Library and Information Science Commons^™

The Research Office And The Research Library: A Holistic Approach To The Research Cycle, Erin Huner, Bobby Glushko

Western Libraries Presentations

There is growing external pressure from funding agencies (the tricouncil of Canada), multi-levels of governance (provincial and federal funding), and communities of practice (clinicians, advocacy groups, industry) that has begun to reframe, for Universities, and researchers, how research is written and thought about in the broader context of Knowledge Mobilization/Translation

At the same time, Universities and researchers are under increasing pressure to evaluate the impact of the research they produce, and how this research has been taken up by their identified partners.

Working together, Research Western and Western Libraries are undertaking a holistic approach to account for the entirety of …

Understanding Factors That Encourage Research Productivity In Academic Librarians, Kristin Hoffmann, Selinda Berg, Denise Koufogiannakis

Western Libraries Publications

Objective – This project identifies the factors that contribute to the success of librarians as active researchers. Research success is generally aligned with productivity and output, and the authors are therefore interested in understanding the factors that encourage research productivity. This fills a gap in the literature on librarians as researchers, which has tended to focus on barriers rather than enablers.

Methods – For this quantitative study, we distributed an online survey to 1,653 potential participants across Canada and received 453 usable responses for a 27% response rate. The survey asked participants to report their research outputs and to answer …

Deception Detection And Rumor Debunking For Social Media, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Publications

Abstract

The main premise of this chapter is that the time is ripe for more extensive research and development of social media tools that filter out intentionally deceptive information such as deceptive memes, rumors and hoaxes, fake news or other fake posts, tweets and fraudulent profiles. Social media users’ awareness of intentional manipulation of online content appears to be relatively low, while the reliance on unverified information (often obtained from strangers) is at an all-time high. I argue there is need for content verification, systematic fact-checking and filtering of social media streams. This literature survey provides a background for understanding …

The Dark History Of Hathitrust, Alissa Centivany

FIMS Publications

Abstract This research explores the ways values, power, and politics shape and are shaped by digital infrastructure development through an in-depth study of HathiTrust’s “dark history,” the period of years leading up to its public launch. This research identifies and traces the emerging and iterative ways that values were surfaced and negotiated, decision making approaches were strategically modified, and relationships were strengthened, reconfigured, and sometimes abandoning through the process of generating a viable, robust and sustainable collaborative digital infrastructure. Through this history, we gain deeper understandings and appreciations of the various and sometimes surprising ways that values, power, and politics …

Mapping Metroid: Narrative, Space, And Other M, Luke Arnott

FIMS Publications

Metroid: Other M, the latest game in the Metroid series, was heavily criticized for the contradictory portrayal of its avatar protagonist, Samus Aran. This article analyzes these critiques within the 25-year history of the Metroid series, noting intersections with literary theory, cognitive science, geography, and cinema. “Mapping Metroid” argues that player dissatisfaction is a result of Other M’s inconsistency in balancing gameplay constraints with player agency, and the game’s failure at “imperative” storytelling. The maps in Other M and its predecessors are treated in depth, since the relationship between cartographic and gameworld spaces must be “read” dynamically by players to …

Questioning Reliability Assessments Of Health Information On Social Media, Nicole K. Dalmer

FIMS Publications

This narrative review examines assessments of the reliability of online health information retrieved through social media to ascertain whether health information accessed or disseminated through social media should be evaluated differently than other online health information. Several medical, library and information science, and interdisciplinary databases were searched using terms relating to social media, reliability, and health information. While social media’s increasing role in health information consumption is recognized, studies are dominated by investigations of traditional (i.e., non-social media) sites. To more richly assess constructions of reliability when using social media for health information, future research must focus on health consumers’ …

Research Data Management: A Library Practitioner’S Perspective, Siu Hong Yu

FIMS Publications

Abstract

Column description. The Future Voices in Public Services column is a forum for students in graduate library and information science programs to discuss key issues they see in academic library public services, to envision what they feel librarians in public service have to offer to academia, to tell us of their visions for the profession, or to tell us of research that is going on in library schools. Interested students can contact Nancy Dewald.

