Library and Information Science Commons^™

Imagery In Nasca Cross-Knit Looped Textiles From The Milwaukee Public Museum, Katherine A. Cianciola

Theses and Dissertations

Textiles associated with the Nasca culture (0-650 C.E.) from Peru’s South Coast have been recognized for their complex and colorful ecological, anthropomorphic, and geometric imagery. Little, however, has been written about their three-dimensional cross-knit looping and embroidery. Cross-knit looping produced three-dimensional figures that were part of an elaborate border on clothing and a style specifically associated with the Nasca (Sawyer 1997:24, 27, 41, 97, 131-132, 136 for example). This thesis focuses on Nasca textiles primarily from the Malcolm K. Whyte (Accession Numbers: 18046 and 20517) collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) and includes three-dimensional cross-knit looping of ecological and …

Squaring The Circle: Talking About Accessibility At Discovery World, Ariel Butler

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, museums have made a concerted effort to consider accessibility and the needs of the broader community in their programming. This thesis analyzes how Discovery World, a science and technology museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, can better accommodate diverse learning styles and disabilities in their 2023 Summer Camp program through a case study of implementation. The thesis analyzes the impact of the plan to improve accessibility and inclusivity in the classroom for children in grades 1-8, focusing on how staff conceptualize the ideal setup and aims to provide valuable insights to enhance inclusivity and accessibility in informal educational settings. …

“Artifacts Of Stone And Pottery”: An Analysis Of The Linn Site (Ias U-28) Collection At The Milwaukee Public Museum, Anastasia Tesfaye Demaio

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on an understudied archaeological collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) from the Linn Site (IAS U-28) in southern Illinois, acquired in the 1930s. Using archaeological methods and archival research, the research aims to characterize the collection's physical attributes and temporal and period affiliations and to contextualize it. This is accomplished through detailed analyses of ceramics and other materials, as well as comparison with other collections from the Linn Site, demonstrating the value of collections-based research. The significance of the research lies in utilizing unstudied materials as archaeological sites disappear. The research highlights ethical tensions and interpersonal …

Ghost Town Living: Presenting The Past On Youtube, Alannah Ray

Theses and Dissertations

Cerro Gordo is a privately-owned historic mining town in California, and the YouTube channel Ghost Town Living, with over 1.6 million followers, documents the current owner's goal of preserving and restoring the town for visitation. This thesis explores how Cerro Gordo and Ghost Town Living can be understood together through the lenses of museology, digital anthropology, and archaeology. Based on a site visit, analysis of digital media, and interviews with staff and people connected to the site, I explore the intersection between heritage sites and social media, and more widely, changing perceptions of American heritage, including who has the right …

From Creator To Curator To Author As Content: Nicolas Winding Refn, Transdiscursive Authorship, And Self-Branding In Twenty-First Century Media, Christopher J. Olson

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s development from creator and curator to author as content within an evolving media ecology driven by capitalist ideology. A close critical study of Refn’s career from 1996 to 2019 offers insight into contemporary techniques of creating, collecting, and curating media texts, as well as the phenomenon of presenting oneself as content via discursive branding. Given that Refn’s career coincided with the emergence of the World Wide Web and the rise of digital platforms, he thus emblematizes what it means to be a creator working within an increasingly interconnected media ecology. Refn initially …

Information Needs Of Korean Immigrants In The United States: Selection And Use Of Social Media, Tae Hee Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This mixed-method study investigates the information needs of Korean immigrants on social media and their selection and use of social media for finding information in the United States. The study was designed to answer six research questions: 1) What are the top types of information needs on social media that Korean immigrants fulfill during their everyday lives in the United States?; 2) What types of social media do Korean immigrants most frequently use during their everyday lives in the United States for different types of information needs?; 3) Are there any relationships between the types of social media Korean immigrants …

“For What We Do Today Becomes The History Of Tomorrow”: A History Of The Bay View Historical Society, 1979-2015, Bradley Wiles

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a history of the Bay View Historical Society (BVHS), a non-profit cultural heritage institution located in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since its creation in 1979, the BVHS has assumed numerous roles related to preservation, documentation, education, information provision, social interaction, and public appreciation around the neighborhood’s history. This study’s overarching purpose is to examine how a modern local historical society assumes and approaches its role within the community it seeks to document, preserve, celebrate, and enrich. The central contention is that such institutions are given life when a range of conditions are conducive for …

Negotiating Authenticity: Reproducing The Past For The Present, David Symanzik-Stock

Theses and Dissertations

Negotiating Authenticity: Reproducing the Past for the Present explores how reproductions connect us to the past. From Rembrandt restrikes to plastic souvenirs, reproductions occupy an important chapter in an object’s biography. This exhibition considers the complex relationships between "original” artifacts and their reproductions, which historically has been the focus of scholarly debate. Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproduction, highlights the intrinsic questions posed of this relationship – when an original work of art (or object) is reproduced, what relationship does both the reproduction and its model (the original) have with …

