Library and Information Science Commons^™

A Visual Workflow For Cataloging, Arden Kirkland, Minor Gordon

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Our digital collections team took on the challenge to improve the tools and processes of cataloging. We began to explore how we could build features that helped students into a cataloging worksheet tool, under development at DressDiscover.org. After our initial development of the tool, we looked back and realized just how much Universal Design for Learning (UDL) had influenced our design, although we had not consciously intended that from the start. Our assessment of the project through a UDL lens was at first extremely affirming, helping us to note many ways that our work already supported all three of …

Social Media As Fragile State, Caroline A. Haythornthwaite, Philip Mai, Anatoliy Gruzd

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Social media platforms are grappling with how to respond to hate speech, misinformation, and political manipulation in ways that address human rights, free speech, and equality. As independent ‘states’, they are enacting their own rules of conduct, deriving their own ‘laws’, convening their own extrajudicial self regulatory institutions, and making their own interpretations and enactments of human rights. With the rise of social states such as Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit, how fragile are they in their ability to achieve outcomes of fair, equitable and consistent application of their own laws? Could an assessment of the fragility of …

Digital Literacy In The Age Of Social Media, Caroline A. Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

For many years media literacy has addressed ways of verifying information, and information literacy has addressed finding information and understanding its production. But today’s social media takes us out of the realm of standard information sources to open, online discussion. The volatility of these environments suggests the need for social media literacy that complements both media and information literacy. This talk takes up the topic of social media literacy, highlighting what is different in these environments, and what will help make literate social media participants. The presentation reviews contemporary ideas about literacy and discusses the contemporary trends in understanding literacy: …

“I’M Not Searching The Right Words”: User Experience Searching Historic Clothing Collection Websites, Arden Kirkland, Monica Sklar, Clare Sauro, Leon Wiebers, Sara Idacavage, Julia Mun

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This study investigates the search processes of users accessing public websites representing historic clothing collections, examining where their searches are supported by the metadata in the collection databases and what factors could make their experience more inclusive. With IRB approval from four universities, we performed a recorded experiment with twenty adults: ten students of historic dress and ten fashion professionals. Four tasks included search scenarios and images representing diverse historic garments. Results indicate that both the descriptive metadata and search features on collection websites present challenges for the typical user search process. Users search for historical dress content the way …

Assessing Topical Homogeneity With Word Embedding And Distance Matrices, Jeffrey M. Stanton, Yisi Sang

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Researchers from many fields have used statistical tools to make sense of large bodies of text. Many tools support quantitative analysis of documents within a corpus, but relatively few studies have examined statistical characteristics of whole corpora. Statistical summaries of whole corpora and comparisons between corpora have potential application in the analysis of topically organized applications such social media platforms. In this study, we created matrix representations of several corpora and examined several statistical tests to make comparisons between pairs of corpora with respect to the topical homogeneity of documents within each corpus. Results of three experiments suggested that a …

Finding Datasets In Publications: The Syracuse University Approach, Tong Zeng, Daniel E. Acuna

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Datasets are critical for scientific research, playing a role in replication, reproducibility, and efficiency. Researchers have recently shown that datasets are becoming more important for science to function properly, even serving as artifacts of study themselves. However, citing datasets is not a common or standard practice in spite of recent efforts by data repositories and funding agencies. This greatly affects our ability to track their usage and importance. A potential solution to this problem is to automatically extract dataset mentions from scientific articles. In this work, we propose to achieve such extraction by using a neural network based on a …

Impact Of Reddit Discussions On Use Or Abandonment Of Wearables, Radhika Garg, Jenna Kim

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Discussion platform, Reddit, is the third most visited website in the US. People can post their questions on this platform to get varying opinions from fellow users, which in turn might also influence their behavior and choices. Wearables are becoming widely adopted, yet challenges persist in their effective long term use because of technical and device related, or personal issues. Therefore, by employing sentiment analysis, this paper aims to analyze how decisions of use or abandonment of wearables are influenced by discussions on Reddit. The results are based on the analysis of 6680 posts and their associated 50,867 comments posted …

Exploring The Role Of Repertoire In Library Cataloging, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Brian Dobreski

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

• Purpose
• Library work is increasingly being explored from the perspective of design. Still, little work has actively explored specific aspects of design as they relate to library cataloging. This study seeks to dive deeper into the relationship between library cataloging and design by exploring a specific aspect of design—the concept of repertoire, or the use of previous experiences and bodies of knowledge during current work.
• Design/methodology/approach
• To examine catalogers’ use of repertoire, this study employed a juxtaposition of field observations of professional library catalogers’ work processes with elements of “think-aloud” protocols.
• Findings
• The researchers identified three major types of repertory …