Mind The Gap: Towards The Integration Of Critical Gerontology In Public Library Praxis, Nicole K. Dalmer

FIMS Publications

Aging populations challenge public libraries to adapt their materials, services and programming to maximize the wellbeing and functional capacity of older adults and enhance their social participation and security. For older adult patrons using public library spaces and services, the capacity to which the public library has been able to deliver on these qualities remains unclear. In the past, libraries and library staff have been critiqued for narrowly interpreting the needs of older adults, concentrating on aging as a loss or deficit. To understand the current state of Canadian urban public library services for older adults, publically accessible texts, documents …

Problematizing The Digital Literacy Paradox In The Context Of Older Adults’ Ict Use: Aging, Media Discourse, And Self-Determination, Kathleen Schreuers, Anabel Quan-Haase, Kim Martin

FIMS Publications

Despite evidence of an upward trend in ICT adoption, current media discourse suggests that older adults (those 60+) lag behind in terms of engagement with digital technology. Through a survey and interviews with older adults we investigate how this population views their own digital skills, barriers to digital literacy, and the social and institutional support system they draw on for technology help. Older adults recognize their age as a factor in the adoption of technology and note differences between how they and younger generations use technology. A lack of skills and limited social and institutional support make it difficult for …

Player–Game Interaction And Cognitive Gameplay: A Taxonomic Framework For The Core Mechanic Of Videogames, Kamran Sedig, Paul Parsons, Robert Haworth

FIMS Publications

Cognitive gameplay—the cognitive dimension of a player’s experience—emerges from the interaction between a player and a game. While its design requires careful consideration, cognitive gameplay can be designed only indirectly via the design of game components. In this paper, we focus on one such component—the core mechanic—which binds a player and game together through the performance of essential interactions. Little extant research has been aimed at developing frameworks to support the design of interactions within the core mechanic with cognitive gameplay in mind. We present a taxonomic framework named INFORM (Interaction desigN For the cORe Mechanic) to address this gap. …

Stak – Serendipitous Tool For Augmenting Knowledge: A Conceptual Tool For Bridging Digital And Physical Resources, Kim Martin, Brian Greenspan, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

Humanities scholars have long claimed the importance of browsing in the library stacks as part of their research process. The digitization practices of libraries and archives, while meant to assist with preservation and access, make the physical browsing experience impossible. While there have been various attempts to recreate this experience online, none as yet has created a digital tool which users can interact with as they move through the physical material in the library. This paper aims to introduce the concept of the Serendipitous Tool for Augmenting Knowledge (STAK), a geolocative app that allows users to access material complementary to …

Crowdsourcing Law And Policy: A Design-Thinking Approach To Crowd-Civic Systems, Brian Mcinnis, Alissa Centivany, Juho Kim, Marta Pobet, Karen Levy, Gilly Leshed

FIMS Publications

Crowdsourcing technologies, strategies and methods offer new opportunities for bridging existing gaps among law, policymaking, and the lived experience of citizens. In recent years, a number of initiatives across the world have applied crowdsourcing to contexts including constitutional reform, drafting federal bills, and generating local policies. However, crowd-civic systems also come with challenges and risks such as socio-technical barriers, marginalization of specific groups, silencing of interests, etc. Using a designthinking approach, this workshop will address both opportunities and challenges of crowd-civic systems to develop best practices for increasing public engagement with law and policy. The workshop organizers will suggest an …

Literacy Requirements Of Court Documents: An Underexplored Barrier To Access To Justice, Amy Salyzyn, Lori Isaj, Brandon Piva, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

Court forms are complex. Canadians have told researchers this in numerous studies to date. For individuals who can afford lawyers, court form complexity may result in few if any adverse consequences as the legal professionals representing them have the experience and training to navigate these documents with relative ease. The story is different, however, for the increasing number of individuals who end up representing themselves in court because they cannot afford a lawyer. For those individuals – commonly referred to as “self-represented litigants” or “SRLs” – court form complexity can be a major barrier to accessing justice. As a practical …