The Role Of Fake And Fraudulent Objects Within The Museum Context: A Case Study Of Tiwanaku Ceramics In The Milwaukee Public Museum Collection, Armando Manresa

Theses and Dissertations

During the 20th century thousands, if not millions, of fake and fraudulent artifacts made their way into museum collections around the world through purchases, donations, and museum exchanges. The growth in Pre-Columbian collections, in particular, was precipitated by the many archaeological discoveries during that time as well as the continued looting of known and unrecorded sites across Latin America. As authentic items flooded the collectors’ market and from there into art and natural history museums, a mass-scale industry in fake and fraudulent artifacts arose to meet the demand. These items were primarily created for tourists, but some artists became so …

“The Same Information Is Given To Everyone”: Algorithmic Awareness Of Online Platforms, Meghan Lindsey Dowell

Theses and Dissertations

After years of discourse surrounding the concept of “filter bubbles,” information seekers still find themselves in echo chambers of their own thoughts and ideas. This study is an exploratory, mixed methods analysis of platform privacy/data policies and user awareness of the personal and usage data collected and user awareness of how platforms use this data to moderate and serve online content. Utilizing Bucher’s (2018) framework to research algorithms through the black box heuristic, this project learns how users inform themselves about data collection and use policies, and their awareness of algorithmic curation. The algorithmic systems that return search results or …

Connecting Their Stories: Black Educators’ Experiences Within Cultural Heritage Institutions That Document The Long Arc Of The Civil Rights Movement, Constance Marie Caddell

Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to examine Black educators’ experiences within cultural heritage institutions that are documenting topics that include the long arc of the American Civil Rights Movement. Black educators are powerful conduits of the African American story because they align with African American cultural heritage institution’s goals to foster equality, identity, pride, and honor in the community. These shared goals lead to Black educators using teaching methods that liberate, advocate, and empower students. This allows them to share new knowledge, strategies, techniques, and concepts on diverse topics. Considering their fundamental mission, it is essential to gain an awareness of the …

Function And Aesthetic Value: An Analysis Of The Milwaukee Public Museum's Thai Royal Silver Collection, Aislinn Sanders

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes 45 objects from the Thai Royal Silver collection currently housed at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM). Of these, 41 were donated by a single donor, Dr. Louis Schapiro, who collected the objects during his time working as Medical Advisor for the King of Siam in 1931-1932. Following his death, his son Mark held onto the objects until 1969, when they became a part of the MPM’s collection. The chosen objects include boxes, bowls, and other types of vessels. Through researching this collection, the following questions guided the direction for this thesis: How did the silver industry begin …

The Case Of The Benin Bronzes: Exploring Repatriation In U.S. Museums, Kendra Voelz

Theses and Dissertations

The Benin Bronzes are a grouping of an estimated 10,000 works made from brass, ivory, wood, clay, as well as other materials. These objects originated from the royal palace in Benin City, located in present day Nigeria in Africa. Within the last five years, beginning in 2017, discussions surrounding the repatriation of these artifacts from museums around the world have been reignited to a high degree where institutions are actively working towards researching and, in increasing numbers, repatriating the material to Nigeria. Through video and written interviews this thesis examines the thoughts and opinions of 11 professionals in museums across …

The Divine Consumptive: The Depiction Of Tuberculosis In Jane Eyre, Haley Highfield

Theses and Dissertations

Disease was a constant and unavoidable facet of life in British society during the Victorian Era. Despite the overwhelming prevalence of disease, the true cause of these illnesses remained mysterious until the turn of the century. With the origins of many of these diseases being either unknown or ascribed to mistaken sources, effective treatment was an impossibility. Tuberculosis is a prime example of this conundrum. Even with an estimated twenty-five percent of the British population dying from this particular disease during the nineteenth century, the actual provenance for infection was not discovered until 1882 with Robert Koch’s identification of the …

Convivial Making: Power In Public Library Creative Places, Shannon Crawford Barniskis

Theses and Dissertations

In 2011, public libraries began to provide access to collaborative creative places, frequently called “makerspaces.” The professional literature portrays these as beneficial for communities and individuals through their support of creativity, innovation, learning, and access to high-tech tools such as 3D printers. As in longstanding “library faith” narratives, which pin the library’s existence to widely held values, makerspace rhetoric describes access to tools and skills as instrumental for a stronger economy or democracy, social justice, and/or individual happiness. The rhetoric generally frames these places as empowering. Yet the concept of power has been neither well-theorized within the library makerspace literature …

Application Of The Markov Chain Method In A Health Portal Recommendation System, Xin Cai

