacy partners. Welfare reform policies changed the lives of many people in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, especially in urban inner cities. It is hoped that by examining the response of a library to welfare reform policies, a greater understanding can be reached in regards to libraries’ responsiveness to the needs of their constituents when political or social upheavals dictate a need for such changes. The responsive public library is one that is actively engaged in the political life of its community, and makes programmatic or structural changes to fulfill the needs of the city’s citizens. The research will use qualitative methods based on conflicting narrative theory, which will be used to critically examine the content of interviews with librarians, literacy partners, and people whose lives were impacted by library programming. Other factors that will be examined are the library’s relationship with city government, its location, and its service population. Additional consideration will be devoted to the state’s method of implementing Welfare-to-Work policies and sources of funding for literacy programs.
Information Needs/Behaviors of Specific Groups Our proposed poster will present our ongoing study of the everyday-life information needs and information-seeking behavior of international students at Midwestern universities. We believe that our exploration of everyday-life information needs and information-seeking behavior of international students in the Midwest can make two important contributions to the field of information science (IS). Our intent is to add to the body of empirical knowledge on information seeking in context for a special student population (international students), and our theoretical aim is to propose a contextual model of the information-seeking of international students. From a practical standpoint, we foresee that the results of our study could be useful to administrators in institutions of higher learning in the United States, and that they could impact the development of strategies for the provision of adequate services to the international student body, possibly leading to improved recruitment and retention of foreign students. Lastly, we hope that our study will ultimately benefit international students and contribute to their successful acclimatization on Midwestern campuses. Our methodology combines a quantitative approach relying on data gathered through a survey, with a qualitative approach informed by the Anglo-American anthropological research tradition: structured and unstructured interviews from which empirical qualitative data is to be extracted through written transcription and qualitative analysis using ethnographic methods. Our poster will present the goals and objectives of our study, the theoretical framework and methodology for our research, as well as preliminary results.
37. Christopher Thomas Hart An examination of the literature shows that no one has analyzed the complex and multifaceted issues surrounding students’ and staff’s information-seeking behavior in a virtual secondary school setting and no theoretical or conceptual framework has been applied to this environment. This exploratory study, which is the first on the topic, investigates the information-seeking behavior of the staff and students of the Florida Virtual School (FLVS) using a case study approach. The research question addresses the manner in which the staff and students of the FLVS seek information resources and services and whether their information-seeking behavior can be explained by the application of the Bates berrypicking model. The context of the case is presented through issues that affect information seeking in a virtual school such as legislative policy, budgetary policy, and accreditation issues. A mixed methods design is employed. Initial data collection occurred through phone interviews with key FLVS administrators and staff members. Based on an analysis of these interviews, electronic surveys were developed, pre-tested and administered to FLVS administrators, course developers, teachers and students. Data collected during this research study is currently being analyzed through the use of cross tabulations to test for relationships among data elements with the understanding that results are only suggestive and cannot be generalized beyond this case study. A report of initial findings through this poster session will offer a tentative answer to the research question as well as describe how the circumstances are likely to have influenced the information seeking behavior studied.
38. Barbara Schultz-Jones An open exchange of information is essential for the successful administration and operation of organizations, corporations and public agencies. These entities function as human communication or interaction networks. A better understanding of factors that contribute to improving information flow in certain organizational environments can inspire ideas for improving cooperation and collaboration for organizational effectiveness. The municipal government for the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada introduced a successful public administration model in 1995. The model uses a program called Neighborhood Integrated Service Teams (NIST) to connect city services to the communities. The teams are configured to network disparate departments and organizational subgroups. This poster presents the preliminary results of a research study that examines a component of the model to determine the shape and dynamics of information interchanges between and among members of a specific network within the NIST program. Data collection included documentation review, field observation, surveys and semi-structured interviews with the 23 community center coordinators. Social network analysis was used to map the relationships of network members and social network theory is applied to the results. The data was analyzed to identify the roles and positions of the individuals in the network and the operating structure of the network itself. The results of the analysis demonstrate the pattern of information flows and the behavior of the network. The impact of the NIST model and plans to extend the study to the full NIST program are discussed.