Revisiting The Open Court Principle In An Era Of Online Publication: Questioning Presumptive Public Access To Parties’ And Witnesses’ Personal Information, Jane Bailey, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

Openness Of cOurts can serve laudable purposes, not the least of which are transparency of government and court systems and access to justice, although accounts of the open court principle’s meaning, breadth, and underlying pur- poses have expanded and shifted over time.CurrentlyinCanadathe adherence to the principle has meant presumptive access to almost all aspects of court cases, including access to personal information about parties and witness- es, encompassing not only information contained in court judgments, but also information contained in documents led in court oces. Historically, not- withstanding this presumptive access, practical obscurity has protected much of this information, in …

Dh And The Digital Archive, Cal Murgu

FIMS Publications

No abstract provided.

Visual Research In Lis: Complementary And Alternative Methods, Angela Pollak

FIMS Publications

Although visual methods are emerging as a valuable and versatile tool in qualitative social studies research, confusion around terminology, options, and best practices persists. Consequently, LIS scholars who wish to employ innovative visual approaches in their research face barriers to discovering and deciding which visual options best suit their goals. Based on a review of the literature, this article identifies and describes the scope of participatory and nonparticipatory visual methods currently in use in the social sciences, with particular attention paid to LIS contexts. While visual methods bring clear benefits to qualitative research in terms of data quality, modes of …

Motivations For Sharing News On Social Media, Lorraine (Lola) Y.C. Wong, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

Social media have become an important part of everyday communication, and a platform for sharing and ‘re-sharing’ of information. We discover news through our social networks and pass some of what we encounter along to others in those same networks. Numerous studies focus on the sharing of personal information (both online and offline) but less research examines practices related to the sharing of news—especially sharing via social media. Understanding why we choose to share news and non-personal content online is vital in a world where we increasingly turn to social media and our online social networks for news and …

“A Process Of Controlled Serendipity”: An Exploratory Study Of Historians’ And Digital Historians’ Experiences Of Serendipity In Digital Environments, K Martin, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

We investigate historians' experiences with serendipity in both physical and digital environments through an online survey. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative data analyses, our preliminary findings show that many digital historians select a specific digital environment because of the expectation that it may elicit a serendipitous experience. Historians also create heuristic methods of using digital tools to integrate elements of serendipity into their research practice. Four features of digital environments were identified by participants as supporting serendipity: exploration, highlighted triggers, allowed for keyword searching and connected them to other people.

Introduction, Karen Nicholson, Maura Seale

FIMS Publications

No abstract provided.

A Retrospective On State Of The Art Social Media Research Methods: Ethical Decisions, Big-Small Data Rivalries And The Spectre Of The 6vs, Anabel Quan-Haase, Luke Sloan

FIMS Publications

This concluding chapter offers critical reflections on some of the key themes covered in the Handbook. Ethics emerged as a concern for many scholars, both for those engaging in quantitative and qualitative approaches. Scholars agree in that there is no overarching set of rules that can be applied to all projects blindly, rather they see ethical decisions as being grounded in the specifics of the data being collected, the social group under study, and the potential repercussions for subjects. A second central theme was the value of qualitative approaches for understanding ‘anomalies’ within larger data sets. Qualitative approaches are seen …

Extending The Frbr Model: A Proposal For A Group 4, Alex Mayhew

FIMS Working Papers

The three Entity-Relationship Groups (E-R Groups) have formed the conceptual framework of cataloguing in FRBR since being established by IFLA in the late 1990s. These three groups define the entities and relationships of interest to FRBR cataloguers. Group 1 describes the Work, Expression, Manifestation, and Item, the parts that make up the whole of a catalogue record. Group 2 describes the responsibility relationships, ensuring proper attribution and ownership to people and corporations. Group 3 describes the subject relationships which include the entities of groups 1 and 2, as well as Concept, Object, Event, and Place, and function like subject headings. …

Local Actions/Global Implications: The Economic And Social Impacts Of Oa Publishing, Cal Murgu