Theses and Dissertations

This study produced a recommendation system that can effectively recommend items on a health portal. Toward this aim, a transaction log that records users’ traversal activities on the Medical College of Wisconsin’s HealthLink, a health portal with a subject directory, was utilized and investigated. This study proposed a mixed-method that included the transaction log analysis method, the Markov chain analysis method, and the inferential analysis method. The transaction log analysis method was applied to extract users’ traversal activities from the log. The Markov chain analysis method was adopted to model users’ traversal activities and then generate recommendation lists for topics, …

Exploring The Information Experience Of The Immigrant Toward Public Libraries In New York City, Jean Edwin Rene

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative exploratory study investigated the experiences, or the lack, of underemployed immigrants with limited job skills, limited income, and limited English speaking skills with public library services as they face many stages of cultural and informational adaptation in the United States. Their information needs are at first primarily for housing, employment, education and social services. In general, they came to the US looking for opportunities, and to be successful. Those achievement means finding good jobs, educations, skills, and greater financial security. Having greater options starts by getting access to information that leads to those objectives. Public libraries have provided …

"Neighborhood Library Modernization": Public Library Expansion In Milwaukee During The 1960s And 1970s, Madeline Brenner

Theses and Dissertations

By the second half of the 20th century, public libraries expanded their reach across American cities and transformed the urban landscape. With almost 10,000 libraries in U.S. cities by 1960, new library development was at an all-time high. Despite this success, few scholars have analyzed these critical changes. Since the historical scholarship on library development is limited, this thesis analyzes the history of public library development in Milwaukee during the 1960s and 1970s. The goals of community engagement and partnership through city-wide circulation of material guided the development of branch library construction under the Ten-Year Library Plan of 1962 to …

“Describing Without Identifying”: The Phenomenological Role Of Gender In Cataloging Practices, Travis L. Wagner

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores gendering practices of visual information catalogers. The work aims to understand how catalogers perceive gender when describing persons within visual information. The qualitative study deployed queer interpretative phenomenological analysis to understand how catalogers think broadly about describing identity. The infused queer theoretical tenets helped to understand that while participants may not directly name gender as challenging, the conflation of gender into cisnormative monoliths (assuming every person's gender matches their sex-assigned-at birth) or silence around gender produce telling opinions concerning nonbinary gender. The research also utilized a Think Aloud exercise wherein participants undertook in-the-moment cataloging three moving images. …

School Wide Digital Devices And The Impact On The Role Of School Librarians, Laura Jeanne Haverkamp

Theses and Dissertations

This mixed methods study examines what happens to the role of the school librarian when schools move to a 1:1 model where every student has a digital device. Using the literature to understand expectations for librarians, the researcher surveyed experienced South Carolina school librarians to determine how 1:1 computing was implemented and supported in schools and if the role of the school librarians has changed as schools transition to a digital environment. The researcher found that there was little uniformity in deployment and support of devices in 1:1 schools, but that librarians felt their roles had changed and their overall …

The Flow Less Traveled: Documenting Independent Original Research On Fluid Flow Interactions In The Laurentian Great Lakes And Immediate Surroundings, Thomas F. Hansen

Theses and Dissertations

This work is a compilation of several research projects undertaken by the author. Each research effort identifies a problem that has been addressed traditionally using methods that are significantly costly, to such an extent that, in general, funding, convenience, and practicality are primary limiting factors to their effective implementation. In each case, the author has been able to either build upon existing, less expensive alternatives, or even invent novel approaches. The fundamental recurring research question is, can creative, even novel, computational approaches make more efficient use of resources to interpret or present data in such a way as to make …

Adoption Of A Self-Care Therapy Mobile App: Application Of Uses And Gratification Theory, Self-Efficacy, And Response Efficacy, Sue Lim

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines factors that influence people’s decision to adopt a self-care therapy chatbot utilizing the uses and gratification theory, self-efficacy, and response efficacy frameworks. Existing literature has shown a large gap between supply and demand of mental health services as well as major barriers that prevent people from seeking services. Therapy chatbots offer the potential to address the gap and the barriers. This research used Woebot, a widely used and clinical evaluated therapy bot, and examined the influence of 6 uses and obtained gratification variables, two self-efficacy scales, and response efficacy on intentions of use. Quantitative analysis of the …

Language Archive Records: Interoperability Of Referencing Practices And Metadata Models, Hugh J. Paterson Iii

Theses and Dissertations

With the rise of the digital language archive and the plethora of referenceable content, a critical question arises: “How easy is it for authors to use existing tools to cite the content they are referencing?” This is especially important as people use archived materials as evidence within published language descriptions.