Design Thinking And Methods In Library Practice And Graduate Library Education, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Ann Rosenblad, Satyen Amonkar

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Despite interest in the application of design thinking and methods in librarianship, there seems to be a disconnect between application and education to support it. This study used an online

questionnaire to elicit feedback from library workers in the United States about interest in and use of design thinking and methods in library practice, and the need for design skills and abilities in library education. We found that practicing librarians perceive the relevance of design thinking and methods to library work, although opinions vary based on library and work type. Design thinking and methods were used mostly for space planning …

Metadata For Diversity: Identification And Implications Of Potential Access Points For Diverse Library Resources, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Sayward Schoonmaker

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate what metadata elements for access points currently exist to represent diverse library reading materials, either in libraries or from external sources, as well as what metadata elements for access points are currently not present but are necessary to represent diverse library reading materials.

Design/methodology/approach A field scan of thirteen contemporary metadata schemas identified elements that might serve as potential access points regarding the diversity status of resource creators as well as topical or thematic content. Elements were semantically mapped using a metadata crosswalk to understand the intellectual and conceptual space of …

Cataloging Research By Design: A Taxonomic Approach To Understanding Research Questions In Cataloging, Rachel Ivy Clarke

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This paper asserts that many research questions (RQs) in cataloging reflect design-based RQs, rather than traditional scientific ones. To support this idea, a review of existing discussions of RQs is presented to identify prominent types of RQs, including design-based RQs. RQ types are then classified into a taxonomic framework and compared with RQs from the Everyday Cataloger Concerns project, which aimed to identify important areas of research from the perspective of practicing catalogers. This comparative method demonstrates the ways in which the research areas identified by cataloging practitioners reflect design RQs—and therefore require design approaches and methods to answer them.

How We Done It Good: Research Through Design As A Legitimate Methodology For Librarianship, Rachel Ivy Clarke

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

“How we done it good” publications—a genre concerning project-based approaches that describe how (and sometimes why) something was done—are often rebuked in the library research community for lacking traditional scientific validity, reliability, and generalizability. While scientific methodologies may be a common approach to research and inquiry, they are not the only methodological paradigms. This research posits that the “how we done it good” paradigm in librarianship reflects a valid and legitimate approach to research. By drawing on the concept of research through design, this study shows how these “how we done it good” projects reflect design methodologies which draw …

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same: Educational And Disciplinary Backgrounds Of American Librarians, 1950-2015, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Young-In Kim

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Discussions of diversity in American librarianship usually focus on gender or ethnicity, but historical studies also show a lack of diversity in educational and disciplinary backgrounds. Librarians traditionally hail from the humanities, especially English and history. But as current educational attention shifts to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, are librarians reflecting this change? Anonymized data from ALA-accredited graduate programs from the last five years was collected, coded, and classified to determine librarians’ educational and disciplinary backgrounds and in what ways, if any, they differ from the past 65 years and from the contemporary U.S. general population. Unsurprisingly, we …

An Exploratory Study For Understanding Reasons Of (Not-)Using Internet Of Things, Radhika Garg, Jenna Kim

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The potential of things or objects generating and processing data about day-to-day activities of its users has given a new level of popularity to Internet of Things (IoT) among its consumers. Even though the popularity has seen a steady increase, the use of IoT devices has been slow and abandonment rapid. To build on the existing literature and advance our understanding of the sociological processes of use and non-use of these devices, this paper presents results from the survey of 489 IoT users. Our qualitative analysis of open ended questions revealed that the motives for use include multi-functionality of devices …

Toward A Design Epistemology For Librarianship, Rachel I. Clarke

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The design of information tools and services is an integral component of librarianship, yet American librarianship has self-identified as a social science for more than 100 years. This paper suggests an alternative epistemological perspective to the scientific tradition in librarianship: design epistemology. The paper discusses key elements that comprise design epistemology and presents examples of manifestations of these elements in librarianship. Analysis reveals that librarianship has much in common with design epistemology, yet the field lacks explicit acknowledgement of design as a fundamental epistemological framework. The paper concludes with a call for reconceptualizing librarianship as a design discipline.

