Digital Commons Network^™

Are We Practicing What We Preach? Towards Greater Transborder Inclusivity In Information Science Systematic Reviews, Stephanie Krueger, Rebecca D. Frank

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Abstract. Inclusiveness has been investigated in different ways by Information Science (InfoSci) researchers, often as a line of social justice inquiry. Systematic reviews (SRs), which bridge the gap between research and practice, are a key example of research impacted by inclusiveness. “Transborder” inclusiveness—the ability of researchers from different institutions, regions, and countries to ac-cess information, and the inclusion of information from researchers in regions and countries where English is not an official language in major collections of InfoSci research—influences how researchers perform SRs. Although this topic has been identified in other disciplines involved in Evidence Based Practice (EBP) such as …

Lgbtq+ Catalog Users: A Brief Survey, Karen Snow, Heather Moulaison-Sandy, Brian Dobreski

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

To promote social justice, recent work in knowledge organization (KO) has focused on providing access for members of marginalized groups including LGBTQ+ persons. Expanding on this work, the current project explores demographics and library usage as well as the participant-provided identity terms of LGBTQ+ library catalog users. Using a survey methodology that collected 141 respondents’ information, researchers found that LGBTQ+ catalog users who responded were primarily young, educated, and identified as either Black or White. The majority of respondents reported regular use of the library catalog, though also found materials in a variety of other ways, including social media. When …

Audit Team Communication And Risk In Trustworthy Digital Repository Certification, Rebecca D. Frank, Jessica Wylie

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper aims to investigate the Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) process by examining the communication practices and risk communication dynamics among auditors during the audit. Through an in-depth, qualitative analysis of the audit process and the interactions between auditors, this paper provides valuable insights into the importance of diverse backgrounds, effective communication, and consensus building in the assessment of TRAC checklist requirements. Furthermore, the paper highlights potential areas of improvement within the audit process, addressing concerns related to disagreements, reliance on leadership, and the comprehensiveness of risk identification and communication.

Repository Staff Perspectives On The Benefits Of Trustworthy Digital Repository Certification, Rebecca D. Frank

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper reports on the results from a qualitative study that asks whether and how staff members from TRAC certified repositories find value in the audit and certification process. While some interviewees found certification valuable, others argued that the costs outweighed the benefits or expressed ambivalence towards certification. Findings indicate that TRAC certification offered both internal and external benefits, such as improved documentation, accountability, transparency, communication, and standards, but there were concerns about high costs, implementation problems, and lack of objective evaluation criteria.

Consequences Of Information Exchanges Of Vulnerable Women On Facebook: An "Information Grounds" Study Informing Value Co-Creation And Ict4d Research, Devendra Potnis, Macy Halladay, Sara-Elizabeth Jones

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) research sporadically leverages information science scholarship. Our qualitative study employs the “information grounds” (IG) lens to investigate the consequences of information exchanges by pregnant women on Facebook, who are vulnerable in the doctor-centric birth culture in rural America. The thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with members and administrators of the Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) group shows that positive consequences outweigh negative consequences of information exchanges and lead to the following progression of outcomes: (1) VBAC group as an information ground, (2) social capital (e.g., cognitive, structural, and relational capital) built on the …

Information Practices Of Administrators For Controlling Information In An Online Community Of New Mothers In Rural America, Devendra Potnis, Macy Halladay

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Rarely does any empirical investigation show how administrators routinely control information in online communities and alleviate misinformation, hate speech, and information overload supported by profit-driven algorithms. Thematic analysis of in-depth phone interviews with members and administrators of a “Vaginal Birth After Cesarean” (VBAC) group with over 500 new mothers on Facebook shows that the administrators make 19 choices for recurring, authoritative but evolving 19 information-related activities when (a) forming the VBAC group over Facebook for local new mothers, (b) actively recruiting women who had a VBAC or have related competencies, (c) removing doctors and solicitors from the group, (d) setting …

Continued Use Of Retracted Publications: Implications For Information Systems And Scientific Publishing, Peiling Wang, Luke Baker Mccullough, Jing Su

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Reports on the preliminary results of an empirical study of post-retraction citations of biomedical research literature. Retractions of biomedical publications have a serious impact on research enterprise and public health. Retractions to correct literature and alert readers are actions by the journals based on evidence of serious flaws or errors or upon the request of the authors. The process of retraction could take a few weeks or years after publication. The purpose of this study is to investigate how retracted peer-reviewed journal articles were cited post-retraction. Post-retraction citing articles are those published two years after the retraction year. The dataset …

Expert Recommended Biomedical Journal Articles: Their Retractions Or Corrections, And Post-Retraction Citing, Peiling Wang, Jing Su

