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

INLS 881/882, Research Issues and Questions I & II
Fall 2016 & Spring 2017

Schedule

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This course covers a wide range of topics (denoted with a T in this schedule), as well as some of the skills that novice researchers need to acquire (denoted with an S in this schedule). Most class sessions include both type of activities.

SESSION 1: AUGUST 23

Introductions; Scope of ILS (T)
What are your current interests? What does it mean to pursue those interests as a doctoral student? What subjects and approaches characterize information and library science?

• Bates, M. (1999). The invisible substrate of information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1043-1050. [UNC libraries]
• Saracevic, T. (1999). Information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1051-1063. [UNC libraries]
  • These two articles are back-to-back in a special issue of JASIST, and will provide a firm foundation for our discussion of the scope of the field.
• Buckland, M. (2012). What kind of science can information science be? Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 63(1), 1-7. [UNC libraries]
  • Buckland's ideas challenge us in new ways, requiring us to re-think what we mean by some core concepts in the field.
• Tuomaala, O., Järvelin, K., & Vakkari, P. (2014). Evolution of library and information science, 1965-2005: Content analysis of journal articles. Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 65(7), 1446-1462. [UNC libraries]
  • Focus your attention on the results reported in Tables 2, 4, 5, 11 (or Appendix C), and 14, and the discussions of them. Just skim the rest quickly.
• More...

Being a doctoral student (S)

SESSION 2: AUGUST 30

Anatomy of a research question (S)
What subjects and approaches characterize information and library science? What are the important research questions in information and library science today?

• Wildemuth, B.M. (2009). Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. [SILS Reserves - Z669.7 .W55 2009]
  • Read Chapter 2 and at least one of the other chapters in Part II of the book. Consider possible sources for research questions in your area of interest.
• Leek, J.T., & Peng, R.D. (2015). What is the question? Science, 347(6228), 1314-1315. [UNC libraries]
  • This brief article demonstrates that information and library science is not the only discipline that struggles with formulating research questions. Consider this article in relation to questions you might pursue in your research.
• Alter, S., & Dennis, A.R. (2002). Selecting research topics: Personal experiences and speculations for the future. Communications of the AIS, 8, 314-329. http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2786&context=cais
  • Read the first sections, through the presentation of the framework; skim the two authors' personal stories as you wish; you can skip section V.
  • Alter and Dennis provide a framework of things to consider as you select among the many research questions that might be interesting to pursue in your area. They then go on to describe their own experiences of choosing research questions to investigate.

SESSION 3: SEPTEMBER 6

Representing/describing knowledge objects so they can be retrieved (T)
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/describe individual information/knowledge objects in ways that support effective information retrieval.

• Faculty guest: Bob Losee
• Doctoral student guests: Jacob Hill, Debbie Maron

• Brachman, R.J., & Levesque, H.J. (2004). Section 1.1, The key concepts: Knowledge, representation, and reasoning. In Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann, 2-4. [E-book in UNC libraries]
  • While from a book on artificial intelligence, these definitions of knowledge and representation can give us a different perspective on these core concepts.
• Furner, J. (2012). FRSAD and the ontology of subjects of works. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 50(5-7), 494-516. [UNC libraries]
  • This article concentrates on representing the subject of a work. Focus your reading on pages 494-501 and 510-513. consider your own position on the ontology of aboutness.
• Blair, D.C. (2003). Information retrieval and the philosophy of language. Annual Review of Information Science & Technology, 37, 3-50. [UNC libraries]
  • This review provides a good introduction to and overview of description as a problem of language and meaning. It also connects description with information retrieval concerns.
• Savoy, J. (2016). Text representation strategies: An example with the State of the Union addresses. Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 67(8), 1858-1870. [UNC libraries]
  • Skim this article, as an example of a current approach to text representation.
• More...

Class ended early, due to illness

Assignments

• Initial specification of "Looking inward" review due

SESSION 4: SEPTEMBER 13

Organizing knowledge objects so they can be retrieved (T)
In addition to describing individual knowledge objects, information professionals develop schemes (including classification systems, semantic frameworks, ontologies, etc.) to organize collections of objects.

• Faculty guest: Melanie Feinberg, Stephanie Haas
• Doctoral student guest: Patrick Golden

• Bowker, G.C., & Star, S.L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [SILS Reserves - BD175 .B68 1999; also in Sakai resources]
  • Introduction: To classify is human, p1-32 (read p1-16 only)
  • Chapter 10, Why classifications matter, p319-326
  • These two sections provide a rationale for classification and why we need to focus some attention on classification.
• Tennis, J.T. (2015). Foundational, first-order, and second-order classification theory. Knowledge Organization, 42(4), 244-249. [UNC libraries]
  • Tennis reviews the literature on classification theory, concluding that there are three different types of theories in use currently. These types provide a framework from which possible research areas could be generated.
• Mai, J.-E. (2013). Ethics, values, and morality in contemporary library classification. Knowledge Organization, 40(4), 242-253. [UNC libraries]
  • Mai considers the ethical dimensions of our classification schemes.
• More...

Conducting a literature review search (S)
There are many ways to identify the relevant literature to include in a literature review. During this session, we'll consider (and practice) some of these.

• Krathwohl, D.R., & Smith, N.L. (2005). The description of the problem. In How to Prepare a dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, p45-74. [SILS reserves - LB2369 .K723 2005; in Sakai resources]
  • Read pages 45-52, focusing on the problem description. We'll be working on search strategies during class, so you don't need to read beyond page 52.
• Locke, L.F., Spirduso, W.W., & Silverman, S.J. (2014). Content of the proposal: Important considerations. In Proposals that Work: A Guide for Planning Dissertations and Grant Proposals. Los Angeles: SAGE, 63-90. [SILS reserves - Q180.55 .P7 L814p 2014; in Sakai resources]
  • Read the first two sections, on reviewing the literature, pages 63-77.
• More...

SESSION 5: SEPTEMBER 20

Personal information management (T)
Today, we'll consider issues of description and organization in two particular contexts: personal collections, and collections of scientific data.

• Jones, W. (2012). The Future of Personal Information Management, Part I: Our Information, Always and Forever. Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services, Lecture #21. Morgan & Claypool. [UNC libraries]
  • Read Chapter 2, The Basics of PIM. Jones examines the basic concepts of information, personal, and managing/management.
• Jones, W. (2014). Transforming Technologies to Manage Our Information: The Future of Personal Information Management, Part 2. Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services, Lecture #28. Morgan & Claypool. [UNC libraries]
  • Read Chapter 9, PIM transformed and transforming: Stories from the past, present, and future. It examines and compares Licklider's 1957 conception of PIM, Jones' current understanding of PIM, and his predictions of PIM in 2057.
• Good, K.D. (2013). From scrapbook to Facebook: A history of personal media assemblage and archives. New Media & Society, 15(4), 557-573. [UNC libraries]
  • You could argue that this study was done outside our field, but I believe you'll find it pertinent to our discussions of PIM, particularly because it incorporates both physical and digital media. Pay particular attention to the section on functional comparisons, and consider her comments in relation to your own ideas about finding, keeping, and re-finding.
• Marshall, C.C. (2008). Rethinking personal digital archiving, Part 1 [and] Part 2. D-Lib Magazine, 14(3/4). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march08/marshall/03marshall-pt1.html; http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march08/marshall/03marshall-pt2.html.
  • Note that there are two parts to this reading. In the first part, Marshall echoes the argument of Star and Bowker, that people want to keep and organize their stuff. She also analyzes the challenges of this activity, for our digital stuff. In the second part, she makes suggestions for a way forward.
• More...

