Library and Information Science Commons^™

Putting The Pieces Together: Endometriosis Blogs, Cognitive Authority, And Collaborative Information Behavior, Diane M. Neal, Pamela J. Mckenzie

FIMS Publications

Objective:

A discourse analysis was conducted of peer-written blogs about the chronic illness endometriosis to understand how bloggers present information sources and make cases for and against the authority of those sources.

Methods:

Eleven blogs that were authored by endometriosis patients and focused exclusively or primarily on the authors' experiences with endometriosis were selected. After selecting segments in which the bloggers invoked forms of knowledge and sources of evidence, the text was discursively analyzed to reveal how bloggers establish and dispute the authority of the sources they invoke.

Results:

When discussing and refuting authority, the bloggers invoked many sources of …

Information In The Hobby Of Gourmet Cooking - Four Contexts, Jenna K. Hartel

Jenna Hartel

This chapter aims to characterize the information activities and information resources that underlie the hobby of gourmet cooking in America. Gourmet cooking has roots in French haute cuisine and is a manner of food preparation that entails high quality or exotic ingredients and advanced technical skills (Wilson 2003). It is featured today at many high end or “white tablecloth” restaurants, associated with cultural icon Julia Child, and has been adopted by millions of Americans as a hobby. Given its complexity to execute, gourmet cooking is information intensive and generates a vast multimedia information universe. Altogether, this hobby is a rich …

You Don't Know What You Don't Know: Investigating The Information Needs Of Clients Of Web Based Public Sector Information Services, Julie Ann Johnson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research grew from two frustrations. The first was the personal frustration experienced when attempting to find information on websites; especially government websites. Often the sites were loaded down with all sorts of information such as corporate organisation charts and press releases but lacked the information which would allow clients to interact effectively with the agency or meet their information needs and move on. The second frustration was that of Edith Cowan University students who battled with a diverse, overlapping and incomplete set of both online and paper based resources as they sought to make decisions about their selections of …