Contextualised Browsing in a Digital Library's Living Lab

Contextualisation has proven to be effective in tailoring \linebreak search results towards the users' information need. While this is true for a basic query search, the usage of contextual session information during exploratory search especially on the level of browsing has so far been underexposed in research. In this paper, we present two approaches that contextualise browsing on the level of structured metadata in a Digital Library (DL), (1) one variant bases on document similarity and (2) one variant utilises implicit session information, such as queries and different document metadata encountered during the session of a users. We evaluate our approaches in a living lab environment using a DL in the social sciences and compare our contextualisation approaches against a non-contextualised approach. For a period of more than three months we analysed 47,444 unique retrieval sessions that contain search activities on the level of browsing. Our results show that a contextualisation of browsing significantly outperforms our baseline in terms of the position of the first clicked item in the result set. The mean rank of the first clicked document (measured as mean first relevant - MFR) was 4.52 using a non-contextualised ranking compared to 3.04 when re-ranking the result lists based on similarity to the previously viewed document. Furthermore, we observed that both contextual approaches show a noticeably higher click-through rate. A contextualisation based on document similarity leads to almost twice as many document views compared to the non-contextualised ranking.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, paper accepted at JCDL 201

An investigation into the ‘I can Google it’ information seeking behaviour of the academic communities in the Maldives and Australia

This thesis is a phenomenological inquiry of the “I can Google it” information seeking behaviour in academic communities from two economically diverse countries – Maldives and Australia. It investigates how the googling phenomenon impacts the provision of academic library services

Reframing museum epistemology for the information age: a discursive design approach to revealing complexity

This practice-based research inquiry examines the impact of an epistemic shift, brought about by the dawning of the information age and advances in networked communication technologies, on physical knowledge institutions - focusing on museums. The research charts adapting knowledge schemas used in museum knowledge organisation and discusses the potential for a new knowledge schema, the network, to establish a new epistemology for museums that reflects contemporary hyperlinked and networked knowledge. The research investigates the potential for networked and shared virtual reality spaces to reveal new ‘knowledge monuments’ reflecting the epistemic values of the network society and the space of flows. The central practice for this thesis focuses on two main elements. The first is applying networks and visual complexity to reveal multi-linearity and adapting perspectives in relational knowledge networks. This concept was explored through two discursive design projects, the Museum Collection Engine, which uses data visualisation, cloud data, and image recognition within an immersive projection dome to create a dynamic and searchable museum collection that returns new and interlinking constellations of museum objects and knowledge. The second discursive design project was Shared Pasts: Decoding Complexity, an AR app with a unique ‘anti-personalisation’ recommendation system designed to reveal complex narratives around historic objects and places. The second element is folksonomy and co-design in developing new community-focused archives using the community's language to build the dataset and socially tagged metadata. This was tested by developing two discursive prototypes, Women Reclaiming AI and Sanctuary Stories

Developing a reading programme through an action research in a secondary school

The purpose of this study is to identify factors that could promote interest and motivation in reading among the non readers as part of Ping Yi Secondary School Media Resource Library's activities. It is an attempt to improve the current practice of reading enrichment programme by conducting a school-based action research, using technology to promote screen and conventional print-based reading. There are three tasks involved in this study. The first task is to investigate the reasons as to why students are not keen to actively read during the library's enrichment reading programme. The second task is to explore the factors and the context that would motivate students to read. This is achieved through the review of literature and interview with students and teachers. Based on the findings of these two tasks, an alternative enrichment reading programme is developed and implemented. The final task is to evaluate and analyse the outcomes of the implementation of alternative reading programme called the Striving for Total Achievement and Responsibility (STAR) and to report the research project. A random sample of 65 students from Secondary two, three and four were selected to participate in the STAR project. The project became the platform for students to hone their reading interests, and acquire and develop multi-literacy skills. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of data, it was found that while participating students began to read more, maintaining the momentum to read remained a real challenge to the teacher librarian. The data gathered showed that there was modest gain in the areas of cognitive, social and technical knowledge among the participants. The research highlights the fact that it is critical for a teacher designing a reading programme to share his or her goals with the participants at the onset; to provide participants with critical support to facilitate the construction of their own learning processes and to relate their learning journey to the demands of the workplace so that they could find relevance and meaning in what they learn and study in school. Although limited in scope and focus, the larger underlying concern of this study is to propel further research on the relationships between reading interests and academic performance among students of different levels, ethnic groups, gender and academic abilities