Scientific data management (T)

• Faculty guest: Arcot Rajasekar

• Ailamaki, A., Kantere, V., & Dash, D. (2010). Managing scientific data. Communications of the ACM, 53(6), 68-78. [UNC libraries]
  • The authors argue that, unless we figure out how to manage the large amounts of scientific data being produced, we cannot make significant scientific progress. They examine scientists' workflows to propose a solution.
• Ekbia, H., Mattioli, M., Kouper, I., Arave, G., Ghazinejad, A., Bowman, T., Suri, V.R., Tsou, A., Weingart, S., & Sugimoto, C.R. (2015). Big data, bigger dilemmas: A critical review. Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 66(8), 1523-1545. [UNC libraries]
  • We're now in an era of "big data" and scale is clearly becoming an issue. This review article highlights some of the questions with which we need to grapple over the next 5-10 years.
• More...

Reading literature reviews (S)
Different literature reviews serve different purposes; we'll consider the ways that you can get the most from reading a literature review.

• Grant, M.J., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies [Review article]. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26, 91-108. [UNC libraries]
  • Skim the background through the methods section, then focus your attention on four of the review types: critical reviews, literature reviews, state-of-the-art reviews, and systematized reviews. For the other types, you can just study Table 1. In the Discussion section, focus your attention on the subsection on using reviews.
• Boote, D.N., & Beile, P. (2005). Scholars before researchers: On the centrality of the dissertation literature review in research preparation. Educational Researcher, 34(6), 3-15. [UNC libraries]
  • This article is based in education research, but almost all of it also applies directly to research in ILS. Read the first sections carefully, through the first column of page 9. Then you can skip to the section, Refining our conception of literature reviewing. You can skip the final section, Looking forward.
• More...

SESSION 6: SEPTEMBER 27

Locating your research interests within this area

• Brief description of "Looking outward" review, on describing and organizing information, due; be prepared to discuss your ideas for this review
• Be prepared to discuss your initial ideas for the "Looking inward" review

Organizing and analyzing the literature you find (S)
If your searching has been successful, you've identified a large number of items that will be useful for your current purposes or in the future. Today, we'll consider tools that can help you manage this literature over the long term.

• Galvan, J.L. (2006). Writing Literature Reviews: A Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. 3rd ed. Glendal, CA: Pyrczak Publishing. [SILS Reserves - H61.8 .G34 2006; also in Sakai resources]
  • Chapter 4: General guidelines for analyzing literature, p31-42
  • Chapter 5, Analyzing quantitative research literature, p43-54
  • Chapter 6, Analyzing qualitative research literature, p55-62
  • Read through these chapters and any others you think will be valuable to you at this point. They each provide very practical advice for moving forward on your literature reviews.

SESSION 7: OCTOBER 4

Special guest: Cassidy Sugimoto, Indiana University (2:00-3:00)

Seminal article: Colin

• Bearman, David. (1992). Diplomatics, Weberian bureaucracy, and the management of electronic records in Europe and America. The American Archivist, 55(1): 168–181. [UNC libraries]

Two critical aspects of scholarly work: theory and methods (S)
What is theory, and why do researchers use/need theory? What methods are used in ILS research, and why?

• Case, D.O. (2012). Metatheories, perspectives and paradigms (section 7.1), [and] Theories (section 7.2). In Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior. 3rd ed. Amsterdam: Academic Press, 163-172. [SILS reserves - ZA3075 .C36 2012; also available in Sakai resources]
  • Case provides an introduction to theories and their role in information and library science.
• Truex, D., Holmström, J., & Keil, M. (2006). Theorizing in information systems research: A reflexive analysis of the adaptation of theory in information systems research. Journal of the AIS, 7(12), 797-821. [UNC libraries]
  • This article focuses on the challenges of importing a theory from another discipline into your own work. Since this practice is fairly common within information and library science, we'll want to become familiar with the possible pitfalls of this approach.
• Chu, H. (2015). Research methods in library and information science: A content analysis. Library & Information Science Research, 37(1), 36-41. [UNC libraries]
  • Chu applied content analysis to research articles from several leading journals in our field, to figure out which methods get used in the field. Table 4 gives you the punch line.
• More...

SESSION 8: OCTOBER 11

Inspirational article: Yuan

• Li, Y., & Belkin, N. J. (2008). A faceted approach to conceptualizing tasks in information seeking. Information Processing & Management, 44(6), 1822–1837. [UNC libraries]

Current research issues in archives and curation (T)
A variety of questions are now being addressed in the area of archives and curation. We'll be introduced to several of them during this discussion.

• DCC Curation Lifecycle Model. Digital Curation Centre. 2014-2015. http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/curation-lifecycle-model.
  • Review the components of this model, with an eye toward identifying research questions related to each component.
• Lee, C.A. (2011). A framework for contextual information in digital collections. Journal of Documentation, 67(1), 95-143. [UNC libraries]
  • Read the first five sections (p95-115) to understand how the framework is built. Lee is arguing that we need to preserve aspects of a digital object's context in order to adequately describe the object.
• Poole, A.H. (2016). The conceptual landscape of digital curation. Journal of Documentation, 72(5), 961-986. [UNC libraries]
  • This review article quickly summarizes some of the research questions and issues arising in relation to digital curation, including data curation. Read through it quickly (it's really only 15 pages of text).
• Houghton, B. (2016). Preservation challenges in the digital age. D-Lib Magazine, 22(7/8). [Online]
  • Read through this brief article to get the sense of some of the challenges faced by those trying to preserve digital materials. Which of these challenges is promising as an area of research?
• Todd-Diaz, A., & O'Hare, S. (2014). If you build it, will they come? A review of digital collection user studies. In Hastings, S.K. (ed.), Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics, 2012-2013. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 257-275. [SILS Reserves - CC135 .A56 2014; copy in Sakai Resources]
  • This article reviews studies of use of digital collections, published in 2012, and the factors that might affect amount of use. Quickly skim the section on methods (p.258-261), so that you can see what they found.
• Yakel, E., Faniel, I., Kriesberg, A., & Yoon, A. (2013). Trust in digital repositories. International Journal of Digital Curation, 8(1), 143-156. [UNC libraries]
  • While there is a technical standard for a repository's trustworthiness, this study examines users' views. If we expect people to deposit their important materials in a repository, a trust relationship must be developed and maintained. Skim the introduction, literature review, and methods, and focus your attention on the study findings (p.149-153).
• More...

