School of Information and Library Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

INLS 881/882, Research Issues and Questions I & II
Fall 2007 & Spring 2008

Schedule

Syllabus / Assignments /

Session 1: August 21, Introductions; Scope of ILS; Being a doctoral student
What are your current interests? What does it mean to pursue those interests as a doctoral student?

Session 2: August 28, Scope of ILS, continued
What subjects and approaches characterize information and library science? What other topics should we add to this list? Whom should we invite to speak to us?
Interest groups will be formed.

• Bates, M. (1999). The invisible substrate of information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1043-1050. [UNC libraries]
• Buckland, M.K. (1991). Information as thing. Journal of the American Society for Information science, 42(5), 351-360. [UNC libraries]
• Saracevic, T. (1999). Information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1051-1063. [UNC libraries]
• Clark, A. (1999). An embodied cognitive science? Trends in Cognitive Science, 3(9), 345-351. [Available via UNC libraries]
• Optional: Case, D.O. (2002). The concept of information. In Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior. Amsterdam: Academic Press, 40-63. [SILS reserves - ZA3075 .C36 2002]
• Optional: Bates, M. (2006). Fundamental forms of information. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 57(8), 1033-1045. [UNC libraries]
• Optional: He, S. (2003). Informatics: A brief survey. The Electronic Library, 21(2), 117-122.

Session 3: September 4, Faculty tour
The SILS faculty will be invited to participate in a "5-minute madness" (i.e., brief) overview of their current research interests.

• Alter, S., & Dennis, A. R. (2002). Selecting research topics: Personal experiences and speculations for the future. Communications of the AIS, 8, article 21. [UNC libraries]
• Scan the web pages or vitae of SILS faculty

Session 4: September 11, Theory
Day 4 Notes

What is theory? Why do researchers use/need theory? Note that we'll revisit this topic toward the end of the spring semester, after we've thought more about it.

• Case, D.O. (2002). Theories (section 7.2), and Sources of theory in information seeking (section 7.3). In Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior. Amsterdam: Academic Press, 135-140. [SILS reserves - ZA3075 .C36 2002]
• Gregor, S. (2006). The nature of theory in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 30(3), 611-642. [EBSCOhost]
• Optional: Pettigrew, K., & McKechnie, L. (2001). The use of theory in information science research. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 52(1), 62-73. [UNC libraries]
• Optional: Holmstrom, J., & Truex, D. (2003). Social theory in IS research: Some recommendations for informed adaptation of social theories in IS research. Proceedings of the Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systems, 2850-2856. [Search via AIS eLibrary]

Session 5: September 18, Reading and writing in ILS; Literature reviews
Day 5 Notes

What is a literature review? Why are they important for researchers? How do I find and analyze the literature that's most pertinent to my research questions? How do I write up what I've learned, and get it published?

Read at least two of the following:

• Webster, J., & Watson, R. (2002). Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review. MIS Quarterly, 26(2), xiii-xxiii. [EBSCOhost]
• Hart, C. (1998). Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination. London: SAGE. [SILS reserves - H62 .H2566 1998]
  • Chapter 2, Reviewing and the research imagination
  • Chapter 7, Writing the review
• Ashford, S. J. B. (1996). The publishing process: The struggle for meaning. In Frost, P., & Taylor, M. S. (eds.), Rhythms of Academic Life: Personal Accounts of Careers in Academia. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 119-127. [SILS reserves - LB1778.2 .R59 1996]
• Mingers, J. (2002). The long and winding road: Getting papers published in top journals. Communications of the AIS, 8, article 22. [UNC libraries]
• Romanelli, E. (1996). Becoming a reviewer: Lessons somewhat painfully learned. In Frost, P., & Taylor, M. S. (eds.), Rhythms of Academic Life: Personal Accounts of Careers in Academia. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 263-267. [SILS reserves - LB1778.2 .R59 1996]
• Koh, C. E. (2003). IS journal review process: A survey on IS research practices and journal review issues. Information & Management, 40(8), 743-756. [UNC libraries]
• Syrett, K.L., & Rudner, L.M. (1996). Authorship ethics. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 5(1). http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=5&n=1
• Clarke, R. (2006). Plagiarism by academics: More complex than it seems. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 7(2), 91-121. [UNC libraries]

Session 6: September 25, Doctoral student tour
The SILS doctoral students will be invited to participate in a "5-minute madness" (i.e., brief) overview of their current research interests.