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Faculty Opinions has provided recommendations of important biomedical publications by domain experts (FMs) since 2001. The purpose of this study is two-fold: 1) identify the characteristics of the expert-recommended articles that were subsequently retracted; 2) investigate what happened after retraction. We examined a set of 232 recommended, later retracted or corrected articles. These articles were classified as New Finding (43%), Interesting Hypothesis (16%), etc. More than 71% of the articles acknowledged funding support; the NIH (US) was a top funder (64%). The top reasons for retractions were Errors of various types (28%); Falsification/fabrication of data, image, or results (20%); Unreliable …

Designated Community: Uncertainty And Risk, Rebecca D. Frank, Laura Rothfritz

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Purpose: This article explores the tension between the concept of a Designated Community as a foundational element in Trustworthy Digital Repository certification and curators’ uncertainty about how to interpret and apply this concept in practice.

Design/methodology/approach: This research employs a qualitative research design involving in-depth semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in the Trustworthy Digital Repository Audit and Certification process.

Findings: Our findings indicate that stakeholders in the audit and certification process viewed their uncertainty about how to apply the concept of a Designated Community in the context of an audit as a source of risk for digital repositories and their collections. …

How Fair Is Marc?: Fair Data Principles Applied To A Bibliographic Data Standard, Brian Dobreski, Heather Moulaison-Sandy, Bradley Wade Bishop

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

FAIR Data Principles provide a framework for considering how best to make data available in a way that is 1) findable, 2) accessible, 3) interoperable, and 4) reusable. Designed to be simple to understand and machine-actionable, FAIR principles support data use and reuse. This conceptual paper investigates the application of FAIR principles to bibliographic data through an examination of the current standard for encoding library records, MARC. To this end, this paper begins by describing the FAIR principles. It then looks to understand the MARC standard and applies the FAIR principles to the data affordances provided by the MARC encoding …

Automated Parsing Of Personal Identity Facets For A Collection Of Visual Images, Brian Dobreski, Melissa Resnick, Benjamin D. Horne

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Collections of digitized, historical images serve as rich primary sources for digital humanities research, though access to these resources has been hindered by inadequate subject metadata. In this study, researchers explored the feasibility of performing subject analysis for a collection of historical images of persons through an automated procedure. Building on previous work that developed a faceted system for representing the identities of persons depicted in 19th century visual images, the present work attempted to automate the process of person and facet parsing for images from the A.S. Williams III Collection at the University of Alabama. A case-based model was …

Analyzing Service Divide In Academic Libraries For Better Serving Disabled Patrons Using Assistive Technologies, Devendra Potnis, Kevin Mallary

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Academic libraries invest thousands of dollars in assistive technologies (AT) for enhancing the delivery of information services to disabled patrons. However, offering AT might not result in their use by the patrons who need them, thereby leading to a service divide. The analysis of qualitative responses, including over 1,400 quotations, elicited from academic library administrators and librarians in 186 public universities across the United States, reveals that academic libraries encounter 51 challenges related to the knowledge and skills of librarians, hardware and software concerns, institutional factors, finances, and external actors, when serving disabled patrons with AT. Finally, the researchers propose …

Hashtags For Gatekeeping Of Information On Social Media, Devendra Potnis, Iman Tahamtan

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since the inception of gatekeeping research in the 1940s, most studies on gatekeeping have been human‐centric, treating and studying individuals as gatekeepers, who perform their gatekeeping role using a combination of the following mechanisms: forming communities, and/or broadcasting, discovering‐searching, collecting, organizing, or protecting information. However, the nature of communication channels and how information is produced by and shared with users has fundamentally changed in the last 80 years. One significant change is the growing use of technology‐enabled metadata like hashtags when sharing information on social media. Rarely any study investigates whether hashtags can perform gatekeeping of information and what it …

Documenting Social Justice In Library And Information Science Research: A Literature Review, Joseph Winberry, Bradley Wade Bishop

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of social justice research in Library and Information Science (LIS) literature in order to identify the research quantity, what populations or settings were included, and future directions for this area of the discipline through examination of when related research was published, what contexts it covered, and what contributions LIS researchers have made in this research area.