Peer reviewing (S)
Beginning next week, you'll be peer reviewing each others' work, so this week, we'll consider how to approach this task.

• Donovan, S.K. (2014). How to be an effective peer reviewer: Some personal thoughts. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 46(1), 89-95. [UNC libraries]
  • Donovan provides concrete advice for those asked to review a research paper for a journal.
• 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 (Chapter 26). [SILS reserves - LB1778.2 .R59 1996; also available as an e-book]
• Lee, C.J., Sugimoto, C.R., Zhang, G., & Cronin, B. (2013). Bias in peer review. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 64(1), 2-17. [UNC libraries]
  • The introductory and concluding sections of this article will give you an overview of how peer reviewing fits into the scholarly publishing process. Read p. 2-4 and 10-13; quickly skim the section on bias, the main focus of the article.
• More...

OCTOBER 18, ASIST: No class

• Draft of "Looking outward" review, on describing and organizing information, due to peer reviewer; comments to be returned to author by October 21

SESSION 9: OCTOBER 25

Inspirational article (Charlene)

• Okoniewski, A.E., Lee, Y.J., Rodriguez, M., &Schnall, R., & Los, A.F.H. (2014). Health information seeking behaviors of ethnically diverse adolescents. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 16(4), 652-660. [UNC libraries]

Social issues in archives and curation (T)
Some of the research issues being raised in relation to archives are focused on their role in society. Today, we'll look at some examples of work raising social/political issues, as well as Web archiving and its implications.

• Faculty guests: Cal Lee, Denise Anthony
• Doctoral student guest: Jonathan Crabtree

• Short, J. (2014). Take ten to tag! Smithsonian Gardens public tagging initiative. Technical Services Quarterly, 31(4), 319-331. [UNC libraries]
  • This is a case study of a crowdsourcing approach to developing the metadata in an archives collection. Focus your reading on the introduction sections (p.319-323) and the lessons learned (p.328-331).
• Stevens, M., Flinn, A., & Shepherd, E. (2011). New frameworks for community engagement in the archive sector: From handing over to handing on. In Waterton, E., & Watson, S. (eds.), Heritage and Community Engagement: Collaboration or Contestation? Routledge, 67-84. [SILS - G156.5 .H47 H457 2011; also in Sakai Resources]
  • The community archives movement arose from the perspectives of communities under-represented in mainstream archives. This chapter reports on a study of different types and levels of engagement between mainstream publicly-funded archives and independent community archives.
• Byrne, D.S. (2010). Access to online local government public records: The privacy paradox. Legal Reference Services Quarterly, 29(1), 1-21. [UNC libraries]
  • As collections containing information about people are digitized, the protection of practical obscurity is disappearing. Byrne examines this issue, using case studies from Florida and Rhode Island. Focus your reading on the introductory sections (p.1-8) and the study findings (p.14-19).
• Masanes, J. (2006). Web archiving: Issues and methods. In Web Archiving. Berlin: Springer, 1-53. [UNC libraries]
  • An introduction to web archiving. Read sections 1.1-1.3 (p.1-18) and 1.5-1.6 (p.40-46) to get a sense of the issues involved.
• SalahEldeen, H.M., & Nelson, M.L. (2012). Losing my revolution: How many resources shared on social media have been lost? In Zaphiris, P., Buchanan, G., Rasmussen, E., & Loizides, F. (eds.), Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries: Second International Conference, TPDL 2012, Proceedings. LNCS 7489. Heidelberg: Springer, 125-137. [UNC libraries]
  • The archiving of social media raises additional issues related to archiving web content. This study used six cases to estimate how quickly we're losing event-centric data shared in social media. Read it quickly, just to get a general sense of the issues.
• More...

Writing a literature review (S)
Once you've identified the literature that is pertinent for a particular review, you need to synthesize it and present it to your readers. We'll consider this process today.

• Webster, J., & Watson, R. (2002). Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review. MIS Quarterly, 26(2), xiii-xxiii. [UNC libraries]
  • This article provides some editors' perspectives on what a good review looks like and how to write one.
• Lunenburg, F.C., & Irby, B.J. (2008). Writing the literature review [and] Synthesizing the literature. In Writing a Successful Thesis or Dissertation: Tips and Strategies for Students in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 142-164. [SILS reserves - LB2369 .L814 2008; also available in Sakai Resources]
  • This portion of a chapter provides some useful advice on writing a literature review. It includes many examples.
• More...

SESSION 10: NOVEMBER 1

Locating your research interests within this area (T)

• "Looking outward" review, on describing and organizing information, due to instructor for grading
• Brief description of "Looking outward" review on curation, archiving, and preservation, due; be prepared to discuss your ideas for this review
• Be prepared to discuss your evolving ideas for the "Looking inward" review

Issues faced during the transition into a doctoral program (S)

• Treacy, A.C., Casillas, N., & Wiest, L.R. (2013). Exploring the importance of an introductory doctoral course. The Researcher, 25(1), 6-20. [http://www.nrmera.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Researcherv25n1Treacy_et-al.pdf]
• Breunig, M., & Penner, J. (2016). Relationship matters: Duo-narrating a graduate student/supervisor journey. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 4(6), 18-27. [UNC libraries]
• Roulston, K., Preissle, J., & Freeman, M. (2013). Becoming researchers: Doctoral students' developmental processes. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 36(3), 252-267. [Sakai resources]
• Gardner, S. K. (2009). Phase I: Entry [and] Phase II: Integration. In The Development of Doctoral Students: Phases of Challenge and Support. ASHE Higher Education Report: Volume 34, Number 6. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 41-75. [Sakai resources]
• More...

Project management (S)

• Lauriol, J. (2006). Proposals for designing and controlling a doctoral research project in management sciences. Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, 4(1), 31-38. [Online]
• Gosling, P. (2006). Mastering Your PhD: Survival and Success in the Doctoral Years and Beyond. Berlin: Springer. [Davis - LB2386 .G67 2006; also available as an e-book]
  • Chapter 3, Setting goals and objectives, p11-19
  • Chapter 6, Charting your progress month by month, p37-42
  • Chapter 13, Celebrate your success, p101-104

SESSION 11: NOVEMBER 8

Inspirational article (Colin)

• McKemmish, S., & Piggott, M. (2013). Toward the archival multiverse: Challenging the binary opposition of the personal and corporate archive in modern archival theory and practice. Archivaria, 76: 111–144. [Online]

Information/technology services (T)
Information professionals provide information and technology services. Today, we'll consider the nature of these services, as well as the characteristics of the information professionals that design and provide them.