39. Maria Souden Practitioners and researchers have long recognized that the library profession, as a whole, has lacked a coherent model for providing civic information. This IMLS-funded study led by researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Michigan begins to address this challenge by identifying components of an effective community information practice model. The site of study was the Hartford Public Library (HPL) and its Neighborhood Team program. HPL’s innovative program has enabled the library to engage with the community – anticipating and responding to the needs of Hartford’s problem-solving groups. Data for this study were collected through interviews, focus groups, and observation of library staff and local problem-solving organizations. Our findings indicate that HPL’s approach to addressing local civic information needs is grounded in the principle of “being at the table” – getting out of the library and into the neighborhoods where problems are addressed. From the data collected we have distilled a community information practice model that extends beyond the activities of the specific HPL neighborhood-based program. The model described here also incorporates aspects of the institutional environment and characteristics of individual staff members. Its key components include: a philosophy of engagement and an ethic of participation; institutional support mechanisms; staff that are proactive and reflective in their practice; and strategies to anticipate and respond to neighborhood needs. All of these elements, working in concert, comprise a promising model that has the potential to help libraries meet real community information needs.
Organization of Information Gazetteers act as helpful tools for a variety of people to identify, for instance, a village somewhere in Africa with a certain amount of accuracy. Such accuracy is crucial to humanitarian relief actors as they attempt to assess damages and deliver aid after natural disasters. Knowing the village name and its precise location increase the chances of that village receiving needed aid. The gazetteer must be complete and robust prior to the disaster in order to improve the probability of various actors communicating urgent situation reports among each other with any modicum of a guarantee that they are referencing the same village. Information management systems, while increasing in complexity and penetration into the humanitarian arena, remain, as in many other domains, fragile systems with failing parts. An improved gazetteer coding and structuring framework may increase the effective delivery of aid to these same villages in Africa. This research examines the current state of affairs in gazetteer construction, applicable international data standards associated with gazetteers, and the significant metadata strengths and weaknesses of current place code systems. I then identify key objectives for an improved gazetteer and place code system for the international humanitarian relief field. From these goals I suggest possible ways to build the next-generation gazetteer which will effectively capture consistent and accurate place names for improved organization of spatial data for humanitarian relief actors.
Indexing and Abstracting The ability to recall information in appropriate contexts is a useful property of human memory. Information management can be improved by mimicking this property in digital systems. The assumption is that familiar human-like codings are easy for administrators to program, and for all users to understand. I propose a real-time, automatic and dynamic temporal index that captures the recurring usage patterns of information objects. The representation of temporal patterns is built using a novel cue-event-object (CEO) model. By itself, an event node simply represents that something happened. It is connected to cue nodes that define when it happened (time-of-day, day-of-week, etc.). It is also connected to one or more object nodes that describe what happened (e.g. a retrieval, a loan, etc.). Event nodes are analogous to cognitive convergence zones that combine the various features of an experience into a single mental representation. The resulting network structure uses spreading activation for temporal queries, to ask at what times an event typically occurs, or what items are accessed at particular times. The CEO model dynamically simulates cognitive reinforcement-learning to reflect how well ongoing object use adheres to a temporal pattern. If an object is used consistently at the specified event time, the links connecting cues, event and object all grow stronger. Otherwise they decay and are ‘forgotten’. Once patterns have been learned, the system can reveal popular items and peak activity times, and can pre-fetch items when they will be most needed, thereby also acting as reminders to the end-user.
Metadata and Semantic Web In many preservation efforts, XML-encoded metadata may seem straightforward, but certain information is left to be inferred by human readers. This is not too bad when people reason about individual records, but such an approach does not scale over large collection sizes or over time. Using the BECHAMEL research framework, we have experimented automated inferences about metadata as objects, properties, and relationships that encode the human-inferable knowledge in the original description. Re-expressing the resulting assertions as RDF triples is one step in heading off preservation risks for digital resources.
Information Systems and Retrieval How do you design a Web site for diverse populations spanning middle school to college age users? We were confronted with answering this question while designing and implementing the Web and dissemination portal www.starsalliance.org, for a large NSF funded project focused on broadening participation in computing and technology degree programs and careers. Funded in part by a supplemental NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant, our poster will present our collective journey in exploring and attempting to address this problem. The areas that will be covered include: 1) Our research question, 2) the theoretical framework, 3) research and implementation design involving best practices and age-oriented information relevance, 4) issues involved in applying theory to practice, and 5) evaluation methods and data collected to ensure overall viability and usability. Our project team, representing two separate southeastern universities, will present our poster: a faculty member, a graduate student, an undergraduate student. We will also provide applied examples during the session that demonstrate the applied solutions used on the STARS Alliance Web site for maximum interest and relevance across age groups.
