Library and Information Science Commons^™

Harold Innis And The Greek Tradition: An Essay Concerning His Ontological Transformation, Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

The transition of Harold Innis’ work from staples research to communications studies commonly is understood to have been an extension of his earlier research rather than a dramatic break from it. While in agreement, we argue that a significant transformation in Innis’s ontology (but not his epistemology) also took place. This can be understood by referencing his concerns about the fate of civilization and his views on the prospectively strategic role of what he called the Greek tradition. To explain this, herein we concentrate on Innis’ largely forgotten book Political Economy in the Modern State, initiated in 1943 and …

Older Adults And Information And Communication Technologies In The Global North, Molly-Gloria R. Harper, Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

At all ages, people are incorporating information and communication technologies (ICTs) into their lives. It is not that they have stopped talking with each other in-person, it is that ICTs complement their interactions when they cannot be together face-to-face. Since the 1990s, email has provided a routine way to stay in touch and sustain meaningful contact over distance. But not all age groups have adopted ICTs with the same enthusiasm. Research in the Global North has consistently reported that age plays an important role in ICT adoption and use (Anderson and Perrin 2017). For example, older adults have been the …

Situating Wikipedia As A Health Information Resource In Various Contexts: A Scoping Review, Denise Smith

FIMS Publications

Background

Wikipedia’s health content is the most frequently visited resource for health information on the internet. While the literature provides strong evidence for its high usage, a comprehensive literature review of Wikipedia’s role within the health context has not yet been reported.

Objective

To conduct a comprehensive review of peer-reviewed, published literature to learn what the existing body of literature says about Wikipedia as a health information resource and what publication trends exist, if any.

Methods

A comprehensive literature search in OVID Medline, OVID Embase, CINAHL, LISTA, Wilson’s Web, AMED, and Web of Science was performed. Through a two-stage screening …

Appendix A: Interview Guide With Privacy-Related Questions (Full Version), Anabel Quan-Haase, Dennis Ho

FIMS Publications

Interview Guide: Networked individualism, East York Project

Survey Research: Useful, Valuable Findings Require Hard Work, Kristin Hoffmann, Selinda Berg

Western Libraries Publications

Gathering data using a survey is often perceived by practitioner-researchers as one of the easiest ways to carry out research; however, a well-constructed survey can be difficult to develop. Librarian practitioner-researchers often use surveys as an economical and easy way to capture information from a wide swath of people. Once the information is gathered, however, the application and usability of the data is often limited and can fall short of the standards of scholarship. Librarian practitioner-researchers may also default to a survey when it is not the most effective tool for data gathering. But when surveys are designed well and …

Keep@Downsview: An Evolving Shared Print Project, Harriet Rykse

Western Libraries Publications

Keep@Downsview is a shared print partnership between six Canadian academic institutions. This article describes the evolution of the partnership from what began as simply an operationally focused collaboration for shared preservation space, in order to release collections space in on-campus libraries, to a partnership that is involved in the larger shared print discussions in North America and which has refocused its strategic directions enabling a more intentional evolution of the partnership.

Four strategic directions were identified prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. Since the onset of Covid-19 it has become apparent that several influencing factors related to the pandemic …

Data Rescue & Curation Best Practices Guide, Ocul Data Community (Odc) Data Rescue Group

Western Libraries Publications

he aim of the Data Rescue & Curation Best Practices Guide is to provide an accessible and hands-on approach to handling data rescue and digital curation of at-risk data for use in secondary research. We provide a set of examples and workflows for addressing common challenges with social science survey data that can be applied to other social and behavioural research data. The goal of this guide and set of workflows presented is to improve librarians’ and data curators’ skills in providing access to high-quality, well-documented, and reusable research data. The aspects of data curation that are addressed throughout this …

Resurrecting Images From The Morgue: A Case Study Of The London Free Press Collection Of Photographic Negatives, Tom Belton

Western Libraries Publications

This paper is a case study of the ongoing transformation of the London Free Press Collection of Photographic Negatives from a physical archive to a digital one. This Collection is a typical medium-sized newspaper photographic negative morgue dating between 1938 and 1992. These morgues possess enormous value as visual evidence of the development of communities, and society in general. The London Free Press serves a market of around a million people in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. The Collection’s current custodian, the University of Western Ontario Archives and Special Collections, is in the process of transforming it from a purely physical entity …