• Saracevic, T., & Kantor, P. B. (1997). Studying the value of library and information services. Part I. Establishing a theoretical framework. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(6), 527-542. [UNC libraries]
  • Taking an evaluative approach, this article provides us with a framework for thinking about a variety of services offered by libraries and similar information organizations.
• Rice, R.E., & Leonardi, P.M. (2014). Information and communication technologies in organizations. In Putnam, L.L., Mumby, D.K. (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Communication: Advances in Theory, Research, and Methods. Los Angeles: SAGE, 425-448. [SILS reserves - HD30.3 .H3575 2014; also in Sakai resources]
  • Quickly read through this chapter, to consider the influences on ICT adoption, as well as the impact that ICT adoption has on organizational functioning.
• VanScoy, A., & Fontana, C. (2016). How reference and information service is studied: Research approaches and methods. Library & Information Science Research, 38(2), 94-100. [UNC libraries]
  • Skim this article quickly, to get a sense of the research being conducted on library reference services and reference work.
• More...

Information professions and the workforce (T)

• Moore, R., & Wildemuth, B. (2012). Information trends: Summary of the symposium discussion. In Moran, B.B., & Marchionini, G. (eds.), Information Professionals 2050: Educational Possibilities and Pathways. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Information & Library Science, 145-154. http://sils.unc.edu/sites/default/files/news/Information-Professionals-2050.pdf
  • Papers on the evolution of libraries, the technology changes affecting the information professions, some of the issues associated with "big data", and information use for research and teaching are summarized, along with the discussion that occurred during this session of the 2012 symposium.
• Gallagher, K.P., Kaiser, K.M., Simon, J.C., Beath, C.M., & Goles, T. (2010). The requisite variety of skills for IT professionals. Communications of the ACM, Virtual Extension, 53(6), 144-148. [UNC libraries]
  • Using data from a multi-year research project sponsored by the Society for Information Management, the authors propose six IT skill categories: foundational skills, operational skills, and essential skills (all technical), and project management skills, problem/opportunity skills, and relationship skills (non-technical).
• More...

SESSION 12: NOVEMBER 15

Methods article (Charlene)

• Ahn, S.J.(G.) (2015). Incorporating immersive virtual environments in health promotion campaigns: A construal level theory approach. Health Communication, 30(6), 545-556. [Copy in Sakai resources]

Information organizations and their management (T); Information behaviors within organizational contexts (T)
Information activities happen within organizational settings, and many of the activities are supported by professionals working in those organizations. In this session, we'll consider some of the organizational and staffing issues associated with the information professions, as well as the information behaviors that have been studied within an organizational context.

• Faculty guest: Mohammad Jarrahi

• Gilstrap, D.L. (2009). A complex systems framework for research on leadership and organizational dynamics in academic libraries. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 9(1), 57-77. [UNC libraries]
  • This article reviews a number of theories of organizational behavior, as they pertain to libraries. They can also be applied in studies of IS/IS organizations, so get familiar with all of them.
• Winter, S., Berente, N., Howison, J., & Butler, B. (2014). Beyond the organizational 'container': Conceptualizing 21st century sociotechnical work. Information & Organization, 24(4), 250-269. [UNC libraries]
  • The sociotechnical systems (STS) approach is often used to conceptualize information system design and implementation. We'll use this new look at the STS approach to get acquainted with it. Read sections 1-2 (p.251-258) and more if you have a chance.
• Weick, K.E., Sutcliffe, K.M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409-421. [UNC libraries]
  • Weick's work on sensemaking, in contrast to Dervin's theory, takes an organizational view. Read at least the introduction and first section (p.409-413). If you have time, review the other sections of the paper, too.
• Jones, M.R., & Karsten, H. (2008). Giddens's structuration theory and information systems research. MIS Quarterly, 32(1), 127-157. [UNC libraries, via JSTOR]
  • Structuration theory has been relatively influential in information systems research, so we should get a taste of that work. Read these sections: Structuration Theory (p129-130), Table 1 (p135), and The Use of Structuration Theory in IS Research (p.138-142). If you have time, skim the rest, too.
• Choo, C.W., Bergeron, P., Detlor, B., & Heaton, L. (2008). Information culture and information use: An exploratory study of three organizations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 59(5), 792-804. [UNC libraries]
  • This study explored the link between organizational culture and information use in a law firm, a public health agency, and an engineering company. The details of the study are interesting, but focus your attention on the Introduction, Literature Review and Conceptual Framework, and Summary and Discussion of Results sections (p.792-795, 802-803).
• More...

Diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency (S)
Diversity and cultural competency are important among and for information professionals, as well as in your academic/research future.

• Postdoc guest: Casey Rawson

• Overall, P.M. (2009). Cultural competence: A conceptual framework for library and information science professionals. Library Quarterly, 79(2), 175-204. [UNC libraries]
  • Skim as much of this article as you can. Focus your reading on the framework itself, pages 190-198.
• Pawley, C. (2006). Unequal legacies: Race and multiculturalism in the LIS curriculum. LIbrary Quarterly, 76(2), 149-168. [UNC libraries]
  • Pawley identifies four models in LIS research and teaching that continue to perpetuate white privilege, but that also have potential for positive transformation.
• More...

Assignments

• Draft of "Looking outward" review, on curation, archiving and preservation, due to peer reviewer; comments to be returned to author by November 18

SESSION 13: NOVEMBER 22

Seminal article: Yuan

• Arthur, M. B. (1994). The boundaryless career: A new perspective for organizational inquiry. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15(4), 295–306. [UNC libraries]

Locating your research interests within the areas of information services and the organizations that provide them

• Brief description of "Looking outward" review, on information services and the organizations that provide them, due; be prepared to discuss your ideas about this review
• Draft of "Looking inward" review due to peer reviewer; comments due to author by November 25

SESSION 14, NOVEMBER 29

• Doctoral student guest: Nina Exner

Professional ethics (T)
Information professionals are guided by codes of ethics, as well as their own moral reasoning about emerging information issues. These considerations often evolve into federal/governmental information policies. Today's discussion will touch on a variety of current ethical and policy issues.

• Gorman, M. History and philosophy. In Our Enduring Values Revisited: Librarianship in an Ever-Changing World. Chicago: ALA Editions, 23-38. [SILS Reserves - Z716.4 .G673 2015; copy of chapter in Sakai Resources]
  • This chapter quickly reviews some of the philosophical underpinnings of librarianship, many of which also apply to related information professions. Core values of the profession are also listed; we'll discuss them in terms of their role in ILS education.
• ALA Code of Ethics. (2008, January 22). American Library Association. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/proethics/codeofethics/codeethics
• ACM code of ethics and professional conduct. (1992, October 16). Association for Computing Machinery. https://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-code-of-ethics-and-professional-conduct.
• ASIS&T professional guidelines. Adopted 5/30/92. http://www.asis.org/AboutASIS/professional-guidelines.html.
  • Read at least two of these three codes of ethics, so that we can discuss similarities and differences between them.