Transitioning From The Mls To The Mld: Integrating Design Thinking And Philosophy Into Library And Information Science Education, Rachel I. Clarke, Steven Bell

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Purpose

As change creates more uncertainty for library practitioners, graduate library education needs to explore how to best prepare students to manage ambiguity through new approaches to identifying and solving challenging problems. We advocate for incorporating design into graduate library education.

Design/Methodology/Approach

First, we discuss the need for a design approach to librarianship. We then introduce the nature of design thinking and philosophy, and discuss the ways in which it is already present in librarianship. We review past developments and recent trends with a special focus on the ways in which design thinking, methods, and philosophies are (or are not) …

Learning In The Wild: Coding For Learning And Practice On Reddit, Caroline A. Haythornthwaite, Priya Kumar, Anatoliy Gruzd, Sarah Gilbert, Marc Esteve Del Valle, Drew Paulin

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Learning on and through social media is becoming a cornerstone of lifelong learning, creating places not only for accessing information, but also for finding other self-motivated learners. Such is the case for Reddit, the online news sharing site that is also a forum for asking and answering questions. We studied learning practices found in ‘Ask’ subreddits AskScience, Ask_Politics, AskAcademia, and AskHistorians to develop a coding schema for informal learning. This paper describes the process of evaluating and defining a workable coding schema, one that started with attention to learning processes associated with discourse, exploratory talk, and conversational dialogue, and ended …

Così Fan Tutte: A Better Approach Than The Right To Be Forgotten, Martha Garcia-Murillo, Ian Macinnes

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we argue in favor of a macro-societal approach to protect people from the potential harms of personal information online. In the tension between information and privacy, “the right to be forgotten” is not an appropriate solution. Such a micro, individual-based answer puts the burden of protection on each person instead of on external entities that can abuse such knowledge. The personal responsibility to delete personal data is challenging because of the leakage of data that happens through the connections we have with others, many of whom do not share the same privacy preferences. We show that effective …

An Information Policy Perspective On Learning Analytics, Caroline A. Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Policy for learning analytics joins a stream of initiatives aimed at understanding the expanding world of information collection, storage, processing and dissemination that is being driven by computing technologies. This paper offers a information policy perspective on learning analytics, joining work by others on ethics and privacy in the management of learning analytics data [8], but extending to consider how issues play out across the information lifecycle and in the formation of policy. Drawing on principles from information policy both informs learning analytics and brings learning analytics into the information policy domain. The resulting combination can help inform policy development …

What Can Social Networks Tell Us About Learning Ecologies?, Caroline A. Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The ecology metaphor is drawn from the biological sciences and refers to the “scientific study of the distribution, abundance and dynamics of organisms, their interactions with other organisms and with their physical environment” (British Ecological Society, 2016). In recent decades, the metaphor has become useful for tackling the complexity of new information and learning environments, particularly as driven by the increasing quantity of information, the growing number of available media and means of communicating, the extended reach of information technologies, and the new practices arising from these configurations. This paper brings to the discussion of learning ecologies the research and …

New Metaphors For Networked Learning, Caroline A. Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

As networked learning leaves designed spaces and becomes diffused and re-infused through open, online information sharing and knowledge construction, what metaphors will frame our next steps, our next inquiries? In keeping with the conference theme of ‘Looking Back – Moving Forward’, this presentation will engage with where we are in the sea of change, and how our current understanding of networks, learning and knowledge will take us forward into new areas of inquiry. Elsewhere I have been advocating for a reclamation of the term ‘e-learning’ that takes us beyond the design and use of the closed LMS and VLE systems …

A Conceptual Model For Video Games And Interactive Media, Rachel I. Clarke, Jacob Jett, Simone Sacchi, Jin Ha Lee

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, we describe a conceptual model for video games and interactive media. Existing conceptual models such as the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) are not adequate to represent the unique descriptive attributes, levels of variance, and relationships among video games. Previous video game-specific models tend to focus on the development of video games and their technical aspects. Our model instead attempts to reflect how users such as game players, collectors, and scholars understand video games and the relationships among them. We specifically consider use cases of gamers, with future intentions of using this conceptual model as a …

Crowdsourcing The Curriculum: Redefining E-Learning Practices Through Peer-Generated Approaches, Drew Paulin, Caroline Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Inclusion of open resources that employ a peer-generated approach is changing who learns what, from whom, and via what means. With these changes, there is a shift in responsibilities from the course designer to motivated and self-directed learner-participants. While much research on e-learning has addressed challenges of creating and sustaining participatory environments, the development of massive open online courses calls for new approaches that go beyond the existing research on participatory environments in institutionally defined classes. We decenter institutionally defined classes and broaden the discussion to the literature on the creation of open virtual communities and the operation of open …