Politics And Porn: How News Media Characterizes Problems Presented By Deepfakes, Critical Studies In Media Communication, Chandell E. Gosse, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

“Deepfake” is a form of machine learning that creates fake videos by superimposing the face of one person on to the body of another in a new video. The technology has been used to create non-consensual fake pornography and sexual imagery, but there is concern that it will soon be used for politically nefarious ends. This study seeks to understand how the news media has characterized the problem(s) presented by deepfakes. We used discourse analysis to examine news articles about deepfakes, finding that news media discuss the problems of deepfakes in four ways: as (too) easily produced and distributed; as …

The Sociological Imagination In Studies Of Communication, Information Technologies, And Media: Citams As An Invisible College, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria Harper, Shelley Boulianne

FIMS Publications

In this 2020 CITAMS special issue of Information, Communication & Society, we bring together an important body of work that draws on the sociological imagination to ask critical questions of our times. We selected nine papers that represent both the breadth of sociological work taking place within CITAMS as well as the diversity of its members. CITAMS is welcoming of a range of perspectives in more than one way. We welcome studies of a range of tools and practices. For example, Kadylak and Cotten (this volume) study the willingness of older adults to use six different emerging technologies in …

Matching Made In Heaven: Collections And Metadata Collaboration For Print Preservation, Alie Visser, Erin Johnson, Christina Zoricic

Western Libraries Publications

Following the trend of repurposing library space to meet modern user needs, Western University is undergoing a planned revitalization and renovation of its largest library on campus. As a result, 500,000 items will need to be shifted to other locations or off-site storage. In this session we will outline the impact of metadata work in shifting this large collection of material to a shared print preservation storage facility, in coordination with Western University’s Keep@Downsview partnership (https://downsviewkeep.org/). Keep@Downsview is a partnership of five universities to preserve the scholarly record in Ontario in a shared, high-density storage and preservation facility. We will …

Disability And Accessibility Language In Subject Headings And Social Tags, Mackenzie Johnson, Carlie Forsythe

FIMS Publications

Mackenzie Johnson and Carlie Forsythe’s article on disability and accessibility language in subject headings and social tagging stresses the importance of involving subject experts in the creation of subject headings, and of getting the headings right to allow effective information retrieval. The authors also assess the ‘third way’, of semi-structured, moderated social tagging systems, that lies between fully controlled vocabularies and free social tagging.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like The Whole User? The Construction Of Worthy And Problematic Users In Online Discussions Of The Public Library, Pam Mckenzie

FIMS Publications

In this article I use a discursive approach and the concept of the ‘category entitlement’ to analyse the ways that contributors to a public Internet discussion of the value of the public library make cases for different user characteristics and behaviour as ‘worthy’ or ‘problematic’, and use these characteristics to discuss and debate the kinds of individuals and the kinds of behaviour that properly belong to each category. Contributors to the discussion represented users in three categories: a fluid ‘everyone’, which included people represented as being disadvantaged and in legitimate need of the library’s resources, expertise, and support; the user …

Matching Made In Heaven: Collections And Metadata Collaboration For Print Preservation, Erin Johnson, Alie Visser, Christina Zoricic

Western Libraries Presentations

Following the trend of re-purposing library space to meet modern user needs, Western University is undergoing a planned revitalization and renovation of its largest library on campus. As a result, 500,000 items will need to be shifted to other locations or off-site storage. In this session we will outline the impact of metadata work in shifting this large collection of material to a shared print preservation storage facility, in coordination with Western University’s Keep@Downsview partnership (https://downsviewkeep.org/). Keep@Downsview is a partnership of five universities to preserve the scholarly record in Ontario in a shared, high-density storage and preservation facility. …

Demystifying Wikipedia, Alie Visser, Erin Johnson

Western Libraries Presentations

Wikipedia: we all know it, and we all use it. As the 5th most visited website in the world, the English version of Wikipedia was viewed 92 billion times last year. Yet, in its short history, libraries have historically stigmatized this resource for its crowd-sourced editing system and inconsistent source quality. Increasingly, librarians from around the world are collaborating with Wikimedia to improve its authority by linking to open resources, hosting edit-a-thons, and integrating our organizational structures into Wikidata. In this workshop, we will highlight the power of the platform, the overlapping values of libraries and Wikipedia, and how both …