Information Retrieval Theory and Practice Few studies have been conducted to identify the “entry point levels” (Jolicoeur, Gluck, & Kosslyn, 1984) used by image searchers. Entry points may vary according to domain knowledge of the items or concepts represented in a picture, but generalizations may be needed for general Web use (Goodrum & Spink, 2001). This research investigates the preferred entry points of various genres of photographs used for Web searching (Fidel, 1997). The study will elicit participants’ first responses to the content of several images and will then ask them to provide free-text representations of entry points of their reactions. We will then use qualitative and quantitative methods to associate the responses with two models of image content description: the Pyramid structure, as described in Jorgensen, Jaimes, Benitez, and Chang (2001), and the nine classes of image content developed by Burford, Briggs, and Eakins (2003). This study investigates whether preferred entry point levels can be determined within these two models for a generalized Web audience. It will also examine whether the image representations elicited from a generalized group correspond with the image preferences of photojournalism professionals in Neal’s study (2006). If similarities exist between the results of both studies, this may indicate a direction toward the most useful entry point levels for photograph indexing and retrieval in the Web. Finally, the findings in this study could be used for research in the area of topical relevance in image data.
Use and Users if Information Systems Three-dimensional (3D) image-objects are making an increasing presence on the Web. Primarily used in e-commerce, this new image format can now be found on museum websites, digital libraries and educational resources. 3D image-objects provide a more detailed view by allowing the user to rotate, zoom or move the object around the screen on the web. There is little documentation exploring this new format of image representation. Information professionals face the challenge of managing 3D image-objects with little understanding of how the users perceive the new format or if previous theoretical suppositions from 2D image research are applicable. There is also a gap in the research establishing appropriate methodologies for these complex objects. A methodological approach for studying these factors has not been thoroughly developed and standard tools for data collection have not been defined. This research is a work-in-progress which explores the different types of image formats (2D and 3D) and user-supplied descriptors. Categorization of the terms are based on Eakins and Grahams’ Hierarchical Levels of Perception. The methodological approach used in the study serves as a proposed possibility for continued investigation. The study collects data by survey and interview, then analyzes it to propose a methodology and tools for continued research. The study is designed to help information professionals gain a more detailed understanding of their users and different forms of image representation, while developing appropriate methodologies for future research.
46. M. Asim Qayyum This research studies whether differences in the technological training approaches with a personal computer have an impact on the perception of utility in impoverished women with little or no computing background. The research utilizes Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to focus on the effects of user training on the acceptance of technology, because previous studies have shown a high correlation exists between these two variables. Thirty women volunteers from the general community will be recruited for the present study. They will be divided randomly into two groups of fifteen participants each. One group will participate in a standard workshop (SW) on developing computing skills. The other group will participate in a custom made workshop (CMW), designed and oriented toward specific interests and project goal(s) of each participant in that group. Interviews will be conducted initially to identify these interests and goals. Such a research design will test the hypotheses that the perceived ease of use and usefulness of computer use will be higher for the participants in custom made workshops (CMW) than those in standard workshops (SW). Task performances will also be compared between these two workshops to test if a higher mean exists for CMW. TAM based questionnaires will be utilized and the resulting data will be analyzed using statistical parametric techniques. Video observations taken during the assessment sessions will supplement the data gathered through the questionnaires, and help in monitoring actual usage. Finally, participants will have to undergo pre/posttests and an instructor assessment session after the end of the training.
