Towards Evidence-Informed Agriculture Policy Making: Investigating The Knowledge Translation Practices Of Researchers In The National Agriculture Research Institutes In Nigeria, Isioma N. Elueze

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study investigated the knowledge translation practices of researchers in the National Agriculture Research Institutes of Nigeria and the utilization of research knowledge by policy actors in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Nigeria. Data for the study was obtained from agriculture researchers and the policy actors through questionnaires and interviews. In addition, bibliometric and content analysis were carried out on documents from the research institutes and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to gauge the transfer and use of knowledge by the researchers and policy actors respectively. Out of about six hundred questionnaires that …

Alternate Academy: Investigating The Use Of Open Educational Resources By Students At The University Of Lagos In Nigeria, Daniel Onaifo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

Open educational resources (OER) are increasingly used to support pedagogical initiatives and learning needs at institutions of higher education across the globe. In this thesis, I examined key issues in the use of OER by students at the University of Lagos in Nigeria. Specifically, I examined how much awareness the students have of OER, their attitudes toward OER, and the benefit they derive from using the resources. I also examined the specific motivations behind their use of the resources as well as the challenges they face in doing so. A mixed methods research design, consisting of two data collection …

Illusions Of A ‘Bond’: Tagging Cultural Products Across Online Platforms, Nadine Desrochers, Audrey Laplante, Anabel Quan-Haase, Kim Martin, Louise Spiteri

FIMS Publications

Structured Abstract

Purpose

Most studies pertaining to social tagging focus on one platform or platform type, thus limiting the scope of their findings. This study explores social tagging practices across four platforms in relation to cultural products associated with the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming.

Design/methodology/approach

A layered and nested case study approach was used to analyze data from four online platforms: Goodreads, Last.fm, WordPress, and public library social discovery platforms. The top-level case study focuses on the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming, and its derivative products. The analysis of tagging practices in each of the …

Understanding Collaborative Sensemaking For System Design — An Investigation Of Musicians' Practice, Nadia Conroy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

There is surprisingly little written in information science and technology literature about the design of tools used to support the collaboration of creators. Understanding collaborative sensemaking through the use of language has been traditionally applied to non-work domains, but this method is also well-suited for informing hypotheses about the design collaborative systems. The presence of ubiquitous, mobile technology, and development of multi-user virtual spaces invites investigation of design which is based on naturalistic, real world, creative group behaviors, including the collaborative work of musicians. This thesis is considering the co-construction of new (musical) knowledge by small groups. Co-construction of new …

Different Approaches For Different Folks, Alexandre Fortier

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis sought to describe the influence of Need for Cognition and Need for Cognitive Closure on the information behaviour of undergraduate students. Following a mixed-methods design, qualitative data were collected first to provide insights into the relationship. The second phase used an information behaviour scale developed for this study. Results were subjected to a factor analysis to identify different aspects of information behaviour, which were then used as the dependent measures in a series of analyses of variance with two traits as independent variables.

Need for Cognition, as indicated by the results of the first phase, influences the general …

Rural Men’S Health, Health Information Seeking, And Gender Identities: A Conceptual Theoretical Review Of The Literature, Bradley C. Hiebert, Beverly Leipert, Sandra Regan, Jacquelyn A. Burkell

FIMS Publications

Beginning as early as 2009, recent shifts in Canadian health care delivery indicate that access to health information is essential to promote and maintain a healthy population. It is important to understand how and where various populations, such as underresourced rural populations, access health information so that public health agencies can develop and deliver appropriate information with, for, and in these contexts. There is a paucity of research that specifically examines how rural Canadian men seek health information; therefore, this review aimed to conceptualize this process based on three dynamic key constructs: health patterns of rural Canadians, health information–seeking behaviors, …

Creating Context From Curiosity: The Role Of Serendipity In The Research Process Of Historians In Physical And Digital Environments, Kim Martin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Serendipity, the word used to describe an unexpected encounter with information, people, or objects, has drawn much scholarly attention since its 1754 coinage by Horace Walpole. Historians commonly use this term when describing unexpected encounters during their research. However, historians have also been shown to be meticulous, organized researchers whose work is unlikely to contain elements that are unexpected. This thesis is an investigation of serendipity as it is recognized, defined, and experienced by historians in both physical and digital environments. Article One presents a grounded theory analysis of 20 interview transcriptions, Article Two presents a combination of grounded theory, …