• Scan the web pages or vitae of the current doctoral students
• Scan at least four dissertations done by SILS students

Session 7: October 2, Interest group presentations
Each interest group will be invited to present a summary of what they've learned. Assigned readings will be selected by the interest groups.

• Knowledge Representation: Hollie & Jed
• Marketing in Libraries and Information Science: Cindy & Elisabeth
• Challenges and Prospects of Information Seeking Behavior Across Cultures: Alice & Amber
• Information Retrieval in Medicine: Laura & Weimao

Session 8: October 9, Information needs and their expression

Interest Group Presentations continued

• Learning in social information contexts: Jacob & Laura
• Bibliometrics: Cassidy, Rachael & Simon

It could be argued that the raison d'etre of the ILS profession is to bring together information that has been created with the people who need it for their own purposes. This will be the first of a series of sessions examining the processes by which this professional goal can be reached. We'll begin from the perspective of the person needing information.

• Wilson, T. D. (1997). Information behaviour: An interdisciplinary perspective. Information Processing & Management, 33(4), 551-572. [UNC libraries]
• Belkin, N. J. (1980). Anomalous states of knowledge as a basis for information retrieval. Canadian Journal of Information Science, 5, 133-145. [SILS reserves]
• Savolainen, R. (1993). The sense-making theory: Reviewing the interests of a user-centered approach to information seeking and use. Information Processing & Management, 29(1), 13-28. [SILS reserves]
• Taylor, R. S. (1968). Question-negotiation and information seeking in libraries. College & Research Libraries, 29(3), 178-194. [SILS reserves]

Session 9: October 16, Information seeking behaviors: models and methods
When someone experiences an information need, what happens next? How can we study people's responses to their information needs?

• Chatman, E. (1999). A theory of life in the round. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(3), 207-217. [UNC libraries]
• Chatman, E. (1996). The impoverished life-world of outsiders. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 47(3), 193-206. [UNC libraries]
• Choo, C. W., Detlor, B., & Turnbull, D. (1999). Information seeking on the Web - an integrated model of browsing and searching. Proceedings of ASIST, 3-16. [http://choo.fis.utoronto.ca/fis/respub/asis99/]
• Ellis, D. (1993). Modeling the information-seeking patterns of academic researchers: a grounded theory approach. Library Quarterly, 63(4), 469-486. [EBSCOhost]
• Erdelez, S. (2004). Investigation of information encountering in the controlled research environment. Information Processing & Management, 40(6), 1013-1025. [UNC libraries]
• Ingwersen, P. (1982). Search procedures in the library--Analyzed from the cognitive point of view. Journal of Documentation, 38(3), 165-191. [SILS reserves]
• Kuhlthau, C. C. (1991). Inside the search process: Information seeking from the user's perspective. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42(5), 361-371. [UNC libraries]
• Vakkari, P., Pannanen, M., & Serola, S. (2003). Changes of search terms and tactics while writing a research proposal: a longitudinal case study. Information Processing & Management, 39(3), 445-464. [UNC libraries]

October 23, ASIST, no class

Session 10:October 30 , Creation of knowledge; The scholarly publication process
The information life cycle begins when someone records their current knowledge. These information objects are of great interest to information professionals, and their later use is affected by how they are created and recorded.

• Buckland, M. (1997). What is a "document"? Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(9), 804-809. [UNC libraries]
• Bichel, R., & Cheney, D. (2004). The information cycle: How today's events are tomorrow's information. http://www.libraries.psu.edu/instruction/infocycle/infocycle.html.
• Cronin, B. (2004). Bowling alone together: Academic writing as distributed cognition. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 55(6), 557-560. [UNC libraries]
• Birnholz, J.P. (2006). What does it mean to be an author? The intersection of credit, contribution, and collaboration in science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 57(13), 1758-1770. [UNC libraries]
• Monastersky, R. (2005, Oct. 14). The number that's devouring science. Chronicle of Higher Education, 52(8), A12 (Section: Research & Publishing). [http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i08/08a01201.htm]
• Cronin, B., & Meho, L. (2006). Using the h-index to rank influential information scientists. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 57(9), 1275-1278. [UNC libraries]
• Marchionini, G., Solomon, P., Davis, C. & Russell, T. (2006).  Information and library science MPACT: A preliminary analysis.  Library & Information Science Research, 28, 480-500.

