Library and Information Science Commons^™

The Public Library As Past Become Space, Greg Nightingale

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

I use Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism in The Arcades Project to critique contemporary notions related to the understanding of the public library as a place. My critical theoretical approach, grounded in historical research and Benjamin’s theories of modernity, highlights contemporary aspects of the public library and broadens and deepens our understanding of the library’s physical role, both within and outside its walls. My research is based on the concurrent yet divergent social and cultural development of modern public libraries and Benjamin’s symbolic shopping arcades. Like Benjamin with the arcade, I believe that the public library contains innovative potentiality, in its …

Dinosaur Representation In Museums: How The Struggle Between Scientific Accuracy And Pop Culture Affects The Public Perception Of Mesozoic Non-Avian Dinosaurs In Museums, Carla A. Feller

Museum Studies Theses

This thesis examines the struggle of museums to keep up with swiftly advancing scientific discoveries relating to the study and display of Mesozoic (approximately 250 million years to 65 million years ago) non-avian dinosaurs. The paper will explore the history of dinosaur discoveries, their display methodologies in museums, and how pop culture, including movies and video games, have influenced museum displays and public perception over time. The lack of updated dinosaur exhibits in smaller local museums leads to disbelief, or an outright denial, of new information such as feathered dinosaurs. Entertainment, such as movies and video games that have non-avian …

Online Interpretation Guideline For Historic House Museums, Olivia A. Weixlmann

Museum Studies Theses

What does it mean to be a museum in 2020? How do cultural institutions, charged with preserving our history, navigate the challenges of the modern world? Technological advances including the internet, quickly produce an abundance of media outlets baiting attention that impact the sociopolitical climate driving civil unrest, and ideological division. The surplus of competing information from technology driven outlets result in audiences being overwhelmed and left questioning if the information they're receiving is from a reliable source.

Designing For The One-Shot: Building Consensus On Design Processes For Academic Librarians, Kirsten Hostetler

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

Academic librarians have long been responsible for teaching information literacy competencies on college campuses, even as many are hesitant to accept the title of teacher. With inadequate instructional design preparation and one-shot sessions serving as a popular, if limited, instructional medium, librarians’ design processes are often developed on the job and infrequently explored in the literature. Previous research has examined specific design models and instructional strategies, but no studies were found that determined how academic librarians select and implement these design decisions within the unique context of a one-shot.

The purpose of this study was to describe academic librarians’ design …

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 …

Establishing The Public Library As An Out-Of-School Partner In Stem/Steam Education, Gwyneth Fernandez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The American public library is a unique community presence that positively influences the lives of families as an out-of-school partner in education. By examining the public library through a systems lens using Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory the impact of these institutions may be seen. A key characteristic of public library service is timely, relevant adaptations that meet the needs of the community served. In this project, a recent public library pilot program is evaluated. This program was created in response to the emerging trend in Science Technology Engineering Art and Math (STEAM) within schools and informal education opportunities. It was found …

Critical Information Literacy And Collections: Developing Praxis For Public Libraries, Lesley Garrett

Liberal Arts Capstones

Public libraries play an active role in building equitable, democratic communities by promoting critical information literacy, most notably in their collections development. Critical Information Literacy builds on the standard information literacy definitions by adding an analysis of political, economic, social and corporate systems that “have power and influence over information production, dissemination, access, and consumption" (Gregory and Higgins, 2013). This project includes a zine created to introduce an adaptation of Paulo Freire's banking concept of education for libraries, as well as note the continued work needed to develop a praxis for critical public librarianship.

Making Sense Of Online Public Health Debates With Visual Analytics Systems, Anton Ninkov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Online debates occur frequently and on a wide variety of topics. Particularly, online debates about various public health topics (e.g., vaccines, statins, cannabis, dieting plans) are prevalent in today’s society. These debates are important because of the real-world implications they can have on public health. Therefore, it is important for public health stakeholders (i.e., those with a vested interest in public health) and the general public to have the ability to make sense of these debates quickly and effectively. This dissertation investigates ways of enabling sense-making of these debates with the use of visual analytics systems (VASes). VASes are computational …

Multimodal Data Fusion And Attack Detection In Recommender Systems, Mehmet Aktukmak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The commercial platforms that use recommender systems can collect relevant information to produce useful recommendations to the platform users. However, these sources usually contain missing values, imbalanced and heterogeneous data, and noisy observations. Such characteristics render the process of exploiting the information nontrivial, as one should carefully address them during the data fusion process. In addition to the degenerative characteristics, some entries can be fake, i.e., they can be the outcomes of malicious intents to manipulate the system. These entries should be eliminated before incorporation to any recommendation task. Detecting such malicious attacks quickly and accurately and then mitigating them …

Digital Identity: A Human-Centered Risk Awareness Study, Toufic N. Chebib

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cybersecurity threats and compromises have been at the epicenter of media attention; their risk and effect on people’s digital identity is something not to be taken lightly. Though cyber threats have affected a great number of people in all age groups, this study focuses on 55 to 75-year-olds, as this age group is close to retirement or already retired. Therefore, a notable compromise impacting their digital identity can have a major impact on their life.