"Being In Time": New Public Management, Academic Librarians, And The Temporal Labor Of Pink-Collar Public Service Work, Karen P. Nicholson

FIMS Publications

Time is a site of power, one that enacts particular subjectivities and relationships. In the workplace, time enables and constrains performance, attitudes, and behaviors. In this qualitative research study, I examine the impact of the values and practices of new public management on academic librarians’ experiences of time when engaged in pink-collar public service (reference and information literacy) work. Data gathered during semi-structured interviews with twenty-four public service librarians in Canadian public research-intensive universities, members of the U15 Group, serve as a site of analysis for this study. Interview data were first analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) …

Licensing And ‘Big Deal’ Analysis At Western : Provost’S Task Force On Open Access & Scholarly Communications, Samuel Cassady, Shawn Hendrikx

Western Libraries Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Transformation Of A Newspaper Negative Archive, Tom Belton

Western Libraries Presentations

No abstract provided.

Conceptions Of Research Among Academic Librarians And Archivists, Lise Doucette, Kristin Hoffmann

Western Libraries Publications

Academic librarians and archivists occupy a unique role as researchers and as practitioners who support faculty and student researchers. However, the ways in which librarians and archivists think about research is largely unexamined, while faculty conceptions of research have been studied extensively. In this study, we analyzed drawings and interviews of 25 Canadian academic librarians and archivists and identified six conceptions of research: research is a shared, community experience; research leads to learning and growth; research is influenced by personal and professional experience; research is a process involving interrelated components; research involves refining and answering a question; research by librarians …

Racialized Youth And The Public Library: A Critical Race Theory Approach To Program Utilization And Effectiveness, Amber Matthews

FIMULAW

My research aims to reverse racial neutrality in public libraries by demonstrating how ambivalence about race perpetuates systemic inequalities and the disengagement of racialized youth. It draws on interdisciplinary research to show how the race-blind approach is not reflective of the needs of communities being served. Using a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework, I show that public libraries can implement processes to gather race-specific data under the recently-implemented Anti-Racism Act (2017). This will provide a contextual understanding of the racial make-up of users and provide a valuable frame of reference to support efforts to build stronger and more effective relationships.

The Role Of Embodied Information In Becoming Anti-Fragile: Through The Lens Of Ultramarathon Running, Jeremy Thompson

FIMULAW

Individuals are capable of putting their bodies and minds through incredible challenges and hardships, accomplishing goals that were thought to be impossible. Through these embodied informationally rich experiences, the potential to become stronger or rather anti-fragile in the face of physical and emotional adversity, may lead to strengthened mental health and the ability to cope well with future adversity. Using an ethnographic methodological approach centering on autoethnography, this proposed research asks ‘using the case of ultramarathon running, how do embodied information experiences in nature support antifragility and mental health and wellness?’

Student-Run Journals And Experiential Learning: Introducing Emerging Library & Information Perspectives, Meghan Kirkland

FIMULAW

Beginning in 2017 the Masters of Library and Information Science program decided to put together a student-run open access academic journal that would be tied together with a scholarly communication and open access course. This journal, Emerging Library & Information Perspectives (ELIP), was developed so that it coincided with course content and allowed students enrolled in the class experiential learning as peer reviewers. ELIP is published digitally and physically by the FIMS Graduate Library using Open Journal Systems, a free and open source software developed by the Public Knowledge Project.

Expectations Of Canadian Life, Actual Post-Arrival Experience, And Pre-Arrival Information Seeking: Results From A Study On Bangladeshi Immigrants In Canada, Nafiz Zaman Shuva

FIMULAW

In this poster, I present findings from my doctoral study on the transitional information practices of Bangladeshi immigrants in Ontario, focusing on the tensions between pre-arrival expectations and actual experiences of Canadian life and on pre-arrival information practices. I conducted surveys (n=205) and semi-structured interviews (n=58) to understand my participants’ settlement information practices. It is evident in my study that there is a significant gap in Bangladeshi immigrants’ expectations of Canadian life and actual post-arrival experience that can be analyzed in terms of information experience, especially in terms of employment expectations and mental preparedness for changes in life circumstances.