Design/Methodology/Approach – This study reviews results from two LIS literature databases—Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA) and Library and Information Science Source (LISS)—that use the term “social justice” in title, abstract, …

Proposing An Information Value Chain To Improve Information Services To Disabled Library Patrons Using Assistive Technologies, Devendra Potnis, Kevin Mallary

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Information services offered by academic libraries increasingly rely on assistive technologies (AT) to facilitate disabled patrons’ retrieval and use of information for learning and teaching. However, disabled patrons’ access to AT might not always lead to their use, resulting in the underutilization of information services offered by academic libraries. We adopt an inward-looking, service innovation perspective to improve information services for disabled patrons using AT. The open coding of qualitative responses collected from administrators and librarians in 186 academic libraries in public universities in the United States, reveals 10 mechanisms (i.e., modified work practices), which involve searching, compiling, mixing, framing, …

Unique Features Of The Person Class In Cultural Heritage Models, Brian Dobreski, Barbara H. Kwaśnik

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Knowledge organizations systems (KOSs) model important entities of interest within a domain. In the cultural heritage domain, KOSs are often designed around cultural information resources, though many other kinds of entities must be modeled and described in the process. Of these, the “person” entity may appear straightforward, but is surprisingly challenging with complex implications. Within cultural heritage, personhood is closely associated with certain kinds of creative responsibilities and rights, though modern technological advances are challenging these traditional notions. In an era marked by AI creators, digital recreations of the dead, and deepfakes, it is worth asking, in cultural heritage, what …

Impacts Of Electronic Reference On Instruction And Reference, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Best Practices For Managing Innovations In Public Libraries In The United States, Devendra Potnis, Joseph Winberry, Bonnie Finn

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Public libraries serve as anchors for thousands of communities across the country. Innovations are critical for the survival and relevance of public libraries in the country. Few studies, if any, identify the best practices for managing innovations in public libraries based on the experiential guidance shared by administrators of public libraries recognized for their innovations. This empirical study fills in the gap by identifying the challenges and solutions for managing innovations in public libraries in the United States. A thematic content analysis of qualitative responses collected through an online, anonymous survey of 219 administrators of 211 innovations in 106 urban …

Altmetrics And Societal Impact Measurements: Match Or Mismatch? A Literature Review, Iman Tahamtan, Lutz Bornmann

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Can alternative metrics (altmetrics) data be used to measure societal impact? We wrote this literature overview of empirical studies in order to find an answer to this question. The overview includes two parts. The first part, “societal impact measurements”, explains possible methods and problems in measuring the societal impact of research, case studies for societal impact measurement, societal impact considerations at funding organizations, and the societal problems that should be solved by science. The second part of the review, “altmetrics”, addresses a major question in research evaluation, which is whether altmetrics are proper indicators for measuring the societal impact of …

Managing The “Backend” Of Lis Research Projects: A Project Management Perspective, Devendra Potnis, Bhakti Gala

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is very little guidance in library and information science (LIS) literature about how researchers should manage the scope, time, costs, quality, human resources, communications, and risks associated with LIS research projects. To fill this gap, researchers tested the utility of project management principles (PMP) for planning and managing a project designed to enhance the information, digital, and financial literacy of the people earning less than $2 per day in India. The customization of PMP through 29 mechanisms and 60 action items was used to conduct focus groups and in-person surveys with over 150 participants, in their native language, at …

Running With The Amazons, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

WHY HAVEN'T LIBRARY SYSTEM and information database designers included as many user-friendly features as Amazon and Google? This question, posed at the recent annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIST), was answered by UCLA professor Marcia Bates, who said that from 20 years of research we know what should be included, but we've never had the money to implement fancy search features. Now, we have a lot of catching up to do.

Changes In Scholarly Reading In Finland Over A Decade: Influences Of E-Journals And Social Media, Elina Late, Carol Tenopir, Sanna Talja, Lisa Christian

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Nationwide surveys of researchers in Finland in 2007 and 2016 distributed with the assistance of FinELib, the Finnish national consortium, show that researchers use a growing range of sources to find and access scholarly articles and that some reading patterns are changing. The percentage of articles found by searching and browsing are decreasing, while researchers are using more social ways to locate articles. Research social networking sites are rated as important to their work. They read more onscreen, although still print some material out for final reading. Reading patterns for books are different, as researchers still rely more on printed …

Benefits And Outcomes Of Library Collections On Scholarly Reading In Finland, Carol Tenopir, Sanna Talja, Elina Late, Lisa Christian

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Results of an online survey distributed to faculty, PhD students, and researchers throughout Finland in 2016 show that library resources, journal articles, and books are important parts of scholars’ research and work life. The survey was disseminated through FinELib to heads of libraries, who were then asked to distribute it to their academic staff, researchers, and PhD students. The purpose of this study was to examine the value of readings obtained from library collections. To help answer this question, participants were asked about the amount and value of their reading and where they obtained readings, which allowed comparison of how …

Proposing “Mobile, Finance, And Information” Toolkit For Financial Inclusion Of The Poor In Developing Countries, Devendra Potnis, Bhakti Gala