To help guide this study, the following research question was formulated, “What are the risk perceptions of individuals, between the ages of 55 and 75 …

Digital Occult Library, Alexis Brandkamp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is a website, titled Digital Occult Library, hosted by the CUNY Commons and built with WordPress. The site address is:

digitaloccultlibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu

It features (in this iteration) twenty-five unique pages with information on and discussion of occult and esoteric topics. It also hosts a forum that can be accessed and utilized by anyone, not just those registered on the Commons. The purpose of the site is to inform three types of interested parties on the highlighted topics: a general audience with no current knowledge of the occult, practitioners of esoteric traditions, and academics. Not only is the …

Bootstrapping Web Archive Collections From Micro-Collections In Social Media, Alexander C. Nwala

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

In a Web plagued by disappearing resources, Web archive collections provide a valuable means of preserving Web resources important to the study of past events. These archived collections start with seed URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) hand-selected by curators. Curators produce high quality seeds by removing non-relevant URIs and adding URIs from credible and authoritative sources, but this ability comes at a cost: it is time consuming to collect these seeds. The result of this is a shortage of curators, a lack of Web archive collections for various important news events, and a need for an automatic system for generating seeds. …

A Framework For Verifying The Fixity Of Archived Web Resources, Mohamed Aturban

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

The number of public and private web archives has increased, and we implicitly trust content delivered by these archives. Fixity is checked to ensure that an archived resource has remained unaltered (i.e., fixed) since the time it was captured. Currently, end users do not have the ability to easily verify the fixity of content preserved in web archives. For instance, if a web page is archived in 1999 and replayed in 2019, how do we know that it has not been tampered with during those 20 years? In order for the users of web archives to verify that archived web …

Cluster Analysis Of Opioid Accessibility In The Carolinas Using Data From The Arcos Database And An Enhanced Two-Step Floating Catchment Area Method, Michael T. Bunker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study takes advantage of transaction level data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS) database made newly available under court order by The Washington Post in July 2019. This data details individual shipments of pharmaceutical opioid analgesics from wholesalers to retail distributors. Using the Enhanced 2-Step Floating Catchment Area (E2SFCA) method, this study calculated access to opioid morphine milligram equivalents (MME) per capita for census tracts in North Carolina and South Carolina during the year 2009. This study demonstrated that outlier volumes of opioid analgesics at individual pharmacies are not always …

User Experience As A Rhetorical Medium: User At The Intersection Of Audience, Reader And Actor, Áine Doyle

English Honors Theses

The goal of this project is to demonstrate how digital interfaces are bodies of visual language that can be “close-read” and interpreted critically, just like any other traditional text; digital user interfaces, like poetry and novels, have form and content that complement and shape the meaning and interpretation of the other. It is meant to encourage academic discussions about digital interfaces to go beyond whether social media is “good” or “bad” to how digital interfaces are structured, why they are structured the way they are, and what effects these structures have on the way they communicate information and content to …

Supporting Biracial Students Through An Equity Lens: Multicultural Literature And Advocacy In School Libraries, Jacqueline Ahlborn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Biracial students make up a substantial allocation of the school population, and their demographics are only expected to increase within the coming years. With this emergence of a larger Biracial community, schools need to consider how they will implement equitable resources and practices to meet the needs for this unique population. School librarians, serving as instructional leaders, can provide the necessary materials and strategies to support their students who are Biracial in order to foster positive racial identity. The purpose of this study is to explore school librarians’ perspectives on the influence of multicultural literature on students’ acceptance and understanding …

“Being Cute And Hella Gay:" Pokémon Reborn, Fan Labor, And Queering The Pokémon World, David Peter Kocik

Theses and Dissertations

Created in 2012, Pokémon Reborn is a fan game made by and for queer fans of the Pokémon franchise. Featuring an LGBTQ+ development team and multiple queer characters, from pansexual Rival Cain to gender non-binary Gym Leader Adrienn, Pokémon Reborn articulates queer desires in a franchise and gaming industry notorious for ignoring and dehumanizing queer individuals. While most research on independent queer game development focuses on how creators subvert heteronormative gameplay elements, Pokémon Reborn challenges dominant industry practices through its queer characters and stories. The fan game incorporates LGBTQ+ lived experiences and queer temporalities in its narrative, queering the traditional …

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 …

My Family, Their History: Using Exploratory Inquiry & Pragmatic Methods To Learn History, Lowellen Sucgang

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

History education is at a crossroads. The availability of information at our fingertips has the potential to change how the non-historian sees history and the other social sciences. This capstone researched ways the non-historian can utilize the changing face of history education by implementing the pragmatic methods of John Dewey’s education philosophy called instrumentalism. Principal issues discussed include the pros and cons of out-of-classroom history education, utilization of exploratory inquiry for research and the usefulness of primary sources for a historiography. To apply instrumentalism ideals and methods, I created a historiography about my ancestors and how their lives intertwined with …