Information policy (T)

• Jaeger, P.T., & Bertot, J.C. (2010). Transparency and technological change: Ensuring equal and sustained public access to government information. Government Information Quarterly, 27(4, special issue), 371-376. [UNC libraries]
  • E-government and social media services may be seen as a means to make government policymaking more accessible to citizens; this article explores the challenges of this approach.
• Holt, J., & Malcic, S. (2015). The privacy ecosystem: Regulating digital identity in the United States and European Union. Journal of Information Policy, 5, 155-178. [UNC Libraries]
  • Differing regulatory strategies for governing privacy in digital space (i.e., the cloud) have been taken in the European Union and the United States, and are compared here.
• Epstein, D., Nisbet, E.C., & Gillespie, T. (2011). Who's responsible for the digital divide? Public perceptions and policy implications. Information Society, 27(2), 92-104. [UNC libraries]
  • The authors present two different ways to frame the concept of the digital divide, and then use survey results to demonstrate that the two different view have different policy implications.

Research ethics, including research with human subjects (S)
Particular issues arise when your research involves human subjects/participants. This session will cover research ethics generally and, more specifically, the ethical issues associated with working with human subjects.

• Locke, L.F., Spirduso, W.W., & Silverman, S.J. (2014). Doing the right thing: "The habit of truth". In Proposals that Work: A Guide for Planning Dissertations and Grant Proposals. Los Angeles: SAGE, 25-40. [SILS reserves - Q180.55 .P7 L814p 2014; copy in Sakai Resources]
  • This chapter discusses the ethical issues that arise during both the process of conducting research and the process of writing it up and publishing it.
• The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. (1979, April 18). Office of the Secretary, The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.html.
  • This brief report is the basis for most of our IRB regulations to date.
• Complete the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative online training course for human subjects research, linked from http://research.unc.edu/offices/human-research-ethics/getting-started/training/.
  • To conduct human subjects research at UNC, you need to be familiar with these resources and complete the required training module.
• Allen, G.N., Ball, N.L., & Smith, H.J. (2011). Information systems research behaviors: What are the normative standards? MIS Quarterly, 35(3), 533-551. [UNC libraries, via EBSCOhost]
  • This article reports on a study of AIS members and their ethical reasoning related to research. Read pages 533-545. We'll speculate about whether the survey results would be different if it had been conducted among members of our own professional associations.
• More...

Assignments

• "Looking outward" review, on curation, archiving and preservation, due to instructor for grading

SESSION 15, DECEMBER 6

Reflections on what we've learned so far

FINAL EXAM DAY: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, NOON

• "Looking outward" review, on information services and the organizations that provide them, due to instructor for grading
• "Looking inward" review due to instructor for grading

SESSION 16: JANUARY 17

Information needs and their expression (T)
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, looking at some of the important theoretical models in this field.

• Wilson, T. D. (1997). Information behaviour: An interdisciplinary perspective. Information Processing & Management, 33(4), 551-572. [UNC libraries]
  • In addition to taking a close look at Wilson's overall model, we'll take a quick look at one empirical application of it: Kostagiolas, P.A., Lavranos, C., Korfiatis, N., Papadatos, J., & Papavlasopoulos, S. (2015). Music, musicians and information seeking behaviour: A case study on a community concert band. Journal of Documentation, 71(1), 3-24. [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 Library; also available via Course Tools: Resources on class Sakai resources]
  • The operationalization of the ASK concept presents significant challenges, so we'll look at one study to see how this might be done: Cole, C., Leide, J., Beheshti, J., Large, A., & Brooks, M. (2005). Investigating the Anomalous States of Knowledge hypothesis in a real-life problem situation: A study of history and psychology undergraduates seeking information for a course essay. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 56(14), 1544-1554. [UNC libraries]
• Taylor, R. S. (1968). Question-negotiation and information seeking in libraries. College & Research Libraries, 29(3), 178-194. [SILS Library; also available via Course Tools: Resources on class Sakai resources]
  • Taylor's idea of four successive levels of information needs is widely cited but infrequently investigated. We'll consider it in light of the following review of studies of compromised need: Nicolaisen, J. (2009). Compromised need and the label effect: An examination of claims and evidence. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 60(10), 2004-2009. [UNC libraries]
• Saracevic, T. (2016). Understanding, manifestations, and attributes. In The Notion of Relevance in Information Science: Everybody Knows What Relevance Is. But What Is It Really? Morgan & Claypool, 11-27. [UNC libraries]
  • Relevance is a core concept in information science. In this chapter, Saracevic defines it and discusses its possible manifestations. Consider the role it plays in each of the other models we're discussing.
• More...

Presenting orally (S)
You'll make a variety of types of oral presentations as part of your academic/research career. Today, we'll share advice on making each of those presentations successful.

• Hartley, J. (2008). Conference papers. In Academic Writing and Publishing: A Practical Handbook. London: Routledge, 95-99. [SILS Reserves - PN146 .H373; also available in Sakai resources]
• Radel, J. (2012). Developing an oral presentation: Suggestions and strategies for scientific and academic settings. KU Medical Center On-Line Tutorial Series. http://www.kumc.edu/SAH/OTEd/jradel/Preparing_talks/TalkStrt.html.
• Gallo, C. (2006, Nov. 21). Your audience will thank you. Bloomberg Business. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2006-11-21/your-audience-will-thank-youbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice
• More...

SESSION 17: JANUARY 24

Information seeking behaviors: models and frameworks, future directions (T)
When someone experiences an information need, what happens next? What theoretical models and frameworks can we use to anticipate people's information seeking behaviors?

• Review one of the following major theories/frameworks related to information seeking behaviors, from the optional reading list. Be prepared to explain it to your classmates, critiquing its strengths and weaknesses.
  • the information search process model (Kuhlthau, 1991)
  • Dervin's sense-making theory and methodology (Savolainen, 1993)
  • information behaviors of researchers (Ellis, 1993)
  • theory of life in the round (Chatman, 1999)

• Marchionini, G. (2008). Human-information interaction research and development. Library & Information Science Research, 30(3), 165-174. [UNC libraries]
  • Marchionini proposes an interaction-centric view of our field. Over the past 8 years, has our research moved in the direction he predicts?
• Burnett, G., & Erdelez, S. (2010). Forecasting the next 10 years in information behavior research: A fish bowl dialogue. Bulletin of ASIST, 36(3), 44-48. [UNC libraries]
  • Some of the trends that were discussed during this ASIST session included the role of context in information behaviors, the evolving impact of new technologies on information behaviors, and the cross-disciplinary nature of information behavior research.
• Buente, W., & Robbin, A. (2008). Trends in internet information behavior, 2000-2004. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 59(11), 1743-1760. [UNC libraries]
  • Analyzing cross-section data from the Pew studies of internet use, Buente and Robbin identify trends in internet searching and use -- an important platform for information seeking behaviors.
• More...

