The School of Information Sciences is pleased to host four fall research forums this fall.
Read the detailed presentation descriptions below. SIS Research Forums are informal and open to everyone. Feel free to bring your lunch.
September 21: SIS Research Forum with Robert J. Sandusky and Jeanine Williamson
October 26: 2005 ISI Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture with Dr. Marcia J. Bates
October 28: SIS Research Forum with Kimberly Black-Parker
November 16: SIS Research Forum with Dania Bilal and Joel Southern
Upcoming Forums:
November 16: SIS Research Forum
This program includes two presentations:
What: Dania Bilal and Joel Southern presenters (see abstracts below)
When: Wednesday, November 16, 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Where: University Center, Suite 220
PART I:
Dania Bilal
Understanding and Navigating International Digital Libraries: Cultural Perspectives
Abstract:
Dania Bilal will discuss the findings of a study on Web usability and culture. She assessed a group of children's cultural understanding of the interface design components of the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL). In addition, the study investigated the children's information seeking behavior, navigational patterns, success, and emotions during their interaction with the ICDL.
PART II:
Joel Southern
The Interplay of Education, Media, and Libraries in Today’s China:
A Cross-Cultural Report
This presentation will blend storytelling about my month-long teaching experience last summer in China’s top academic institution – Tsinghua University — with my knowledge of China’s tenuous relationship with the media, academic freedom, and an increasingly assertive society. China’s recent growth and economic liberalization in information and technology industries begs one to consider its impact on its socialist ideologies, especially in light of overt disparities in income and weakening trust in the media.
Past SIS Research Forums:
The 2005 ISI Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture
Information Science luminary Marcia J. Bates will keynote this yearly research forum.
What: 2005 ISI Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture with Dr. Marcia J. Bates
Professor Emerita, Department of Information Studies, University of California Los Angeles
When: October 26, 11:30 am - 1 pm (Wednesday)
Where: Lindsay Young Auditorium, 101 Hodges Library
Can We Have a Comprehensive Understanding of Information?
Information has so many definitions that it seems undefinable. Yet, in a discipline named after information, we surely need a technical definition that we can build on for theoretical and professional uses. This presentation will challenge your conceptions about information.
Dr. Bates is a well-known and highly-cited scholar and a frequent keynote speaker. She has a long and outstanding career in information science education and research. Her publications are used worldwide in teaching, research, and throughout academia and the profession. The Royal School of Library & Information Science in Copenhagen, Denmark, held a symposium on her work in 2003.
She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her honors include numerous awards: the 2005 Award of Merit, the 1998 Research Award, and twice the JASIST Best Paper Award from the American Society of Information Science & Technology; the 2005 Professional Contribution Award from the Association for Library & Information Science education; the 2001 Kilgour Award for Research in Library & Information Technology from the American Library Association & OCLC.
The distinguished ISI Lazerow Memorial Lectures are sponsored by the Thomson Scientific Corporate Awards Program. Samuel Lazerow was an outstanding librarian, administrator, and pioneer in library automation and technology. In 1983, the Institute for Scientific Information established the Lecture Series to honor the memory of Samuel Lazerow.
For more information contact Peiling Wang at (865) 974-3700 or peilingw@utk.edu
October 28: SIS Research Forum
Dr. Kimberly Black-Parker, Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky, will give a presentation entitled “I Shall Become a Collector of Me”: Social Power, Expressive Culture and Knowledge Institutions.
What: Dr. Kimberly Black-Parker
When: Friday, October 28, 1:30 - 2:30
Where: 309 Communications Building
Abstract
The social significance and institutional recognition of the expressive culture of women, even more so that of women of color, is an interesting location from which to discuss what cultural theorist Homi Bhabha has labeled as the “politically crucial need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences.” A thoughtful consideration of the social dynamics influencing access to the specific knowledges expressed by African-American women in the form of poetry is the subject of the present study which addresses the following questions:
* What is the social significance of African American women’s contemporary expressive culture in general and poetry specifically?
* What is the role of knowledge institutions, such as research libraries, in the larger dynamics of social power?
* What is the landscape of research library holdings of contemporary African-American women’s poetry?
This study provides an examination of the publication record of African-American women’s poetry produced during a key decade of literary activity (1980-1990) as well as an exploration of the social and institutional contexts relating to their collection and holdings by major research libraries in the United States.
September 21: SIS Research Forum
What: SIS Research Forum
When: September 21, 12:00 - 1:30 p.m. (Wednesday)
Where: University Center, Suite 220
This program includes two presentations:
1) Topic: Solving Problems and Managing Information: Social Informatics in Distributed Information Systems Research
Presenter: Robert J. Sandusky
This talk describes how a social informatics approach to information systems research deepens our understanding of information use in distributed settings. Social informatics is the interdisciplinary study of the design, deployment and situated use of information and communications technologies. Examples from a study of a large open source software development community illustrate how the software problem management process is simultaneously information management and problem solving. The data also reveals how information, activity, social order, context, and process are mutuallyconstitutive and align to support the community’s goal of solving software problems.
2) Topic: The career satisfaction and job satisfaction of information professionals in relation to personality traits
Collaborators: John Lounsbury (UT Psychology), Jeanine Williamson (Library), and Anne Pemberton (UNCW)
Presenter: Jeanine Williamson
Abstract:
This study of nine types of information professionals found that personality traits were significantly related to career and jobsatisfaction. Stepwise and hierarchical regression were employed to determine the most significant traits involved. Extraversion, optimism, and work drive were important, as in John Lounsbury's studies of individuals from all occupations, as well as a few traits particular to the information professionals in this study. Implications for hiring and management are given.