Data And Maps In Reference And Reflections On Working In Public And Technical Services, Lindsay Bontje

Western Libraries Presentations

This presentation explores Western Libraries' new LibGuide for data and statistics and outlines some resources that may be useful in reference work. It details and explores how to discover various cartographic resources available in the Map and Data Centre including maps, air photos, atlases and fire insurance plans. The presentation discusses the integration of new print maps into the collection and clearing a large cataloging backlog. Finally, this presentation explores thoughts and reflections on working in both public and technical services simultaneously.

Remembering Me: Big Data, Individual Identity, And The Psychological Necessity Of Forgetting, Jacquelyn A. Burkell

FIMS Publications

Each of us has a personal narrative: a story that defines us, and one that we tell about ourselves to our inner and outer worlds. A strong sense of identity is rooted in a personal narrative that has coherence and correspondence (Conway, 2005): coherence in the sense that the story we tell is consistent with and supportive of our current version of ‘self’; and correspondence in the sense that the story reflects the contents of autobiographical memory and the meaning of our experiences. These goals are achieved by a reciprocal interaction of autobiographical memory and the self, in which memories …

Health 2.0: The Scholarly Communication Practices Of Medical Sciences And Health Sciences Users On Academia.Edu, Lydia Thorne

FIMS Working Papers

Many academics are active users of social media and some even use these sites for professional networking. However, while scholars can use traditional social networking platforms to network with their peers, share research articles, and keep up to date in their fields, there are some limitations that emerge when these sites are used for academic purposes. Academic social networking sites have emerged as one viable alternative, as they allow scholars to share their research and to network and collaborate with others while maintaining a professional online presence. Although many studies have examined the information behaviour of those who use academic …

A Proposal: The Religious Information Practices Of New Kadampa Buddhists: Examining The Informational Nature Of Buddhist Practice And A Prolegomenon To A Buddhist Theory Of Information Practice, Roger Chabot (Kelsang Legden)

FIMS Working Papers

To provide a background for the study, in this section I will introduce the theoretical concepts and population of study that will feature in this project. I begin with an introduction to everyday life information seeking and its intersection with religion and spirituality then follow this with an introduction of religious practices understood as information practices. Afterwards, I provide a rationale for studying Buddhists and provide an introduction to the particular Buddhist sect that will be the focus of the research.

Using Map Interfaces To Visualize And Access Archival Resources: Results Of A Survey Of North American Archives, Tom Belton

Western Libraries Presentations

This presentation reveals the results of a 2015 survey of North American archives as to their views on the utility of mapping layers to provide access to archival resources.

The Library Is Our Lab: The Case For Print Books In An Academic Library, Peggy Ellis, Fran Gray

Western Libraries Presentations

Humanities researchers consider the library to be their laboratory, and its print collections their essential research equipment. In spite of anecdotal evidence that both students and faculty in the Humanities prefer print materials over e-books, academic libraries are allocating a steadily increasing proportion of their acquisitions budgets toward the purchase of e-books across all disciplines.

At Western University in London, Ontario, Peggy Ellis and Fran Gray surveyed Arts & Humanities faculty members and graduate students to gain a better understanding of their attitudes toward e-books. The objectives of our research are three-fold: to determine whether researchers in the Humanities departments …

The Him Career Matrix: Illuminating A Framework For Professional Advancement, Elaine M. Zibrowski, Kelly J. Adams

FIMS Presentations

This project sought out to develop the first, Canadian HIM career matrix in order to:

1. Support a common language to describe the seven core competency areas in which HIM professionals can work;

2. Describe new and evolving roles in HIM in Canada;
3. Provide information on advanced career options available within our profession; and
4. Seek consensus around the common functions performed by Canadian HIM professionals

Commercial Content Moderation: Digital Laborers' Dirty Work, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