SESSION 18: JANUARY 31

Special guest: Heather O'Brien, University of British Columbia

• O'Brien, H. (2016). Theoretical perspectives on user engagement. In O'Brien, H., & Cairns, P. (eds.), Why Engagement Matters: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives of User Engagement in Digital Media. Springer, 1-26. [UNC libraries]
  • In this chapter, O'Brien summarizes the development of user engagement as a theoretical construct. Read through it quickly, so you're prepared to build on it during our discussion.

Information sources: documentary, social (T)
When people are seeking information, they identify and use particular information sources. We'll look at three empirical studies of source selection, each taking a slightly different approach to understanding this phenomenon.

• Zhang, Y. (2014). Beyond quality and accessibility: Source selection in consumer health information searching. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 65(5), 911-927. [UNC libraries]
  • With a focus on health information sources, this study examines a variety of factors that influence source selection.
• Woudstra, L., van den Hooff, B., & Schouten, A.P. (2012). Dimensions of quality and accessibility: Selection of human information sources from a social capital perspective. Information Processing & Management, 48(4), 618-630. [UNC libraries]
  • This study examines two important attributes affecting source selection -- quality and accessibility -- applying them to human/interpersonal sources.
• Lopatovska, I., Fenton, M.R., & Campot, S. (2012). Examining preferences for search engines and their effects on information behavior. ASIST Proceedings, 49. [UNC libraries]
  • This study examines one particular source: search engines, examining the behaviors and emotions related to availability or unavailability of a search engine when seeking information.
• More...

Interdisciplinary collaboration in research(S)
Most social science research today is conducted in collaborative teams, and often in interdisciplinary teams. What's the most effective way to identify potential collaborators? Why is interdisciplinary research important and what are its key characteristics?

• 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]
  • In this brief commentary, Cronin uses the concept of distributed cognition to take another look at the rise in co-authorship over the last decades.
• Reich, S.M., & Reich, J.A. (2006). Cultural competence in interdisciplinary collaborations: A method for respecting diversity in research partnerships. American Journal of Community Psychology, 38, 51-62. [UNC libraries]
  • This paper positions disciplines as cultures, and examines the cultural competence needed to successfully conduct interdisciplinary research.
• More...

SESSION 19: FEBRUARY 7

Locating your research interests within this area

• Brief description of "Looking outward" review on information needs, seeking, and sources due; be prepared to discuss your ideas for this review
• Initial specification of "Looking inward" review and prospectus due; be prepared to discuss your ideas for this review and prospectus

SESSION 20: FEBRUARY 14

Information retrieval systems (T)
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.

• Croft, W.B., Metzler, D., & Strohman, T. (2015). Search engines and information retrieval. In Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice, p1-10. Available online at http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/downloads/SEIRiP.pdf. [SILS reserves - TK5105.884 .C765 2010]
  • Croft et al. provide a brief introduction to information retrieval and its "big issues". Focus your reading on sections 1.1 and 1.2.
• Sanderson, M., & Croft, W.B. (2012). The history of information retrieval research. Proceedings of the IEEE, 100, 1444-1451.
  • This invited paper provides an overview of IR research since its beginnings in the 1960s. Consider the types of research questions that were asked in each era.
• Harman, D. (2011). Information Retrieval Evaluation. Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services #19. Morgan & Claypool. [UNC libraries]
  • Evaluation is an important component of IR research. Read sections 2.1-2.3 (p27-34), to get a sense of the TREC approach to evaluation. Also read section 4.4 (p82-85) for Harman's view of the research challenges we face.
• Fuhr, N. (2012). Information retrieval as engineering science [Salton Award lecture]. ACM SIGIR Forum, 46(2), 19-28. [UNC libraries]
  • We'll discuss two questions raised in Fuhr's lecture: Is information retrieval an engineering science? What role do/can IR experiments play in the field's progress?
• More...

SESSION 21: FEBRUARY 21

Interactive information retrieval (T)

• Belkin, N.J. (2015). People, interacting with information [Salton award lecture]. ACM SIGIR Forum, 49(2), 13-27. [UNC libraries]
• Cool, C., & Belkin, N.J. (2011). Interactive information retrieval: History and background. In Ruthven, I., & Kelly, D., (eds.), Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval. London: Facet Publishing.
• Huang, X., & Soergel, D. (2013). Relevance: An improved framework for explicating the notion. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 64(1), 18-35. [UNC libraries]
  • Huang and Soergel quickly review past definitions of relevance,and then propose a more unified framework based on the relationships between information/document/surrogate and problem/need/request/query. Concentrate on the section on "A unified conceptual framework of relevance," p19-24, and skim the rest.
• Kelly, D., Arguello, J., Edwards, A., & Wu, W. (2015). Development and evaluation of search tasks for IIR experiments using a cognitive complexity framework. Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on The Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR '15), 101-110. [UNC libraries]
• Arguello, J., & Capra, A. (2014). The effects of rank and border on aggregated search coherence and search behavior. Proceedings of the 23st ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM '14), 539-548. [UNC libraries]
  • The Kelly et al. (2015) and Arguello and Capra (2014) studies are typical examples of interactive IR experiments. We'll take a look at their findings, but will focus most of our attention on the research methods used.
• More...

Assignments

• Draft of "Looking outward" review on information needs, seeking, and sources due to peer reviewer; comments to be returned to author by February 25

SESSION 22: FEBRUARY 28

Creating and presenting a poster (S)
Especially as you get your research program started, you are likely to be presenting a poster at a conference. The benefit of that effort may hinge on the effectiveness of your poster design.

• Guest presenter (2:00-3:00): Jennie Goforth, Research & Design Services Librarian (tentative)

• Designing effective posters. UNC Health Sciences Library. (2015). http://guides.lib.unc.edu/posters
• Guide to creating research posters. University of Texas at Austin, Office of Undergraduate Research. (2015). http://www.utexas.edu/ugs/our/poster
  • Includes sample posters and templates.
• More...

Human-computer interaction (T)
Several SILS faculty incorporate issues of human-computer interaction in their research. We'll look at several studies they've conducted, with a focus on the questions asked and the methods used. Consider each in light of the types of contributions identified by Wobbrock and Kientz.