Making Sense Of Sense-Making: Uncovering Dervin’S Hermeneutic Intentions, Roger Chabot

FIMULAW

Brenda Dervin’s Sense-Making metatheory is a popular theory within Library and Information for helping to describe the nature of information needs and the seeking of information. However, both Savolainen (1999) and Kari (2001) have noted how Dervin is surprisingly vague about gap-bridging, a fundamental component of her theory and ultimately fails to describe how sense is actually made (Kari, 2001, p. 36). However, Dervin notes that individuals construct “interpretive bridges over a gappy reality” (Dervin, 1999b, p. 730), suggesting that the crux of Sense-Making is a hermeneutic process. Based on a textual analysis (McKee, 2003) of Dervin’s writing on Sense-Making …

A News Verification Browser For The Detection Of Clickbait, Satire, And Falsified News, Victoria Rubin, Chris Brogly, Nadia Conroy, Yimin Chen, Sarah E. Cornwell, Toluwase V. Asubiaro

FIMS Publications

The LiT.RL News Verification Browser is a research tool for news readers, journalists, editors or information professionals. The tool analyzes the language used in digital news web pages to determine if they are clickbait, satirical news, or falsified news, and visualizes the results by highlighting content in color-coded categories. Although the clickbait, satire, and falsification detectors perform to certain accuracy levels on test data, during real-world internet use accuracy may vary. The browser is not a replacement for digital literacy and is not always correct. All processing is completed on the local machine - results are not sent to or …

Using Gis And Mapping Tools To Access And Visualize Archival Records: Case Studies And Survey Results Of North American Archivists And Historians, Tom Belton

Western Libraries Publications

Online map interfaces and GIS software are means of accessing and visualizing archival holdings associated strongly with places. This article investigates the possibility of an interest among at least some archivists and historians in finding records based on place names and maps. A review of recent tools and case studies on map-based methods of seeking and visualizing information in archives and special collections provides a current overview. A 2015 survey gathered additional information from archivists as to whether they place a high priority on, and are comfortable with, map-based methods, as well as to what extent their patron groups might …

Educators' Perceptions Of Information Literacy And Skills Required To Spot ‘Fake News’, Victoria Rubin, Nicole Delellis

FIMS Publications

This research examines the concept of ‘fake news’ in the context of information literacy (IL) in a post‐secondary educational setting. Educators' perceptions shape both IL curricula and classroom discussions with students. We conducted 18 interviews with members of 3 integral groups implementing IL education (8 professors, 6 librarians, 4 department chairs). Interviews explored participants' perceptions of: IL education, perceived skills associated with IL, skills required to spot ‘fake news’, and gauged our participants' willingness to incorporate segments dedicated to detecting ‘fake news’ in IL curriculum. Our qualitative findings identify a substantial overlap that exists between skills associated with IL and …

What Am I Reading?: Article-Style Native Advertisements In Canadian Newspapers, Victoria Rubin, Sarah Cornwell

FIMS Presentations

Native ads are ubiquitous in the North American digital news context. Their form, content and presentational style are practically indistinguishable from regular news editorials, and thus are often mistaken for informative content by newsreaders. This advertising practice is deceptive, in that it exploits loopholes in human digital literacy. Despite this, it is flourishing as a lucrative digital news advertising format. This paper documents and compares the 2018 Canadian news editorial writing and advertising practices in an effort to highlight their similarities and differences for potential automatic detection and categorization. We collected 10 native ads and 10 editorial pieces from 4 …

Building And Maintaining Lgbtq+ Picture Book Collections, Alissa Droog, Danielle Bettridge, Alyssa R. Martin, Ashleigh Yates-Mackay

FIMS Publications

The LGBTQ+ community has had to continuously fight for their rights, including their right to be represented in the library. This toolkit provides instruction on how to develop and manage a library collection of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books. It is split into four sections that include a guide to evaluating materials, recommended picture books, a guide to fighting censorship, and a list of recommended resources.

Roll For Initiative: A Player’S Guide To Tabletop Role-Playing Games In Libraries, Carlie Forsythe

FIMS Publications

Independent study exploring the history of tabletop role-playing games, their intrinsic benefits, and how they can be implemented into library collections and programs. I also explore the accessibility of tabletop role-playing games and how they can be made more accessible. To conclude, I present a series of recommendations and valuable resources for librarians and enthusiasts.