Library & Information Science Research最新文献

The tattoo information experience reveals possibilities to explore how tattoo images are created as things, what actions lead to the creation of a tattoo image, who is considered a creator of a tattoo image, and how different personal, social and cultural contexts influence creation of information through the tattoo acquisition experience. Based on the findings from nine interviews, the process of tattoo information creation was conceptualized encompassing all stages of the tattoo experience: from the moment the first idea of getting a tattoo emerges to sharing of information about a tattoo. Participants' stories about their tattoo experiences were used to develop a framework of four key phases of tattoo information creation: conceptualizing, verbalizing, visualizing, and pluralizing. These phases occur between four anchors identified in the participants' stories: anticipation, identification, ideation, and creation. This framework can be used to assist future empirical and theoretical research on tattoo information experience.

Scientific collaboration is a distinct iteration of information creation as a process. It aims to form willful relationships between scientists to achieve the shared objective of new information creation with the end goal of knowledge production. Findings of an exploratory study investigating barriers that hinder effective scientific collaboration and strategies to cope with these obstacles are reported. A qualitative and interpretive methodology is leveraged to analyze data collected from 14 in-depth interviews with researchers who work in a cross-disciplinary scientific research center. The results indicate that domain disparity and motivation and engagement are the strongest hindrances to effective collaboration. Researchers adopt active and constant learning as an approach to mitigate barriers, lower affective distress, and improve collaboration processes. Malleable boundary objects can facilitate collaboration by adjusting to research aims but may also contort projects, manifesting as a barrier to new information creation.

Cognitive mapping is a method typically adopted in ethnographical research to learn about library user behavior and experience in a cross-cultural context. Through reporting practical findings from a case study, where it served as a key method, the usefulness of cognitive mapping in revealing cognitive style and perceptions of the library and in understanding cultural users' behaviors and experiences is explored. Cognitive mapping offers an open exploratory way to help self-reflection of personal contexts regardless of language constraints. As such, it provides for the study of multiple cultural communities. In addition, its potential of usage in a virtual environment is presented. One limitation of this method is the extent to which it can reveal the holistic picture of library experience in isolation. As such, it works well when applied with other data collection techniques to form a flexible yet robust methodological framework to learning about library cultural groups.

Information behavior scholars are increasingly exploring information creation; however, these studies focus primarily on individuals' processes. The Melbourne Korean War Memorial (MKWM) used an interdisciplinary co-creation process, combining expertise in architecture, industrial design, engineering, and history. Over a two-year period, the MKWM research/design team worked with government officials and community members, from ideation and prototype design, through construction and installation of the completed memorial. The finished product informs the viewer about historic events, while also meeting architectural and design best practices. The co-authors' analysis of the information co-creation process constructs a new model of an informing aesthetic, where the memorial design embeds three types of information: explicit (e.g., photographs); implicit (e.g., national flowers); and embodied (e.g., pathway elevation). By combining research expertise with community feedback, while meeting technical and government design needs, the memorial informs about the war through a combination of statistics, storytelling, and visual knowledge representations.

Accounts of how scholarly information is produced are crucial for understanding and using the information yet they are often criticized for being incomprehensive or even non-existent. This article aims to increase the understanding of how scholarly information-making is conceived and documented by information-makers. By analyzing how a set of archaeological field reports describe different aspects of the information-making activities (cf. Activity Theory) pertaining to the research documented in the reports, the study suggests that scholars might have a tendency to focus on reporting tools, outcomes and physical location of activities while descriptions of especially rules/norms, community factors and division of labour are rare and expected to be known tacitly. The findings suggest also that the descriptions of information-making activities become comprehensible in relation to their related activities. Therefore, an increased emphasis on explicating their underpinning social factors and how activity systems and their elements link to other activity systems could improve the comprehensiveness of documentation and decrease the need of tacit contextual knowledge.

In the field of digital libraries, research on user experience is sparse, especially in terms of emotions, impressions, and stimulation evoked by interaction with the digital library. Given the many different methods and tools available for assessing user experience, two questionnaires and eye-tracking were explored to see how each can contribute to understanding user experience in digital libraries. An eye-tracking study with 30 participants was carried out using two digital libraries. Analysis of the questionnaires revealed that overall, one digital library was experienced more positively, with the difference most evident in the hedonic quality. The eye-tracking data revealed different gaze patterns in the two digital libraries, with significant difference in measure values particularly on the search boxes. When eye-tracking was combined with the questionnaire data, several correlations were found, indicating that the search box position and the intuitiveness of the homepage had an impact on the user experience.

Multifaceted evaluation studies of digital archives are important to understanding multiple aspects of user experience and improving the quality of the systems. This study provides an example of a formative evaluation of the community digital heritage archive. Using a multifaceted evaluation framework, the study focused on three aspects of the site relevant to users: interface, collections, and information organization. The study adopted a mixed-methods design with a questionnaire and interviews with community members. The findings indicate that in addition to a usable interface, the quality of objects, depth of metadata, contextual information, and coverage are important to users. The lack of representation of marginalized groups that were part of the community's history emerged as an important theme. The findings from the study were used to redesign the site and to expand the archive's coverage. This research also points to the need for evaluation models that focus on community-based criteria.

This study examined discussions of the r/Datasets community on Reddit. It identified three activities in which the community engaged: question answering, data sharing, and community building. Members of the community used 21 types of data and information sources in their activities. The findings of this research enhance our understanding of the activity structures, data and information sources used, and challenges and problems encountered when users search for, share, and make sense of datasets on the web, outside the traditional information and data ecosystems. Data librarians and curators can use the findings of this study in the design of their data management and reference services. The typology of data sources and the metadata model developed through this study can be used in annotating and categorizing data sources and informing the design of metadata schemas and vocabularies for datasets.

The use of mixed methods in library and information science research is more effective in generating insightful results when the methods are fully integrated with each other. A novel sequential mixed methods approach was developed to more holistically study user search behavior within a library discovery system. Customized semi-structured interview protocols, using the critical incident technique, were based on each participant's search logs. Findings from the interviews informed statistical log analysis, which identified features of search sessions that made accessing resources more likely. Individual interviews provide more precise data when protocols are created using the participants' logs. Similarly, statistical log analyses are enhanced with users' descriptions of their behaviors in library discovery systems. While prior studies have employed both interviews and log analysis, using the methods to inform one another reduces the limitations and enhances the benefits of each.

Fans purposively creating information aiming specifically to inform the public positively about a celebrity has become a significant practice within contemporary Chinese fan culture. “Celebrity promotion” information creation offers an important opportunity to understand how people intentionally create information beyond internal user groups and existing information needs. Based on unobtrusive observation and semi-structured interviews, findings show that fans create positive online content and conduct offline advertisements to boost a celebrity's specific works, reputation, and fan base. Fans also intentionally develop strategies and improve their information literacy to make informational materials more visible and appealing, while critically separating “celebrity promotion” from enjoyment-centered fandom activities. As fans adapt to the current information environment, the intentionality of their practices stems from beliefs that 1) they are the actor(s)’ shareholders/partners and 2) by creating “promotion” information, fans can achieve their goal of helping the actor(s).