In this chapter from the forthcoming Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online (Noble and Tynes, Eds., 2016), I introduce both the concept of commercial content moderation (CCM) work and workers, as well as the ways in which this unseen work affects how users experience the Internet of social media and user-generated content (UGC). I tie it to issues of race and gender by describing specific cases of viral videos that transgressed norms and by providing examples from my interviews with CCM workers. The interventions of CCM workers on behalf of the platforms for which they labor directly contradict …

In/Visibility, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

In online life there is a normative supposition that the information- and image-rich environment of the web and other platforms should provide unfettered access to the circulation of all types of content. Less attention is paid to what is not seen, to the invisible—be it actual content that is rescinded, altered or removed, or the opaque decision-making processes that maintain its flow. In/visibility online is central to the intertwined functions/mechanisms of user experience and platform control, further operationalized under globalized, technologically driven capitalism. A digital labour phenomenon that is both responsible for it and relies upon it: is …

The Academic Data Librarian Profession In Canada: History And Future Directions, S Vincent Gray, Elizabeth Hill

Western Libraries Publications

ACRL publication

Databrarianship: The Academic Data Librarian in Theory and Practice can by purchased at the ALA store:

http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=11774

Digitizing Corporate History, Alie Visser

Western Libraries Presentations

No abstract provided.

Empowered To Name, Inspired To Act: Social Responsibility And Diversity As Calls To Action In The Lis Context, Sarah T. Roberts, Safiya Umoja Noble

FIMS Publications

Social responsibility and diversity are two principle tenets of the field of library and information science (LIS), as defined by the American Library Association’s Core Values of Librarianship document, yet often remain on the margins of LIS education, leading to limited student engagement with these concepts and to limited faculty modeling of socially responsible interventions. In this paper, we take up the need to increase the role of both in articulating the values of diversity and social responsibility in LIS education, and argue the field should broaden to put LIS students and faculty in dialog with contemporary social issues of …

The Paradox Of Privacy: Revisiting A Core Library Value In An Age Of Big Data And Linked Data, Grant D. Campbell, Scott Cowan

FIMS Publications

Protecting user privacy and confidentiality is fundamental to the ethics and practice of librarianship, and such protection constitutes one of eleven values in the American Library Association’s “Core Values of Librarianship” (2004). This paper addresses the concerns of protecting privacy in the library as they relate to library users who are defining, exploring, and negotiating their sexual identities with the help of the library’s information, programming, and physical facilities. In so doing, we enlist the aid of Garret Keizer, who, in Privacy (2012), articulates a fresh theory of the concept in light of American social life in the twenty-first century. …

Heroes For The Helpless: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Canadian National Print Media’S Coverage Of The Food Insecurity Crisis In Nunavut, Bradley Hiebert, Elaine Power

FIMS Publications

In northern Canada, the Inuit’s transition from a culturally traditional to a Western diet has been accompanied by chronic poverty and provoked high levels of food insecurity, resulting in numerous negative health outcomes. This study examines national coverage of Nunavut food insecurity as presented in two of Canada’s most widely read newspapers: The Globe and Mail (GM) and the National Post (NP). A critical discourse analysis (CDA) was employed to analyze 24 articles, 19 from GM and 5 from NP. Analysis suggests national print media propagates the Inuit’s position as The Other by selectively reporting on social issues such as …

Beyond Simple Charts: Design Of Visualizations For Big Health Data, Oluwakemi Ola, Kamran Sedig

FIMS Publications

Health data is often big data due to its high volume, low veracity, great variety, and high velocity. Big health data has the potential to improve productivity, eliminate waste, and support a broad range of tasks related to disease surveillance, patient care, research, and population health management. Interactive visualizations have the potential to amplify big data’s utilization. Visualizations can be used to support a variety of tasks, such as tracking the geographic distribution of diseases, analyzing the prevalence of disease, triaging medical records, predicting outbreaks, and discovering at-risk populations. Currently, many health visualization tools use simple charts, such as bar …

Policy As Embedded Generativity: A Case Study Of The Emergence And Evolution Of Hathitrust, Alissa Centivany