47. Wendy Stephens While information science has evolved into a user-centered discipline, the information needs of children remain understudied. There are well-developed theoretical perspectives on how, among adults, information needs are received and interpreted by others who act as information designees. Classroom teachers assigning research tasks can unwittingly press students into the same sort of agency. When working to complete traditional research assignments, children are often compelled to negotiate an uncertain information gap, originating with and evaluated by another individual. Information scientists seeking to quantify online search performance in laboratory research environments can impose a similar sort of information burden upon study participants. The development of the inquiry-based education movement, integrating research activities for even the youngest schoolchildren, parallels the proliferation of digital information sources of varying degrees of accuracy and reliability. The changing nature of the information landscape increases the importance of investigating the process of conceptual transfer for children in particular. Through qualitative analysis, the degree of remove between academic information needs developed by teachers and those perceived by students can be evaluated and many different potential breakdown points in the search practice can be isolated. Such analysis, grounded in open-ended process description, can suggest ways in which an information-centered classroom assignment is transformed as it is negotiated and transferred among teachers, students, parents, and information professionals.
48. Danny P. Wallace and Connie Van Fleet Understanding how people use information and information technology is essential to planning, designing, and implementing effective library and information services and to educating reflective information professionals, but many public and professional perceptions are based on informal observation and speculation rather than systematic study. The assumption that there are significant generational differences in the ability to use information and information technologies appears to have become essentially axiomatic. A typical statement is “There are more pronounced differences between the generations that there ever has been before.”1 Although the principal generations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are defined in a variety of ways, a typical categorization, based solely on anecdotal evidence, includes “Traditionalists,” “Baby Boomers,” “Generations Xers,” and “Millennials.”2 Despite an abundance of seemingly definitive assertions regarding intergenerational differences in comfort with and use of information and information technology, the research base for understanding such differences is remarkably sparse. Project MAGIC, currently under way at the University of Oklahoma School of Library and Information Studies, will a) systematically explore the relationships among age, generation, core understanding of information processes, and core understanding of information technology, with specific reference to the role of improved understanding of intergenerational factors of information competence in the education of reflective library and information professionals and b) present a model for developing a validated process and instruments for assessing the information competence of adults of all ages. References
Human-Computer Interaction Annotations can be described by three attributes: content, form, and function. Annotation form represents the behavior associated with completing an annotation. Use of various annotation forms provides the behavioral manifestation of the function. Annotation function reflects the users’ cognitive states while annotating. Furthermore, the sharing of annotations provides an opportunity to investigate annotation functions in its social setting. This study is investigating the relative value (combining frequency of use and user rating) of online annotation according to combinations of form/function and audience (private, work group, and larger public). It is also investigating the patterns of behavior and cognitive states while annotating for different audiences. More specifically, this study seeks to answer the following questions: What forms and functions in an annotation system are used by different audiences? What patterns of behavior and cognitive states across the experience of various audiences facilitate annotating online? Using a prototype annotation module of the Open Journal System, we are collecting data on annotating and linking by using screen capture and verbal protocol analysis. Using a revised time-line interview, based on Dervin’s Sense-Making theory, we are also asking subjects to comment on their own behavior to enrich our understanding of annotating/linking from the readers’ perspective. Furthermore, Dillon’s TIME framework is being used in conjunction with our understanding of annotation and linking to assess the prototype system and to understand what makes the annotation tools usable, the likely problems and usability issues in their design, and how various ways of presenting the information changes the users’ experience.
50. Chanwoo Yang This study explores possible variation in eye movements when viewing Web pages between members of two different cultures (North American vs. East Asian). The purpose of this study is to provide insight and suggestions when designing Web sites for a particular culture or for cross-cultural Web sites. According to Nisbett and colleagues' cultural cognitive theory, Westerners, in particular North Americans, attend more to focal objects, whereas East Asians attend more to contextual information. These differences may affect how users respond to and use online material. People from a different culture may attend to different visual elements or areas of a Web page. In reality, familiarity with a Web site and types of activities (i.e., browsing vs. search tasks) may also affect eye movements. In the present study, research questions examine variations in eye movements in different tasks and level of familiarity with a Web page between two cultures: (1) Will subjects' patterns of eye movements be changed according to types of performances on a Web page? (2) Does familiarity with a Web page affect patterns of eye movements? Participants will be asked to perform either browsing or search tasks on each of four Web pages (in their language version). The proposed research questions also examine Norton and Stark's scanpath theory. Several eye movement metrics will be analyzed statistically along with performance data. The implications and limitations of the results will be discussed.
