Research

Bio:

Jeffrey Pomerantz is an Associate Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his Ph.D. from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, and his MS(LIS) from Simmons College. Much of Pomerantz's work has been on digital reference services, and the integration of physical library-style services into digital libraries. Pomerantz's recent work has involved evaluations of collaborative online library services.

Research Interests:

Digital libraries, Digital reference, Question answering, Electronic publishing

Current Projects:

2006 - 2007	State Library of North Carolina Library Services and Technology Act Program Evaluation A study funded by the State Library of North Carolina (SLNC) to evaluate the impact of Library Services & Technology Act (LSTA) funds in North Carolina over the course of the SLNC's 5-year LSTA Plan 2003-07.
2006	The Return on Investment of Collaborative Virtual Reference Service A study to quantify the ROI associated with the implementation of a collaborative virtual reference service. The impact that participating in NCknows, a statewide chat-based reference service in North Carolina, has on participating libraries was identified, in terms of the monetary and non-priced costs and benefits incurred.
2006	Evaluability Assessment of Statewide Chat Reference Services A proof-of-concept meta-assessment of statewide virtual reference services. Variables that may be fruitfully compared across services, the "state of the art" of virtual reference services, and an essential baseline that existing and future services may use in evaluating their own performance were identified.
2006 - 2008	Curriculum Development: Digital Libraries A collaborative research project with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Department of Computer Science. Curriculum development for programs in Computer Science and Information and Library Science emphasizing digital libraries, consistent with the Computing Curriculum 2001 (CC2001), a joint effort of ACM and IEEE-CS, defining curricula for computer science.

Past Projects:

2004 - 2005	State Library of North Carolina Needs Assessment and Marketing Study A study funded by the State Library of North Carolina (SLNC) to determine how the SLNC can position itself as the primary information source for North Carolina state employees.
2003 - 2005	Evaluation of the State Library of North Carolina's Statewide Virtual Reference Service An evaluation of NCknows, the State Library of North Carolina's collaborative statewide chat-based virtual reference service, from the perspectives of the service's patrons, the individual participating libraries, and the collaborative as a whole. Click here for the project reports.
2002 - 2004	Question Triage for Experts and Documents: Expanding the Information Retrieval Function of the NSDL Funded under NSF National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) grant number 0226144 to develop an ontology of question types needing human intermediation and those best handled by automated means.
2001 - 2003	Integrating Expertise into the NSDL: Putting a Human Face on the Digital Library Funded under NSF NSDL grant number 0121525 to build an operational, distributed digital reference service to support the NSDL, now implemented as AskNSDL.
2001 - 2003	Question Types in Digital Reference Services: An Evaluation of Question Taxonomies Research towards a dissertation in the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University. Click here for the full dissertation.