November 6. No class

Session 11: November 13, Oral presentation (and videotaping) of mini-reviews

2:15-2:30 Jed Dube: Representation of High-level Semantic Concepts of Films

2:30-2:45 Alice Etim: Using ICT to develop the Base of the Pyramid (BoP)

2:45-3:00 Weimao Ke: Collaborative Filtering

3:00-3:15 Jacob Kramer-Duffield Social nework software

3:15-3:30 break 3:30-3:45 Elisabeth Leonard: new product development as it relates to innovation

3:45-4:00 Laura Marcial: Diffusion of Innovation in Healthcare

4:00-4:15 Cynthia Schmidt: marketing in school libraries

4:15-4:30 Cassidy Sugimoto: interdisciplinarity and collaboration

Session 12: November 20, Representing/describing knowledge objects so they can be retrieved
Information/knowledge objects may exist, but they are not useful unless the person needing them can discover them. One important role of the information professional is to represent and organize information/knowledge objects in ways that support effective information retrieval.

2:15-2:30 Rachael Clemens: Visual literacy

2:30-2:45 Simon Spiro: 2:45-3:00 Hollie White: Classification of science

• Sowa, J. (2000). Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations. Brooks/Cole. [SILS reserves - Q387 .S68 2000]
  • Chapter 1
• Brachman, R.J., & Levesque, H.J. (eds.) (1985). Readings in Knowledge Representation. Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann. [SILS reserves - Q335 .R43 1985]
  • Introduction, xiii-xix
• Miller, G. (1995). WordNet: A lexical database for English. Communications of the ACM, 38(11), 39-41. [ACM Digital Library]

Session 13: November 27, Organizing knowledge objects so they can be retrieved
In addition to describing individual knowledge objects, information professionals develop schemes (including semantic frameworks, ontologies, etc.) to organize collections of objects.

• Jacob, E. K. (2004). Classification and categorization: A difference that makes a difference. Library Trends, 52(3), 515-540. [EBSCOhost]
• Berners-Lee, T. (1998). Semantic web road map [draft]. [http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html]
• Kwasnik, B. (1999). The role of classification in knowledge representation and discovery. Library Trends, 48(1), 22-47. [EBSCOhost]
• Bruza, P.D., Song, D.W., & Wong, K.F. (2000). Aboutness from a commonsense perspective. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(12), 1090-1105. [UNC libraries]
• Listen to: Schachter, J., Butterfield, S., Wales, J., & Shirky, C. (2005). Folksonomy: How I learned to stop worrying and love the mess. Panel discussion from ETech 2005.[http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail464.html]
• Hawking, D. & Zobel, J. (2007). Does topic metadata help with web search? Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 58(5), 613-628.

Session 14: Day to be determined (Dec 6 or 7 suggested). Class dinner meeting and reflections

Tuesday, December 11, 5:00: Second (written) mini-review due

Spring 2008 Semester

Session 15: January 15, Writing a research proposal; Research with human subjects

• A guide to the IRB process. http://ohre.unc.edu/guide_to_irb.php.
• Robson, C. (2002). Real World Research. 2nd ed. Blackwell. [SILS reserves - H62 .R627 2002] Appendix A: Writing a project proposal, 526-53
• Dalton, R., & Siverson, R. (1998). Gee! I've never spent $5.5 million before: The six fallacies of NSF proposal writing. PS: Political Science and Politics, 31(1), 74-76. [JSTOR]
• Optional, but do take a look at the figure: Locke, L.F., Spirduso, W.W., & Silverman, S.J. (1992). Developing proposals: Some common problems. In Galliers, R. (ed.), Information Systems Research: Issues, Methods and Practical Guidelines. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific, 182-207. [SILS reserves - T58.6 .I515 1992]
• Optional: Trochim, W.M.K. (2006). Research Methods Knowledge Base.
  • Foundations: Philosophy of Research, http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/philosophy.php
  • Foundations: Conceptualizing, http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/resprob.php
• Optional: Metoyer-Duran, C., & Hernon, P. (1994). Problem statements in research proposals and published research: A case study of researchers' viewpoints. Library & Information Science Research, 16(2), 105-118. [SILS reserves]

Session 16: January 22, Interdisciplinary research issues

• Bronstein, L. R. (2003). A model for interdisciplinary collaboration. Social Work, 48(3), 297-306. [EBSCOhost]
• Kouzes, R.T., Myers, J.D., & Wulf, W.A. (1996). Collaboratories: Doing science on the internet. IEEE Computer, 29(8), 40-46. [UNC libraries]
• NSF Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. (2003). Revolutionizing Science and Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure: Executive Summary. http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/ExecSum.pdf. (Full report available at http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/report.pdf).
• Nissani, M. (1997). Ten cheers for interdisciplinarity: The case for interdisciplinary knowledge and research. Social Science Journal, 34(2), 201-216. [EBSCOhost, html only]
• Optional: Pierce, S. (1999). Boundary crossing in research literature as a means of interdisciplinary information transfer. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(3), 271-279. [UNC libraries]

Session 17: January 29, Interdisciplinary research by the SILS faculty

• Informatics in health arenas (faculty participation to be determined)

Session 18: February 5, Information seeking processes
The processes by which people find the information they need are of interest to both practitioners and researchers in ILS.