Archived resource metadata is well discussed in language documentation circles; however, bibliographic metadata and its accessibility are less discussed. Discoverability metadata, a subset of archived resource metadata, serves aggregators like OLAC by declaring a resource exists. In contrast, bibliographic metadata functions within documents by declaring where to find a resource …

An Optimization Analysis Of The Subject Directory System On The Medlineplus Portal - An Investigation Of Mental Health, Children, Teenagers, And Older Adults Related Health Topics, Yifan Zhu

Theses and Dissertations

The Internet is a common means for people to search for health information. The subject directory of MedlinePlus offers Internet searchers a browsing environment so that those seekers could start from a broad term and refine their search terms to meet their real information needs, thus resulting in a better information search. For those novice users who are not familiar with relevant domain knowledge, MedlinePlus’s directory can be of great assistance and enable the portal to adopt to a more general population. Such a subject directory system and its involved health topics in the MedlinePlus portal formed a network where …

A New Framework Of Privacy Concerns Assessment In The Context Of Facial Recognition Technology (Frt): Mixed-Methods Sequential Exploratory Analysis Of Youtube Users., Yazeed Alhumaidan

Theses and Dissertations

Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) has become one of the most rapidly growing technologies. A statistical report expected that the global market size of FRT will record an increase by over 100% within five years, from $3.8 billion in 2020 to $8.5 billion in 2025 (“Facial Recognition Market Size, Share and Global Market Forecast to 2025 ,” n.d.). The proliferation of FRT is primarily related to the organizational desire to bridge integrity, credibility, and reliability vulnerabilities that are inherent in traditional identification mechanisms. The ambiguity of how information flows in this system has led to an increase in individuals' privacy concerns. …

Examining The Notion Of The Boundary Object In Information Systems: The Transdisciplinary Oeuvre Of Cognitive Science, Laura Elien Ridenour

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the transdisciplinary area of cognitive science, and was framed around the sociological notion of the boundary object. Harmonizing theoretical and technical approaches, methods introduced in this work moved beyond qualitative study practices traditional to boundary object theory work to a mixed-methods data-driven approach. Bibliometric Web of Science data, enriched with National Science Foundation (NSF) journal classifications, formed the foundation from which a seed-and-expand dataset were created from journals containing the string cogni* and their cited articles for the years 2006-2016. This two-tiered dataset allowed for the analysis of boundary-spanning interdisciplinary concepts, as identified by noun phrases, and …

Typological And Iconographic Analyses Of Casas Grandes Pottery At The Milwaukee Public Museum, Samantha Bomkamp

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the results of analyses conducted on 80 ceramic vessels from the

Casas Grandes region (Chihuahua, Mexico) currently housed at the Milwaukee Public Museum

(MPM). This collection, most of which was donated in 1977, was accompanied with little to no

provenience information, and no research has been conducted on the materials since they came

to the Museum. Drawing upon published studies of Casas Grandes pottery, a detailed coding

scheme was developed in order to record formal and stylistic data that could be used to classify

the vessels typologically and chronologically. Fifteen different ceramic types dating to the Viejo …

Investigating The Contents Of A Maya Tomb: An Analysis Of The Milwaukee Public Museum's Ceramic Collection From Chajul, Guatemala, Emma Eisner

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines a collection of 120 artifacts recovered from a tomb at the highland Maya site of Chajul, Guatemala, and currently housed at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM). Prior to this study, research on the MPM collection was very limited and there were few publications related to Chajul. The study focuses primarily on the 84 ceramic objects in the Museum’s collection. Detailed analysis of these artifacts was undertaken in order to collect data on their likely dates of production, forms, surface treatment’s, functions, and iconography. Contextual information from the tomb is also considered, including details of its construction as …

A Collection Divided: An Analysis Of Accession 16082, The Ohio Hopewell Site Collection At The Milwaukee Public Museum, Katrina N. Schmitz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates and documents sixty-one Ohio Hopewellian objects that form a collection currently housed at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM). The objects were excavated from the Hopewell site of Ross County, Ohio which lends its name to a renowned and geographically expansive archaeological cultural horizon. The meaning and interpretation of these MPM objects, and the site itself have evolved over time through decisions made by Native peoples, archaeologists, and museum curators. The MPM’s collection can be used as a conduit enabling discussion of the evolution of interpretations for the entire Hopewell site and the extraordinary number of artifacts which …

The Ensemble Mesh-Term Query Expansion Models Using Multiple Lda Topic Models And Ann Classifiers In Health Information Retrieval, Sukjin You

Theses and Dissertations

Information retrieval in the health field has several challenges. Health information terminology is difficult for consumers (laypeople) to understand. Formulating a query with professional terms is not easy for consumers because health-related terms are more familiar to health professionals. If health terms related to a query are automatically added, it would help consumers to find relevant information. The proposed query expansion (QE) models show how to expand a query using MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms. The documents were represented by MeSH terms (i.e. Bag-of-MeSH), which were included in the full-text articles. And then the MeSH terms were used to generate …