51. Lei Zhang and Richard Kopak According to Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995), any information that causes cognitive change is considered relevant, and the expectation of relevance guides the audience toward the communicator’s intention. Optimal relevance is determined by the interplay between the contextual effects and the processing effort. By extending the notion of Relevance Theory from verbal communication to hypertext communication, this research seeks to examine how hypertext presentation affects readers’ cognitive processes involved in using hypertext, a shift from the long-standing perspective of construction-integration model (Kintsch, 1998). What is Relevance Theory’s account for hypertext comprehension in terms of its core elements such as ostension & inference, contextual effects & processing effort, explicature & implicature? What is the distinction between relevance and coherence regarding hypertext comprehension and its effects on understanding hypertext structure? What are the strategies to assist readers to achieve optimal relevance in navigating through the information space? This research attempts to offer a robust principle for hypertext writing in particular and to move a step towards constructing hypertext linguistics in general, and to effect a response to the claim that linguistics hasn’t affected hypertext studies as it ought to (Pajares Tosca, 2000; Esperet, 1996).
Bibliometrics/Informetrics/Webometrics Bradford’s Law, also called the Bradford distribution, describes quantitatively how articles within any subject-related field are distributed (“scattered”) among periodical titles in that field. Bradford distributions arrange journals into zones of decreasing productivity, with the number of titles in Zone 1 and succeeding zones related according to the formula 1:n:n(squared), with the value of n always a constant number (e.g. 3, 5).
Results indicate that:
Digital/Virtual Libraries As the communities involved in Digital Libraries (DL) are diverse, the education of DL is offered in a number of ways. From focusing on information technology and tools to emphasizing the integrations of the aspects of traditional libraries, the education of DL is provided diversely depending on concerned communities. In general, DL education has been offered by three communities: Library and Information Science community (L-Schools), Information School community (I-Schools), Computer Science and related community (Computer Science). Given that there have been no agreed upon definition of DL and curriculum for DL education, examining DL education from three communities can reveal the constructs of DL. This study aims to investigate the purposes, contents and formats of DL education from three communities with following four research questions:
The methodology of this study will include the content analysis of actual textbooks, articles, and materials which are pointed out by the course syllabi and program descriptions. The findings of this study may lead to the unique constructs and conceptions of DL according to the corresponding communities. In a sense, the identified constructs and conceptions of DL from three communities can be utilized for building systematic DL curricula and coordinated approaches of DL education.
54. Kenneth R. Fleischmann To understand where digital libraries can go and are going, it is important to consider how they have developed to date as well as their similarities to and differences from physical libraries. This research applies a novel three-step theoretical framework, the boundary objects with agency framework, to understanding both physical and digital libraries. The first step is to study the social worlds of digital library designers, librarians, and users to understand their ongoing value convergences and conflicts. Next, it is important to study how digital libraries have emerged at the intersection of the social worlds to discover how value convergences and conflicts shape the development of digital libraries. The final step is to study the agency exhibited by digital libraries in reshaping the relationships among the constituent social worlds to learn how digital libraries reshape and reconfigure value convergences and conflicts. This research is significant because of the implications that it will have for digital library design and use. Asking digital library designers and digital librarians about how values impact their work can make them more reflective about their work, as has been found in two NSF-funded studies of information technology values completed by the author. The insights of this study can also be applied to LIS education, through an increased emphasis on ethics in the LIS curriculum and the development of case studies that can help to demonstrate to future information professionals the importance of being reflective about how digital libraries can serve the needs of users.
School Media Centers/Libraries To date, no studies that demonstrate a correlation between student achievement and school library programs use a student output measure that is a direct product of student work, and in particular, of student research. In addition, while there is data readily available from online database providers and school libraries regarding accessing and circulation of materials, no studies have reported on the kind and quality of sources high school students cite for their major research projects. Using a citation analysis methodology developed for a study of college students, this study seeks to describe and assess the quality of high school student bibliographic citations submitted for major research projects. A quality bibliography is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for a quality research project; nevertheless, the ability to locate and cite reliable, authoritative sources is an increasingly important research skill at a time when so much unreliable information is available at students’ fingertips. The student bibliography is, therefore, a direct measure of student achievement. Survey data collected from teachers, students and library media specialists will be used to determine whether there are correlations between quality student bibliographies and a variety of independent variables, including bibliographic instruction from teacher or library staff, collaboration between classroom teacher and library media specialist, assistance from library staff, and the quality of the school library collection. Results from this study may be used to help refine best practice models for teachers and library media specialists regarding areas such as collaboration, bibliographic instruction, and collection development.