• Bates, M. (1989). The design of browsing and berrypicking techniques for the online search interface. Online Review, 13(5), 407-424. [SILS reserves]
• Borlund, P. (2003). The concept of relevance in IR. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 54(10), 913-925. [UNC libraries]
• Vakkari, P. (1999). Task complexity, information types, search strategies and relevance: Integrating studies on information seeking and retrieval. Information Processing & Management, 35(6), 819-837. [UNC libraries]
• Optional: Hert, C.A. (1997). What do we know about user behavior on information retrieval systems? In Understanding Information Retrieval Interactions: Theoretical and Practical Implications. Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 13-50. [SILS - ZA4060 .H67 1997]

Session 19: February 12, Information retrieval systems
Information retrieval systems provide access to recorded information/knowledge objects. The design and evaluation of such systems is a core area of research in ILS.

• Baeza-Yates, R., & Ribeiro-Neto, B. (1999). Modern Information Retrieval. ACM Press, Addison-Wesley. [SILS reserves - Z667 .B34 1999]
  • Chapter 1, Introduction, 1-18
• Croft, W. B. (ed.) (2000). Advances in Information Retrieval: Recent Research from the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval. Boston: Kluwer. [Available via UNC libraries; search in NetLibrary]
  • Chapter 1, Combining approaches to information retrieval, 1-36
• Kekalainen, J., & Jarvelin, K. (2002). Evaluating information retrieval systems under the challenges of interaction and multidimensional dynamic relevance. Proceedings of the 4th CoLIS Conference, 252-270. [http://www.info.uta.fi/tutkimus/fire/archive/JK05.pdf]
• Allan, J., Aslam, J., Belkin, N., Buckley, C., Callan, J., Croft, B., Dumais, S., Fuhr, N., Harman, D., Harper, D. J., Hiemstra, D., Hofmann, T., Hovy, E., Kraaij, W., Lafferty, J., Lavrenko, V., Lewis, D., Liddy, L., Manmatha, R., McCallum, A., Ponte, J., Prager, J., Radev, D., Resnik, P., Robertson, S., Rosenfeld, R., Roukos, S., Sanderson, M., Schwartz, R., Singhal, A., Smeaton, A., Turtle, H., Voorhees, E., Weischedel, R., Xu, J., and Zhai, C. 2003. Challenges in information retrieval and language modeling: report of a workshop held at the center for intelligent information retrieval, University of Massachusetts Amherst, September 2002. SIGIR Forum 37, 1 (Apr. 2003), 31-47. http://www.sigir.org/forum/S2003/ir-challenges2.pdf.
• Session 20: February 19. SILS Faculty IR research (guests to be determined)

Session 21: February 26, Faculty presentations

• 2:00-3:00, Leadership in libraries
• 3:15-4:30, Personal information management
  • 
    

Session 22: March 4, Faculty presentations

• 2:00-3:20, Cultural memory institutions
• 3:30-4:30, Preservation

March 11: Spring break, no class

Session 24: March 18, Discussion of seminal and current works; Faculty presentations

• 3:20-4:30, Workforce issues

Session 25: March 25, Faculty presentations

• 2:00-3:00, Children and young adults as readers/information users
• 3:15-4:30, Digital libraries

Session 26: April 1, Seminal and current article; Inspirational works/events
Each class member's selections will be discussed

Session 27: April 8 No Class (CHI Conference) What have you learned? Re-read the description of your interests that you posted to the class list last August. Have they changed? In what way? What research opportunities and hot topics interest you? How do you want to contribute to them in the next year? During the rest of your doctoral studies? Afterwards? What do you need to learn to accomplish these goals?

Session 28: April 15, Review of 2007-2008 journals (JASIST, IP&M, LISR)

Session 29: April 22, Final presentations

Tuesday, April 29: Final product due

Syllabus / Assignments /

Creative Commons Non-Commercial Sharealike with Attribution