• Wobbrock, J.O, & Kientz, J.A. (2016). Research contributinos in human-computer interaction. interactions, 23(3), 38-44. [UNC libraries]

• Chen, A.T., Capra, R., & Wu, W.-C. (2014). An investigation of the effects of awareness and task orientation on collaborative search. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 51 (10p.). [UNC libraries]
• Gotz, D., & Stavropoulos, H. (2014). DecisionFlow: Visual analytics for high-dimensional temporal event sequence data. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 20(12), 1783-1792. [UNC libraries]
• Ramdeen, S., & Hemminger, B.M. (2012). A tale of two interfaces: How facets affect the library catalog search experience. Journal of the American Association for Information Science & Technology, 63(4), 702-715. [UNC libraries]
• Fan, X., Mostafa, J., Mane, K., & Sugimoto, C. (2012). Personalization is not a panacea: Balancing serendipity and personalization in medical news content delivery. Proceedings of the ACM International Health Informatics Symposium, 709-714. [UNC libraries]
• Wildemuth, B. M., Marchionini, G., Yang, M., Geisler, G., Wilkens, T., Hughes, A., & Gruss, R. (2003). How fast is too fast?  Evaluating fast forward surrogates for digital video.  Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 221-230. [UNC libraries]
• More...

SESSION 23: MARCH 7

Locating your research interests within this area

• Final product of "Looking outward" review on information needs, seeking, and sources due to instructor for grading
• Brief description of "Looking outward" review on information retrieval (IR), interactive IR, and human-computer interaction due; be prepared to discuss your ideas for this review

Developing a research proposal (S)
Writing a research proposal is a critical skill that doctoral students must develop; in addition, you need to be able to manage a research project,if approved/funded. Some of these basic skills will be discussed in this session.

• Wildemuth, B.M. (2009). Developing a research question. In Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 11-20. [SILS Reserve - Z669.7 .W55 2009; copy of 2016 draft chapter available in Sakai resources]
• Brause, R.S. (2000). Writing your dissertation proposal while designing your dissertation research. Writing Your Doctoral Dissertation: Invisible Rules for Success. London: Falmer, 97-110. [UNC libraries, online text]
• Robson, C. (2002). Appendix A: Writing a project proposal. In Real World Research.2nd ed. Blackwell, 526-533. [SILS Library - H62 .R627 2002; additional copy avaialble in Sakai resources]
• More...

MARCH 14, SPRING BREAK: No class

SESSION 24: MARCH 21

Information use (T)
We might conceptualize the use of information along a whole spectrum of activities, from just examining or reading an information object, through to absorbing it into one's knowledge base and applying it to a particular problem or activity.

• Latham, K.F. (2014). Experiencing documents. Journal of Documentation, 70(4), 544-561. [UNC Libraries]
  • Focus your reading on pages 544-551. In this first section, Latham discusses two different types/purposes of document use, so will set the stage for our discussion.
• Vakkari, P. (2016). Searching as learning: A systematization based on literature. Journal of Information Science, 42(1), 7-18. [UNC libraries]
  • Vakkari is concerned with the process of searching, rather than reading the retrieved document. Even with this focus, he argues that learning occurs. In what situations would you consider learning to be a type of information use?
• Du, J.T. (2014). The information journey of marketing professionals: Incorporating work task-driven information seeking, information judgments, information use, and information sharing. Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 65(9), 1850-1869. [UNC Libraries]
  • In this recent study, Du considers the information behaviors of a particular population. Skim the paper, to get the general idea of the study; pay particular attention to results related specifically to information use.
• Renear, A.H., & Palmer, C.L. (2009). Strategic reading, ontologies, and the future of scientific publishing. Science, 325(5942), 828-832. [UNC libraries, or at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/325/5942/828.pdf.
  • As with the Du study, this paper focuses on a particular population of information users: scientists. The particular use of interest is strategic reading. Consider how it differs from other types of reading.
• Zhang, L., Kopak, R., Freund, L., & Rasmussen, E. (2011). Making functional units functional: The role of rhetorical structure in use of scholarly journal articles. International Journal of Information Management, 31(1), 21-29. [UNC libraries]
  • This paper also focuses on reading/use of scholarly articles. Skim it to get a general idea of the study; pay particular attention to section 4.1, Table 1, and the first column of Table 2.
• More...

Grant writing and finding funding (S)
With additional funding, your research program can expand. While most of your grant writing will be after you complete your doctoral studies, you can get started on it any time.

• Browse the resources provided by UNC's Office of Research, at http://research.unc.edu/researchers/proposal-development/ and http://fundingportal.unc.edu/proposal-writing/
• 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. [UNC libraries, JSTOR]
• More...

Assignments

• Discussion of progress and evolving ideas for "Looking inward" review and prospectus

SESSION 25: MARCH 28

Information and data sharing (T)
The expectation that scientists will share their data with others (including the public) are increasing, particularly with research funded by the public. Yet scientists' behaviors are not yet meeting this expectation. We'll look at these issues in light of current research on information and data sharing.

• Kennedy, J. (2016). Conceptual boundaries of sharing. Information, Communication & Society, 19(4), 461-474. [UNC libraries]
  • To put our more empirical discussions in context, quickly read through this article.
• Borgman, C.L. (2012). The conundrum of sharing research data. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 63(6), 1059-1078. [UNC libraries]
  • Borgman focuses on the sharing of research data in this article. Skim through the beginning of the article, but spend most of your time on the section on "Why share research data?" (p.1066-1072).
• Kim, Y., & Burns, C.S. (2016). Norms of data sharing in biological sciences: The roles of metadata, data repository, and journal and funding requirements. Journal of Information Science, 42(2), 230-245. [UNC libraries]
  • Read through the first three sections, then skim the reearch model and methods sections. Focus some attention on the results, particularly the hypotheses and model presented on page 240.
• More...

Data management (S)
We'll discuss options for managing your research data, so that future sharing is more possible.

Social media (T)
With Web 2.0 applications, Web users have been more actively involved in generating information content, rather than just consuming it. Sometimes this occurs within a defined community or social network, and so social interactions within the community are also of interest.

• Weller, K. (2016). Trying to understand social media users and usage: The forgotten features of social media platforms. Online Information Review, 40(2), 256-264.
  • This brief article outlines some of the research questions related to social media that have been pursued, and also identifies some research questions that have not been pursued.
• Tufekci, Z. (2014). Big questions for social media big data: Representativeness, validity and other methodological pitfalls. Proceedings of the 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 505-514. [Online]
  • In this paper, Tufekci outlines some of the methodological problems associated with working with social media data.
• Oh, S., & Syn, S.Y. (2015). Motivations for sharing information and social support in social media: A comparative analysis of Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube, and Flickr. Journal of the Associatino for Information Science & Technology, 66(10), 2045-2060. [UNC libraries]
  • This empirical study of social media use is an example of what you might consider. Read through it quickly, with a focus on how you might carry out a related or similar study.
• More...

Assignments

• Draft of "Looking outward" review on information retrieval (IR), interactive IR, and human-computer interaction due to peer reviewer; comments to be returned to author by March 31

SESSION 26: APRIL 4

Creation of knowledge (T); The scholarly publication process (T)
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. They are also the means by which scholars' work can have an impact, and so may be viewed as an indicator of scholarly productivity.