FIMS Publications

The traditional core of CSCW focuses on the relationships, tensions, and gaps between technical systems and social activity. Policy orbits around this core as a persistent but marginally represented presence. In the last few years, however, CSCW has witnessed an upsurge of interest in (re)integrating policy more explicitly and meaningfully into research and practice. For example, recent scholarship stressed the mutually constitutive and interconnected threads of design, practice, and policy [31]. This paper expands upon those motivations through a qualitative case study of the role of policy in library mass digitization work and the subsequent emergence and evolution of …

“Popcorn Tastes Good”: Participatory Policymaking And Reddit’S “Amageddon”, Alissa Centivany, Bobby Glushko

FIMS Publications

In human-computer interaction research and practice, policy concerns can sometimes fall to the margins, orbiting at the periphery of the traditionally core interests of design and practice. This perspective ignores the important ways that policy is bound up with the technical and behavioral elements of the HCI universe. Policy concerns are triggered as a matter of course in social computing, CSCW, systems engineering, UX, and related contexts because technological design, social practice and policy are dynamically entangled and mutually constitutive. Through this research, we demonstrate the value of a stronger emphasis on policy in HCI by exploring a recent controversy …

Writing And Reading The Results: The Reporting Of Research Rigour Tactics In Information Behaviour Research As Evident In The Published Proceedings Of The Biennial Isic Conferences, 1996 – 2014, Lynne Ef Mckechnie, Roger Chabot, Nicole K. Dalmer, Heidi Julien, Cass Mabbott

FIMS Publications

Introduction. This study examined if and how information behaviour researchers include research rigour tactics in reports of their research projects. Method. A content analysis was conducted of the 193 research reports published in the 1996 – 2014 ISIC proceedings.

Analysis. Articles were coded for author affiliation, rigour tactics reported, and whether or not enough information was presented to allow readers to assess the quality of the research and replicate the study. Both quantitative (frequencies) and qualitative (excerpts from the articles) data are reported.

Results. In total 698 research rigour tactics were reported for an average of 3.6 per paper, a …

Boundary Objects In Information Science, Isto Huvila, Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson, Eva Jansen, Pam Mckenzie, Adam Worrall

FIMS Publications

(Accepted for publication; final date unknown at present.) Boundary objects are abstract or physical artefacts that exist in the liminal spaces between adjacent communities of people. The theory of BOs was originally introduced by Star and Griesemer in a study on information practices at the Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology but has since been adapted in a broad range of research contexts in a large number of disciplines including the various branches of information science. The aim of this review article is to present an overview of the state of the art of information science research informed by the theory …

A Model Of Social Media Engagement: User Profiles, Gratifications, And Experiences, Lori Mccay-Peet, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

No abstract provided.

“Taking Back” Information Literacy: Time And The One-Shot In The Neoliberal University, Karen P. Nicholson

FIMS Publications

No abstract provided.

Display And Control In Online Social Spaces: Toward A Typology Of Users, Jacquelyn A. Burkell, Alexandre Fortier

FIMS Publications

Online social networks are spaces of social display where an astronomical amount of personal information, which would once have been characterized as private, is shared with a loose community of friends or followers. This broad sharing does not preclude participant interest in control, both over the content of the social network profile and over the audience that has access to that profile. Thus, issues of display and control are in tension in the context of online social networking. The goal of this research is to articulate the different subjective perspectives that characterize Facebook users with respect to the control …

Values, Ethics And Participatory Policymaking In Online Communities, Alissa Centivany

FIMS Publications

Drawing upon principles and lessons of technology law and policy, value-centered design, anticipatory design ethics, and information policy literatures this research seeks to contribute to understandings of the ways in which platform design, practice, and policymaking intersect on the social media site Reddit. This research explores how Reddit’s users, moderators, and administrators surface values (like free speech, privacy, dignity, and autonomy), hint at ethical principles (what content, speech, behavior ought to be restricted and under what conditions), through a continuous process of (re)negotiating expectations and norms around values, ethics, and power on the site. Central to this research are questions …