Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology最新文献

EDITOR'S SUMMARY

ASIS&T President, Lynn Connaway, traveled to Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China in December to visit the Asia Pacific and Taipei Chapters. At several universities she participated in chapter meetings and research forums with faculty and students and promoted ASIS&T membership in the region. ASIS&T plans interesting upcoming events including an ASIS&T Regional Meeting in Columbus, Ohio, Meet the Author webinars and the 2017 Annual Meeting, which will be held in Washington, D.C. October 27-November 1, 2017. The search for an Executive to replace Dick Hill, who is retiring, is now being conducted by an executive search firm. Hill also became ill in mid-January, and ASIS&T Director of Finance and Administration, Jan Hatzakos, is serving as Interim Executive Director until he can return or his replacement is hired.

EDITOR'S SUMMARY

ASIS&T SIG/MET held the METRICS 2016 workshop on October 14, 2016, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Topics covered during the workshop include informetrics, information retrieval, bibliometrics and scientometrics, especially as they apply to evaluation of individuals and scholarly work. Nine presentations were given at the full-day workshop, as well as seven posters, three of which were open posters. The end of the event included presentation of the Best Student Paper award, a staple in the METRICS workshop, and the prize winners were invited to discuss their papers at the event. The SIG/MET Best Paper Award sponsored by Altmetric.com and Digital Science was awarded to Dangzhi Zhao and Lucinda Johnson for their case study To What Degree Are Uni-citations Perfunctory? A Case Study.

EDITOR'S SUMMARY

During a panel at the ASIS&T 2016 Annual Meeting in Copenhagen, attendees discussed European perspectives on the world of information science. The presentations and discussions took European contributions and views on information science and contrasted them with those of the United States. Niels Lund discussed the Nordic Library and Information Science (LIS) and the impact LIS had on education in Denmark starting in the 1980s. Julian Warner talked about the invention of the telegraph and differing opinions on intellectual property in databases between the United States and Europe. Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan highlighted the development of information science in continental Europe and talked about coining terminology to better unify information standards across Europe. Michael Buckland discussed the history of documentation and neo-documentalism and the European influences in that field. Isabella Peters closed the presentations with a sample of opinions on information science from the European Chapter of ASIS&T.

EDITOR'S SUMMARY

Creating metaphors to explain a data model is vital to explain the model to people without the knowledge or experience to understand it quickly. Much like family trees evoke a sense of relationships between people by using the structure and design of a tree, strong metaphors for information architecture can help anyone understand the relationships in any data model. Good metaphors, such as web “pages,” stick with people, even if they are not completely accurate. New ways of expressing relationships in data demand new metaphors in order to express the necessity of data models to executives deciding whether or not to fund a project or even programmers that need to build around the model. Complex metaphors such as oceans, with ecosystems of fish and other organisms reacting to their environment, are far more accurate and fluid for explaining modern information architecture.

EDITOR'S SUMMARY

Reijo Savolainen, 2016 recipient of the ASIS&T Research in Information Science Award, observes that research on information behavior tends to be skewed more heavily toward the context of the workplace, but focusing on everyday life information seeking (ELIS) brings information behavior into the sphere of ordinary life. Using Brenda Dervin's sense-making methodology, research on ELIS can illuminate information seeking behavior for individuals in many different fields and circles. Qualitative study results from environmental activists, home buyers and unemployed individuals reveal how these groups seek information to help solve everyday problems. These studies highlight the use of information source horizons and preferred information seeking paths of individuals, showing patterns in how far people search for information and where they prefer to begin and end their searches. While social media provided useful information in these contexts, the information was often clouded behind affective factors when dealing with sensitive or controversial topics and thus were not always reliable or accessible to all.

EDITOR'S SUMMARY

Text and data mining have proven to greatly impact the world of biomedical research, especially for Roche Diagnostics in Penzberg, Germany. Taking information from such sources as patient literature, genomic cancer samples and PubMed articles, researchers at Roche Diagnostics are able to structure the data in a way that lends itself to creating personalized healthcare. Text mining used to build structured databases tends to yield the most relevant information for biomedical research, so Roche uses unstructured data to build a knowledge base automatically. This knowledge base, the disease marker association database, offers search capabilities for full text, abstracts or curated data. The database is made up of 50-million scientific abstracts and leans on rule-based engines as well as machine learning engines. By combining information from patient care, diagnoses and treatment, the healthcare industry can see a shift to digitization and more efficient care.

EDITOR'S SUMMARY

The Theory Development within the Information Sciences workshop was held on October 15, 2016, at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. The two main goals of the theory development workshop were to understand stages of theory development and discuss solutions to common challenges in the field, and to gauge the interests of the participants on theory development strategies. Diane Sonnenwald gave an overview on theory development based on her own experiences, Sam Chu talked about theory development applied to inquiry project-based learning, Mei-Mei Wu discussed multi methodologies in information retrieval and ShanJu Lin Chang touched on theory development processes in research on browsing phenomena. The workshop's second half was a roundtable discussion that involved participants discussing challenges in the field and receiving feedback from the presenters.