Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Visual Displays Of Information: A Conceptual Taxonomy, Scott Warren

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

This paper creates a taxonomic model for visual information displays looking at three levels: information design (based on Edward Tufte’s work), information architecture, and information spaces. Special attention is paid to the use of spatial and navigational metaphors in visual systems as they affect the user’s experience. Especially interesting is how a user creates an “information space” – a mental model of what he has seen, how she keeps track of where she is within a system, and how these activities fit together with the data that is being sought. Mathematics is one area that holds promise for better understanding …

On The Fly Bi: Reaching And Teaching From The Reference Desk, Nancy B. Turner, Susan E. Beck

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

Today’s reference librarians are constantly faced with the challenge of orienting users to the complex, ever changing world of the electronic library. A well-structured library instruction program is one important approach to the overall goal of educating users. But library instruction sessions cannot and do not reach all students. Studies indicate that students are most receptive to learning research techniques at the point of need, which most often occurs at the reference desk. Although many reference librarians are committed to ‘‘teaching students to fish,’’ they are frequently faced with students whose research needs require in-depth lessons that exceed the time …

Converting A Controlled Vocabulary Into An Ontology: The Case Of Gem, Jian Qin, Stephen Paling

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The prevalance of digital information raised issues regarding the suitability of conventional library tools for organizing information. The multi-dimensionality of digital resources requires a more versatile and flexible representation to accommodate intelligent information representation and retrieval. Ontologies are used as a solution to such issues in many application domains, mainly due to their ability explicitly to specify the semantics and relations and to express them in a computer understandable language. Conventional knowledge organization tools such as classifications and thesauri resemble ontologies in a way that they define concepts and relationships in a systematic manner, but they are less expressive than …

Natural Language Processing, Elizabeth D. Liddy

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the computerized approach to analyzing text that is based on both a set of theories and a set of technologies. And, being a very active area of research and development, there is not a single agreed-upon definition that would satisfy everyone, but there are some aspects, which would be part of any knowledgeable person’s definition.

An Nlp Approach For Improving Access To Statistical Information For The Masses, Elizabeth D. Liddy, Jennifer H. Liddy

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Naïve users need to access statistical information, but frequently do not have the sophisticated levels of understanding required in order to translate their information needs into the structure and vocabulary of sites which currently provide access to statistical information. However, these users can articulate quite straightforwardly in their own terms what they are looking for. One approach to satisfying the masses of citizens with needs for statistical information is to automatically map their natural language expressions of their information needs into the metadata structure and terminology that defines and describes the content of statistical tables. To accomplish this goal, we …

Investigating The Interplay Between Structure And Information And Communications Technology In The Real Estate Industry, Kevin Crowston, Steve Sawyer, Rolf Wigand

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are reshaping many industries, often by reshaping how information is shared. Information intensive industries, by their nature, show the greatest impacts due to ICTs that enable information sharing and the bypassing of traditional information intermediaries. However, while the effects and uses of ICT are often associated with organizations (and industries), their use occurs at the individual level. In other words, it is changes to individual work related to the use of ICTs that reshape both organization and industry structures, and vice versa. To explore the relationships between individual uses of ICT and changes to organization …

The Social Embeddedness Of Transactions: Evidence From The Residential Real Estate Industry, Steve Sawyer, Kevin Crowston, Rolf T. Wigand, Marcel Allbritton

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Information and communications technologies (ICT) are becoming pervasive in the residential real estate industry and affecting the work lives of real estate agents. Drawing on data from a regional study of the residential real-estate industry in the United States, we focus on the disintermediation or, more accurately, the re-intermediation of real estate agents in the sales process. We examine how real estate agents are (1) taking advantage of new ICT in their work, and (2) protecting themselves from others wishing to displace their position in the real estate value chain. Our analysis draws on two contrasting theoretical approaches to better …

Genre-Based Navigation On The Web, Barbara H. Kwasnik, Kevin Crowston, Mike Nilan, X. Liu, J. Cai

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

We report on our ongoing study of using the genre of Web pages to facilitate information exploration. By genre, we mean socially recognized regularities of form and purpose in documents (e.g., a letter, a memo, a research paper). Our study had three phases. First, through a user study, we identified genres which most/least frequently meet searchers' information needs. We found that certain genres are better suited for certain types of needs. We identified five (5) major groups of document genres that might be used in an interactive search tool that would allow genrebased navigation. We tried to balance the following …

A Process Theory Of Competency Rallying In Engineering Projects, Bernhard R. Katzy, Kevin Crowston

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Firms face an environment changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Market opportunities in particular can arise and disappear in a short time. Unfortunately, the speed with which organizations can adapt their strategies and competencies to meet these opportunities remains limited. We argue that firms can address these individual limitations by cooperating with others for access to market opportunities and needed competencies. In this paper, we present a process theory of how a network of firms can reliably engineering and deliver products in the face of rapid market changes. In this theory, the success of the network is predicated on 1) …

E-Tables: Non-Specialist Use And Understanding Of Statistical Data, Gary Marchionini, Carol Hert, Ben Shneiderman, Liz Liddy

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This paper provides a progress report on a project that aims to understand how people think about and understand statistical data presented in tables. The focus is on people who are not statistical specialists. To this end, studies of various user populations were conducted, underlying data enrichment and explanation was investigated, and interactive user interface prototypes were developed and tested.

Information And Communication Technologies In The Real Estate Industry: Results Of A Pilot Survey, Rolf T. Wigand, Kevin Crowston, Steve Sawyer, Marcel Allbritton

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

We have been studying the growing use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the residential real estate industry and the effects of this use on how realtors work. Earlier stages of our project involved qualitative research to develop a better understanding of the industry, the work of realtors and their use of ICT. In this paper we report on the results of qualitative research and a pilot of a survey intended to gather large-scale data on realtors and ICT use.

Franz Leopold Ranke, The Ranke Library At Syracuse And The Open Future Of Scientific History, Siegfried Baur

The Courier

"The recent purchase of the great historical library of Dr. Leopold von Ranke by an American suggests some reflections. There is no doubt that this library, which numbers many thousands of books, pamphlets, manuscripts and documents of all times and all languages, is the finest historical collection in the world.... But this great and invaluable collection, which should have gone to one of the large cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Chicago, or to one of the university towns like Cambridge, New Haven, Ithaca or Ann Arbor, is going to Syracuse, which is neither a large city nor a …

Manuscripts Processing At Syracuse: An Insider's View, Kathleen Manwaring

The Courier

After explaining the specialness of special collections, Manwaring compares the processing of books and serials, with their preselected, pre-organized content, to the processing of manuscripts, which "reflect the chaos inherent in real life." The latter requires "total immersion" in order to "discover and reflect the underlying structure of the individual's life experience" while making his or her papers accessible to scholars.

News Of The Library And The Library Associates, From Courier, Vol. Xxxiii, 1998-2001, Syracuse University Library Associates

The Courier

Post-Standard Award Citation, 1998, for David H. Starn

Post-Standard Award Citation, 1999, for Dorothea P. Nelson

Post-Standard Award Citation, 2000, for Katleen W. Rossman

Recent Acquisitions:

-Thomas Moore Papers

-Kat Ran Press (Michael Russem)

-Margaret Bourke-White Photographs

-The Werner Seligmann Papers

Library Associates Programs for 1998-99, 1999-00, and 2000-01

In Memoriam