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 …

Lost And Found: Onöndowa’Ga:’Gawenoh As An Anchor To Identity And Sovereignty, Brittney N. Jimerson

Museum Studies Theses

This author presents a study of the Onöndowa’ga:’, an Indigenous group located in Western New York, who are more commonly known as the Seneca. Onöndowa’ga:’Gawenoh[1]to the Onöndowa’ga:’, like all Indigenous people, is a form of intangible history, history that is interconnected with who they are and where they come from. The history of who the Onöndowa’ga:’ were and still are, as well as what their language means to their culture, is the groundwork for understanding how devastating US policies became for them. While many areas of culture were impacted by those policies, the largest target was on Indigenous languages. It …

Exhibiting Prejudice: How Twentieth-Century Museums Promoted The Eugenics Movement, Anna Wachtel

Museum Studies Theses

This research illustrates the impact museums have on social, political, and educational systems through the exploration of the eugenics movement in American museums. Museum professionals promoted racial hierarchies and eugenic ideologies at World’s Fairs through the exploitation of “exotic” peoples and contests designed to judge and categorize racial differences based on an individual’s physical and mental characteristics.

Following World’s Fairs, museums began displaying eugenic themed exhibits. Prominent museum professionals and government officials of the early twentieth century used their position of authority to promote the eugenics movement in National and regional American museums through educational exhibits using approachable science-based exhibit …

Zonta International: Unveiling 100 Years Of History & Membership, Jessica E. Nantka

Museum Studies Projects

The purpose of this master’s thesis project is to examine the formidable globalized service organization, Zonta International (ZI), which has impacted women around the world for 100 years. I utilized essential practices in the Museum Studies Master of Arts program at SUNY Buffalo State to create this project in association with an exhibit, Zonta International: Unveiling 100 Years of History & Membership, presented at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum from November 5 – November 23, 2019. The use of digitized images, documents, and artifacts within the Howard D. Beach Photography Studio Collection owned by The Buffalo History Museum, have been …

Zonta International: Unveiling 100 Years Of History & Membership, Jessica E. Nantka

Museum Studies Projects

The purpose of this master’s thesis project is to examine the formidable globalized service organization, Zonta International (ZI), which has impacted women around the world for 100 years. I utilized essential practices in the Museum Studies Master of Arts program at SUNY Buffalo State to create this project in association with an exhibit, Zonta International: Unveiling 100 Years of History & Membership, presented at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum from November 5 – November 23, 2019. The use of digitized images, documents, and artifacts within the Howard D. Beach Photography Studio Collection owned by The Buffalo History Museum, have been …

Patients’ Needs And Preferences Regarding Radiology Test Results On Patient Portals, Mansour Abdulaziz Almanaa

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction and significance: Radiology exams are an important part of health care. To enhance the quality of health care, health care services need to be delivered in ways that meet patients’ needs and preferences. Patients were found to be interested in the timely receipt of radiology test results. One of the easiest and fastest ways to deliver radiology test results to patients is via online patient portals. It seems, however, that the method of providing radiology test results through patient portals has not reached its full maturity; it still needs a great deal of improvement. Therefore, participation of the end-readers …

Hypersensitivity Adverse Event Reporting In Clinical Cancer Trials: Barriers And Potential Solutions To Studying Severe Events On A Population Level, Christina E. Eldredge

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

HYPERSENSITIVITY ADVERSE EVENT REPORTING IN CLINICAL CANCER TRIALS: BARRIERS AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS TO STUDYING ALLERGIC EVENTS ON A POPULATION LEVEL

by

Christina Eldredge

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2020

Under the Supervision of Professor Timothy Patrick

Clinical cancer trial interventions are associated with hypersensitivity events (HEs) which are recorded in the national clinical trial registry, ClinicalTrials.gov and publicly available. This data could potentially be leveraged to study predictors for HEs to identify at risk patients who may benefit from desensitization therapies to prevent these potentially life-threatening reactions. However, variation in investigator reporting methods is a barrier to leveraging this data …

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 …

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 …

Lost And Found In The Map Library: Ena L. Yonge And The History Of Map Librarianship, Georgia Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the history of map librarianship and gender through an analysis of the career of Ena L. Yonge, a pioneering map librarian who worked at the American Geographical Society from 1917 to 1962. The thesis examines the decline of the ideal of the “gentleman librarian” in relation to the feminization of the library profession in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. With a focus on Yonge, the thesis examines changing relationship between the AGS, the U.S. government, and larger world events, including World War I and World War II. Yonge’s career spanned a transformation in the profession …

Claim, Consume, Curate: Placing Value On Functional Art, Heather Rose Sheets Hanlon

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is the written portion of the thesis requirements for University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Art History, Museums and Curatorial program. It corresponds with the other component, a museum-style exhibition in the Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery, as its catalog. The catalog and exhibition together address the factors of change in decorative art reception since the modern era and how museum institutions can continue to broaden the conditioned meanings of such art in a dynamic, responsive way.

These changes and suggestions are illustrated through objects and their display in the exhibition vignettes “The Home,” “The Boutique,” “The Museum,” and “Storing Stuff.” …