FIMS Presentations

The second speaker will highlight the increased impact of open access publications compared to subscription-based publications, as shown in citation-based studies as well as altmetrics such as download reports. In order to access research published in a non-open access publication, readers must either be affiliated with an institution that subscribes to the publication, purchase an individual subscription, or pay to view/rent a particular article. Taking Scholarship@Western as a case in point, the second speaker will demonstrate the global impact of open access research. Because the content published in Scholarship@Western is indexed by Google and Google Scholar, researchers all around the …

Native Advertising: Ads In Disguise As Editorials, Sarah Cornwell, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Presentations

Native advertising, paid for by corporate funding, may fool news readers into thinking that they are reading investigative journalism editorials. Such misleading practice constitutes an internal threat to the profession of journalism and may further deteriorate mainstream media trust. If information users are unaware of the Native Ads original promotional nature, they may find themselves insufficiently informed or mislead by its content. This study investigates cases of Native Ads in terms of their contextual use, distinctive features, and likeness to editorials. LIS should aim to provide clear discernment guidelines and consider automated user alerts.

News Verification Suite: Towards System Design To Supplement Reporters’ And Editors’ Judgements, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Presentations

The News Verification Suite aims to provide users with a set of functions to verify information in the news. This paper offers a conceptual basis and a vision of system elements towards automated fact-checking in news production, curation, and consumption. The traditional model of journalism is compared to ‘news sharing a.s.a.p.’, highlighting similarities between journalistic criteria of excellence and LIS mandates for credibility and information quality. Potential steps for intervention with text-analytical technologies are identified – deception detection, rumor busting, satire labeling; they are nascent but feasible. Automated news verification can support and supplement news producers’ and news readers’ decision-making.

Perceptions Of Clickbait: A Q-Methodology Approach, Yimin Chen, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Presentations

Clickbait is “content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page” (“clickbait,” n.d.). The term is also generally used to refer specifically to the attention-grabbing headlines. Critics of clickbait argue that clickbait is shallow, misleading, and ubiquitous – “a new word that has become synonymous with online journalism” (Frampton, 2015). It is the subject of a small, but growing number of studies in disciplines ranging from linguistics, communications, and information sciences. Palau-Sampio (2016) analyzed linguistic strategies associated with tabloid journalism in the Spanish digital newspaper Elpais.com, concluding that …

Deception Detection & Rumor Debunking, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Presentations

(1) Deception Detection and (2) Rumor Debunking, as the title suggests,and I will argue for the need of hybrid methods (in a combination of the two). My main goal here is to point researchers interested in social media research towards these 2 exciting fields. I predict that such technologies (with more R&D, as they mature) will become indispensable in our attention-economy. Content producers are rushed to be first in the news stream, and social media consumers simply don’t have time or energy to verify content that is pushed at them.

Web Literacy For Student Fact-Checkers, Mike Caulfield

Textbooks

The web gives us many such strategies and tactics and tools, which, properly used, can get students closer to the truth of a statement or image within seconds. For some reason we have decided not to teach students these specific techniques. As many people have noted, the web is both the largest propaganda machine ever created and the most amazing fact-checking tool ever invented. But if we haven't taught our students those capabilities is it any surprise that propaganda is winning?

This is an unabashedly practical guide for the student fact-checker. It supplements generic information literacy with the specific web-based …

Digital Library And Open Access Initiatives: Responses, Strategies And Emerging Trends, Kishor Chandra Satpathy

Edited Books

No abstract provided.

Himmelfarb Library Liaison Letter - January 2017, George Washington University, Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library

Himmelfarb Library Liaison Letters

No abstract provided.

Creating Learning Outcomes From Threshold Concepts For Information Literacy Instruction, Allison Hosier

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Threshold concepts theory and learning outcomes represent two different ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Finding a way to translate between the two is necessary for librarians who may wish to use concepts from the Framework for Information Literacy to shape their instruction. The following article outlines a process for transforming concepts from the “Scholarship as Conversation” frame into learning outcomes that the author developed as part of a tutorial project. This process can easily be adapted to a variety of instructional situations.