Empirical Evaluation Of Metadata For Video Games And Interactive Media, Rachel I. Clarke, Jin Ha Lee, Andrew Perti

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Despite increasing interest in and acknowledgment of the significance of video games, current descriptive practices are not sufficiently robust to support searching, browsing, and other access behaviors from diverse user groups. To address this issue, the Game Metadata Research Group at the University of Washington Information School, in collaboration with the Seattle Interactive Media Museum, worked to create a standardized metadata schema. This metadata schema was empirically evaluated using multiple approaches—collaborative review, schema testing, semi-structured user interview, and a large-scale survey. Reviewing and testing the schema revealed issues and challenges in sourcing the metadata for particular elements, determining the level …

Why Video Game Genres Fail: A Classificatory Analysis, Rachel I. Clarke, Jin Ha Lee, Neils Clark

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This paper explores the current affordances and limitations of video game genre from a library and information science perspective with an emphasis on classification theory. We identify and discuss various purposes of genre relating to video games, including identity, collocation and retrieval, commercial marketing, and educational instruction. Through the use of examples, we discuss the ways in which these purposes are supported by genre classification and conceptualization, and the implications for video games. Suggestions for improved conceptualizations such as family resemblances, prototype theory, faceted classification, and appeal factors for video game genres are considered, with discussions of strengths and weaknesses. …

A Qualitative Investigation Of Users’ Video Game Information Needs And Behaviors, Rachel I. Clarke, Jin Ha Lee, Stephanie Rossi

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Video games are popular consumer products as well as research subjects, yet little exists about how players and other stakeholders find video games and what information they need to select, acquire, and play video games. With the aim of better understanding people’s game-related information needs and behaviors, we conducted 56 semi-structured interviews with users who find, play, purchase, collect, and recommend video games. Participants included casual and avid gamers, parents, collectors, industry professionals, librarians, and scholars. From this user data, we derive and discuss key design implications for video game information systems: designing for target user populations, enabling recommendations on …

Sharing Historic Costume Collections Online, Arden Kirkland, Kathi Martin, Marlise Schoeny, Kiki Smith, Gayle Strege

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The recent increase in online costume history resources has provided scholars of dress with fresh sources of information for inspiring and validating their research. The best digital archives consider the needs of their users in creating systems that make it easy for more users to access the greatest amount of relevant information. Users of online costume history resources have specific needs that should be addressed, both for internal users (organizing and entering information) and external users (finding information). This paper follows a panel presentation at the 2014 Symposium of the Costume Society of America, on the subject of digital initiatives …

Breaking Records: The History Of Bibliographic Records And Their Influence In Conceptualizing Bibliographic Data, Rachel I. Clarke

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

A bibliographic record is a conceptual whole that includes all bibliographic information about a resource together in one place. With the Semantic Web, individual data statements are linked across the web. This position article argues that the traditional conceptualization of bibliographic records affects the affordances and limitations of that data. A historical analysis of the development of bibliographic records contrasted with the Semantic Web model reveals how the “record” model shaped library cataloging and the implications on library catalogs today. Reification of the record model for bibliographic data hampers possibilities for innovation in cataloging, inspiring a reconceptualization of bibliographic description.

A Capability Maturity Model For Research Data Management., Jian Qin, Kevin Crowston, Arden Kirkland

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Objective: To support the assessment and improvement of research data management (RDM) practices to increase its reliability, this paper describes the development of a capability maturity model (CMM) for RDM. Improved RDM is now a critical need, but low awareness of – or lack of – data management is still common among research projects.

Methods: A CMM includes four key elements: key practices, key process areas, maturity levels, and generic processes. These elements were determined for RDM by a review and synthesis of the published literature on and best practices for RDM.

Results: The RDM CMM includes …

Developing A Video Game Metadata Schema For The Seattle Interactive Media Museum, Rachel I. Clarke, Jin Ha Lee, Joseph T. Tennis, Michael Carpenter

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

As interest in video games increases, so does the need for intelligent access to them. However, traditional organizational systems and standards fall short. In order to fill this gap, we are collaborating with the Seattle Interactive Media Museum to develop a formal metadata schema for video games. In the paper, we describe how the schema was established from a user-centered design approach and introduce the core elements from our schema. We also discuss the challenges we encountered as we were conducting a domain analysis and cataloging real-world examples of video games. Inconsistent, vague, and subjective sources of information for title, …