• Hurd, J. M. (2000). The transformation of scientific communication: A model for 2020. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(14), 1279-1283. [UNC libraries]
  • Hurd reviews the lifecycle of scientific publishing, as it was in 2000 and as she imagined it would be by 2020. We'll use this model as a basis for our discussion of the publication lifecycle.
• Friedman, B. (2014). Structural challenges and the need to adapt [Viewpoint]. Communications of the ACM, 57(7), 34-37. [UNC libraries]
  • Friedman comments directly on the processes of knowledge creation. Jjuxtapose her views against those of Hurd.
• Watkinson, A., Nicholas, D., Thornley, C., Herman, E., Jamali, H. R., Volentine, R., Allard, S., Levine, K., & Tenopir, C. (2016). Changes in the digital scholarly environment and issues of trust: An exploratory, qualitative analysis. Information Processing & Management, 52(3), 446-458. [UNC libraries]
  • In this paper, the authors consider scholars' perspectives on their own work, given a rapidly-shifting publishing environment. You'll want to read it through.
• Shaw, D., & Vaughan, L. (2008). Publication and citation patterns among LIS faculty: Profiling a "typical professor". Library & Information Science Research, 30(1), 47-55. [UNC libraries]
  • We're most interested in the findings of this paper. So skim it all, but focus your attention on Tables 3-5 and Figure 2 and the text that discusses them. For next week's discussion, pay attention to Tables 6-12 and the text that discusses them.

Writing refereed articles and conference papers (S)
Refereed articles are the bread and butter of academic life in the social sciences. We'll discuss writing, and how to keep your own writing moving forward.

• Hartley, J. (2008). Academic Writing and Publishing: A Practical Handbook. London: Routledge. [SILS Reserve - PN146 .H373 2008; the assigned sections are also available in Sakai resources]
  • 2.1, Titles, p23-28
  • 2.2, Authors, p29-30
  • 2.5, Introductions, p41-44
  • 2.6, Methods, p45-46
  • 2.7, Results, p47-48
  • 2.8, Discussions, p49-52
  • 2.12, Responding to referees, p67-70
  • Read through at least these sections. They're brief and very practical. Feel free to read additional parts of Section 2, guided by your interest.
• Syrett, K.L., & Rudner, L.M. (1996). Authorship ethics. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 5(1). http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=5&n=1
  • Several ethical issues are reviewed: authorship definition, acknowledgments, redundant publication, competing manuscripts, conflict of interest, and citation of sources.
• More...

Assignments

• Draft of"Looking inward" review and prospectus due to peer reviewer; comments to be returned to author by April 7

SESSION 27: APRIL 11

Impact of scholarly communication (T); Bibliometrics, webmetrics, altmetrics (T)

• Zhao, D., & Strotmann, A. (2015). Foundations of citation analysis. In Analysis and Visualization of Citation Networks. Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services #39. Morgan & Claypool, 1-20. [UNC libraries]
  • Skim this one to get an overview of the purposes and role of citation analysis. Their focus is more on citation networks than evaluative uses of citation data, but still useful for us.
• Lariviere, V., Sugimoto, C.R., & Cronin, B. (2012). A bibliometric chronicling of library and information science's first hundred years. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 63(5), 997-1016. [UNC libraries]
  • This study used citation analysis methods to understand how ILS has evolved (in terms of topics covered) over its history. Skim the first sections, so that you can focus your attention on the Results (p.1001-1012).
• Eyre-Walker, A., & Stoletzki, N. (2013). The assessment of science: The relative merits of post-publication review, the impact factor, and the number of citations. PLoS Biology, 11(10), e1001675. [Online]
  • As the title indicates, the authors compare the strengths and weaknesses of three approaches to evaluating the quality of a research paper. Two of these approaches are based on citation data.
• Norris, M., Oppenheim, C., & Rowland, F. (2008). The citation advantage of open-access. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 59(12), 1963-1972. [UNC libraries]
  • A number of studies have analyzed whether open access articles are more likely to be cited ; this is one example. Read the literature review, so you get a sense of earlier work; then skim to get the gist of the findings from this study.
• Priem, J. (2013, March 28). Beyond the paper [Comment]. Nature, 495(7442), 437-440. [Online]
  • Priem argues for a 'share early, share often' approach to scientific communication, undergirded by algorithms.
• Piwowar, H. (2013, Jan. 10). Altmetrics: Value all research products. Nature, 493(7431), 159. [Online]
  • Piwowar has been collaborating with Jason Priem over the past several years, to encourage the use of altmetrics (based on a variety of social media products from scientists) along with the more traditional bibliometrics to assess impact. This very brief article can fill you in, but you may also want to check the Priem and Hemminger (2010) article listed in the optional reading list for more details.
• More...

Assignments

• Final product of "Looking outward" review on information retrieval (IR), interactive IR, and human-computer interaction due to instructor for grading

SESSION 28: APRIL 18

Locating your research interests within this area

• Brief description of "Looking outward" review on information use and sharing, with particular emphasis on scholarly communication, due; be prepared to discuss your ideas for this review

SESSION 29: APRIL 25

Year-end review: What have you learned?
What have you learned? Consider the two Looking Inward assignments you've completed. What research opportunities and hot topics now 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?

• Gallos, J.V. (1996). On becoming a scholar: One woman's journey. In Frost, P.J., & Taylor, M.S. (eds.), Rhythms of Academic Life: Personal Accounts of Careers in Academia. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 11-18. [SILS reserve - LB1778.2 .R59 1996; copy of chapter in Sakai resources]
  • Gallos shares her personal reflections on her development at the beginning of her academic career.
• Lovitts, B.E. (2008). The transition to independent research: Who makes it, who doesn't, and why. Journal of Higher Education, 79(3), 296-325. [UNC libraries]
  • Lovitts provides advice for an academic career, based on focus groups involving 55 highly-productive faculty members. She organizes their comments in terms of six major theoretical constructs: intelligence, knowledge, thinking styles, personality, motivation, and environment.
• Gardner, S.K. (2008). "What's too much and what's too little?": The process of becoming an independent researcher in doctoral education. Journal of Higher Education, 79(3), 326-350. [UNC libraries]
  • Gardner's advice for us is based on interviews with 50 doctoral students in chemistry and history at two different universities. She presents the results in terms of three phases of doctoral study: admission, integration, and candidacy.
• More...

FINAL EXAM DATE, TBA

• Final product of "Looking outward" review on information use and sharing, with particular emphasis on scholarly communication, due to instructor for grading
• Final product of"Looking inward" review and prospectus due to instructor for grading

Syllabus / Assignments / Sakai class site

The INLS 881-882 website, UNC-CH, 2016, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Address all comments and questions to Barbara M. Wildemuth at wildem@ils.unc.edu. This page was last modified on November 28, 2016, by Barbara M. Wildemuth.