56. Gayle Bogel Resource selection and access to electronic resources in the school library have been identified as essential to developing critical thinking and higher order cognitive skills in student learning, and yet the relationship of building level technology decisions (between educators and technology specialists who are not educators) to the access, integration and implementation of electronic resources have not been explored as a factor in successful school library programs. Although collaborative activities of school librarians and teachers have been well documented, the collaboration between school librarians and technology personnel has not. The effectiveness of information resources and the flow of information to the crucial components of learner centered schools is directly related to the policy decisions and collaborative input of educators and technology personnel. Information and technology literacy, requiring an integration of information sources, access and delivery systems, has become an assessment goal in school reform. There appears to be a need for careful collaboration in information access and delivery to optimize the conditions for successful student learning. Historically collaboration research into the effectiveness of school libraries and librarians has concentrated on activities between teachers and librarians. Current research points to the need to consider collaboration beyond interactions with teachers, to support student achievement through the larger school community, particularly among those who affect the flow of information. The purpose of this mixed methods study is to analyze collaborative behaviors and decision making between school librarians and technology specialists related to access and selection of information resources that have an effect on student learning.
57. Richard L. Hasenyager, Jr. Research on the quality of metadata in school library catalogs is scarce; user-centered studies represent the bulk of scholarship in this area. Preliminary research and anecdotal information shows school library metadata is often incomplete. Assessment of library catalog quality could be developed through the careful study of the results found utilizing the user interface, the use of individual MARC tags, and the "completeness" of the MARC record. The purpose of this study will be to articulate and contextualize the barriers to efficient, complete and comprehensive MARC records in the school library catalog. Some possible factors affecting the consistency of records may include the librarian's training and credentials as well as his familiarity with established cataloging standards; administrative policies with regard to the funding and staffing libraries; and the absence of state or national repositories to facilitate copy cataloging for school libraries using established cataloging methods. This study will utilize stakeholder analysis to allow the investigator to disaggregate the different populations that influence the quality of school library catalogs. Interviews will be conducted and surveys will be analyzed on multiple campuses across a variety of school districts located in the Houston metropolitan area to collect data. The findings of this study may influence future staff development for school librarians and suggest successful dissemination strategies for two new standards in cataloging, the Resource Description and Access (RDA) and Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) initiatives.
Administration and Management Information asymmetry represents the presence of different sets of information within the knowledge structures of individuals involving in a bargain or transaction. These different knowledge structures of individuals results in product valuation different from the valuation that would be done in the presence of same knowledge structures. This paper represents an effort to explore the interrelationship of information asymmetry and its resultant impact on product valuation. This research will be valuable not only for the domain of Finance and Economics, but also for the domain of Information Science. This research will provide the information scientists a new research frontier that can increase the breadth of Information Science as a discipline.
59. Deborah Turner My poster presentation will reflect my research interest in leadership, specifically information habits used in support of becoming an administrator or executive. My poster will present the research questions, social constructionist theoretical framework, qualitative methodology, and critical incident method that I am considering as I advance toward my dissertation proposal. Professionals, especially those who aspire to leadership roles, are increasingly mobile. In the course of their careers, they may hold a number of different positions, work in a variety of organizations, and even pursue multiple career paths. In so doing, they gain a wide variety of experiences and access to a significant amount of information key to making effective career transitions. Information behaviors that support their information interactions as they become socialized and maneuver between contexts are critical. Human information behavior within a single context has been studied widely. Information behavior across multiple contexts and over time has received little attention. My preliminary research on this topic has shown that aspiring leaders readily engage in the oral transmission of information as a primary instrument of information seeking and use. I will explore how the oral transmission of information is used as a tool in leadership socialization processes. I anticipate contributing to our understanding of the phenomenon of oral information behavior.
Buildings/Facilities
Homelessness is predicted to continue to increase because of a severe lack of affordable accommodation in most urban areas. Poverty and homelessness lead to social exclusion in our society. Social inclusion of homeless people in libraries will result in more benefit than harm to these severely marginalized people. Homeless people must be made more welcome in public places, especially libraries, because we live in a society that is increasing privatization of public places, and libraries are one of the last free public places. Libraries must take more ethical responsibility to help end homelessness.
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