INLS 180 Day 10 Notes
April 3, 2006
Points
Bias in services
Aesthetics is important in design and in human services
High interactivity =/= high quality
People remember (and focus on) the negative experience (implications for learning/child rearing?)
Perceptions are two-way (how people perceive librarians and vice versa)
Interactivity includes cognitive physical, and emotional facets
Wikipedia/flickr, etc. as social interaction
Questions
Why not have successful practitioners teach reference?
Can we introduce positive reference experience as part of the ref interview?
What is more important: people skills or library experience?
Can we map type of question to type of ref service (online or not)?
What is a correct answer?
Do people have different expectations about levels of interactivity with people or machines?
To date, most of our work has focused on 1-1 communication, group and scholarly next
Informetrics and Bibliometrics, webometrics
queueing theory, circulation models, operations research
citation analysis, from individuals to groups to organizations; from doc to doc to doc to field to field to field
see http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/info_maps.html for maps of comm patterns
Logical Assumptions (Griffith, Drott & Small)
1. X cited by Y is more likely to be related to Y than arbitrary A not cited
1. X cited by Y and A not cited by Y=>more likely that X was used in preparation of Y
2. Y and Z cite X=>more likely Y and Z are related than A and B citing no docs in common
Y cites X and Z=>X and Z more likely related to each other than to A not cited by Y (not co-cited with X and Y)
Problems of citation analysis
Multiple authors
Self-citations
Homographs (same name/different authors)
Synonyms (name variants)
Types of sources (books vs journals, some journals limit citations)
Implicit citations (discussed or implied but not cited)
Time fluctuations (year to year)
Field variations (e.g., humanities vs sciences)
Errors
Applications
Various literature studies
User studies
Historical studies
Communication patterns (e.g., how ideas spread)
IR (e.g., google, Clever today)
Collection development [note the collection weeding argument]
Recommendation systems
See Oct. 14, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Ed (The number that’s devouring science) re: impact factors
Note h-factor
Note our Mpact indicators work
See web of science from UNC Library page
See www.citeseer.com
See webometrics
3. Discuss:
Smith, L. C. (1981). Citation analysis. Library Trends, 30(1), Summer 1981. 83-106. (SILS reserve)
Lawrence, S. (2001). Online or invisible, Nature (online)
4. Read for next week
Read for next meeting:
Moorhead, G., Ference, R., & Neck, C. P. (1991). Group decision fiascoes continue: Space Shuttle Challenger and a groupthink framework. Human Relations, 44(6). 539-550. (SILS reserve)
Examine/read for next meeting:
The Cochrane Collaboration. http://www.cochrane.org/index0.htm
The Open Directory. http://dmoz.org/
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/
Optional: Dibbell, J. (1996). A rape in cyberspace: How an evil clown, a Haitian trikster spirit, two wizards, and a cast of dozens turned a database into a society. In Mark Stefik (Ed.) Internet dreams: Archetypes, myths, and metaphors. Cambridge, MIT Press.
Finholt, T. Collaboratories (online)
5. One-minute paper concept
What was the big point you learned in class today?
What is the main, unanswered question you leave class with today?