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since 2015, the Government of India has been designing policies for transforming the country with over 400 million unbanked adults into a cashless economy so that a majority of financial transactions can be carried over mobile devices, the most widely used information and communication technology in the country. However, over 200 million adults earning less than $2 a day have a low or little mobile, financial, or information literacy. This short paper reports a newly proposed interdisciplinary, six-step toolkit operationalized using a survey questionnaire, focus group prompts, and hands-on training for developing mobile, financial, and information literacy among the poor …

Seeking, Reading, And Use Of Scholarly Articles: An International Study Of Perceptions And Behavior Of Researchers., Carol Tenopir, Lisa Christian, Jordan Kaufman

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

While journal articles are still considered the most important sources of scholarly reading, libraries may no longer have a monopoly on providing discovery and access. Many other sources of scholarly information are available to readers. This international study examines how researchers discover, read, and use scholarly literature for their work. Respondents in 2018 report an average of almost 20 article readings a month and there are still significant differences found in the reading and use of scholarly literature by discipline and geographical location, consistent with the earlier studies. Researchers show they are willing to change or adopt new strategies to …

Academic Librarians And Research Data Services: Attitudes And Practices, Carol Tenopir, Suzie Allard, Lynn Baird, Robert J. Sandusky, Andrew Lundeen, Dane Hughes, Danielle Pollock

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Becoming a partner in the research process and enabling access to the scholarship of e-science is a natural evolution of the traditional roles of academic libraries. Managing research data can be an important aspect of this expanded role, although many academic librarians may not feel they have the necessary preparation, skills, and capacity to effectively provide research data services. In addition, researchers need to understand the degree to which these services are becoming part of the core services offered by academic librarians in a variety of settings. Knowledge of the possibilities and confidence in their respective roles with research data …

Open Peer Review: The Current Landscape And Emerging Models, Dietmar Wolfram, Peiling Wang, Hyoungjoo Park

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Open peer review (OPR) is an important innovation in the open science movement. OPR can play a significant role in advancing scientific communication by increasing its transparency. Despite the growing interest in OPR, adoption of this innovation since the turn of the century has been slow. This study provides the first comprehensive investigation of OPR adoption, its early adopters and the implementation models used. We identified 174 current OPR journals and analysed their wide-ranging implementations to derive emerging OPR models. The findings suggest that: 1) there has been a steady growth in OPR adoption since 2001 when 38 journals initially …

What Is Innovative To Public Libraries In The United States? A Perspective Of Library Administrators For Classifying Innovations, Devendra Potnis, Joseph Winberry, Bonnie Finn, Courtney Hunt

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Innovations are critical for public libraries but rarely any primary research studies the scope and interpretation of the term “innovation” by public libraries. Also, few of the existing innovation typologies are based on data collected from public libraries. This study fills in the gap by eliciting 80 innovations reported by the administrators of 108, award-winning public libraries in the United States, and proposes the first organic classification of innovations for public libraries, with the following four types of innovations: Program (access-oriented/use- oriented), Process (efficiency-driven/effectiveness-driven), Partnership (internal/external), and Technology (web-based technologies/assistive technologies/artificial intelligence). Findings can advance the state of innovations in …

Suomalaisten Tutkijoiden Sosiaalisen Median Käyttö: Sosiaalisen Median Merkitys Työssä, Tiedonhankinnassa Ja Tieteellisen Tiedon Jakamisessa., Elina Late, Sanna Kumpulainen, Sanna Talja, Lisa Christian, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

The use of social media in scholarly communication has grown in recent years, and consequently, scholars’ uses of social media has gained importance as a research topic.The aim of this article is to shed light on the role of social media in scholars’ work. The research presents findings from a survey (N=528) conducted in Finland in late 2016. There exists no prior research on the role and uses social media among Finnish scholars. This research specifically focuses on the perceived role of social media in information seeking and sharing. We also study the differences between disciplines, age groups, and positions. …

Factors Influencing Undergraduate Use Of E-Books: A Mixed Methods Study, Devendra Potnis, Kanchan Deosthali, Xiaohua Zhu, Rebecca Mccusker

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Academic libraries invest millions of dollars to make electronic resources available to students for free. However, free access might not necessarily result in students’ sustained interest in and use of e-books. This interdisciplinary, mixed methods research investigates the factors influencing the intention of 279 undergraduate students to use e-books at a land-grant university in the southern US. Structural equation modeling of the survey responses suggests that organizational environment for information technology, external locus of control, subjective norm, perceived enjoyment (i.e., joyfulness), and information technology features play a significant role in influencing the intention of students to use e-books. Based on …