Making digital history: The impact of digitality on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research

This thesis investigates tow key questions: firstly, how do two broad groups - academic, family and local historians, and the public - evaluate, use, and contribute to digital history resources? And consequently, what impact have digital technologies had on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research? Analysing the impact of design on participant experiences and the reception of digital historiography by demonstrating the value of methods drawn from human-computer interaction, including heuristic evaluation, trace ethnography and semi-structured interviews. This thesis also investigates the relationship between heritage crowdsourcing projects (which ask the public to help with meaningful, inherently rewarding tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge) and the development of historical skills and interests. It situates crowdsourcing and citizen history within the broader field of participatory digital history and then focuses on the impact of digitality on the research practices of faculty and community historians. Chapter 1 provides an overview of over 400 digital history projects aimed at engaging the public or collecting, creating or enhancing records about historical materials for scholarly and general audiences. Chapter 2 discusses design factors that may influence the success of crowdsourcing projects. Following this, Chapter 3 explores the ways in which some crowdsourcing projects encourage deeper engagement with history or science, and the role of communities of practice in citizen history. Chapter 4 shifts our focus from public participation to scholarly practices in historical research, presenting the results of interviews conducted with 29 faculty and community historians. Finally, the Conclusion draws together the threads that link public participation and scholarly practices, teasing out the ways in which the practices of discovering, gathering, creating and sharing historical materials and knowledge have been affected by digital methods, tools and resources

Scholarly communication the information chain and technology: analyses and reflexions

It is no longer easy to adopt deterministic explanations of scholarly communication, technology or the information chain. Complex and reflexive relations have built up between the substantive and methodological literatures relevant to these topics. This thesis aims to explore these relations with reference to two sets of interviews, one with academicr esearchersa nd the other with information professionals. These interviews were conducted in 1998-9 during the FIDDO Project, a part of the UK Joint Information Systems Committee `Electronic Libraries Programme'. Two major theoretical perspectives are employed to support two analytic methodologies. The first is social constructivism, which is representedm ethodologically in the thesis by discourse analysis. The second is actor-network theory, which is represented methodologically by co-word analysis. Both of these approaches are engaged in questions of relativism and realism in social explanation. The implementation of each of the methodologies involves innovative moves. The discourse analysis is focused on personal deixis (self-reference) located by pronoun-use, and on interest management. The co-word analysis is adapted from a scientometric technique and supplemented by the use of categorical definitions of the three topics. Each methodology is employed to analyse both sets of interviews. The four resulting sets of findings are presented in terms of the boundaries apparent between the three topical concepts. The boundaries between scholarly communication, technology and the information chain are found to vary, for example according to the identities of the interviewees responsible for the data. They also vary according to the methodology employed. Discourse analysis of interviews with information professionals suggests that the idea of technology is deployed as a dual repertoire, consisting of empowerment and automation, and that the pattern of this deployment is one constituent of the contested boundaries between the three topics. Co-word analysis of the same interviews suggests that an important focus of the boundaries is around the idea of electronic journals. Discourse analysis of interviews with academicr esearchersa lso reveals use of the dual technology repertoire, but in addition suggests that the category of formal scholarly communication acts to legitimate the interests of researchers. Co-word analysis of the same interviews suggests that a number of models of document access were in play, including those based on the library, on paper and on documents. The implications of these substantive analyses include that studies based on `user needs' or the `impact of technology' could benefit from an analysis of how such topics are constructed in particular accounts. Finally, the question is addressed as to the extent that the results of the discourse and the co-word analyses (of the same data) are compatible so that they can be meaningfully synthesised. That is, do the two approaches give rise to outcomes that have similar epistemological status? The question is answered `empirically' with reference to the issueo f reflexivity as it is configured in the two approachesa, nd it is confirmed that the two types of outcome are not compatible due to profound differences in the positions adopted by their respective informing theories. The methodological implications of this include that those engaged in relativist research practice need to be aware the ways in which epistemological and reflexive issues are relevant to their actions

Experiencing the academic library in the Digital Age: From information seeking and user experience to human information interaction

The Digital Age, marked by the prevalent usage of digital technologies and explosion of digital information, has changed the way we communicate and interact with information, and prompts us to think about how it is influencing and transforming user experience with and within academic libraries. For academic libraries whilst their relationships with users may have shifted so too have their audiences. Internationalisation in higher education (HE) institutions has brought greater student diversity and requirements that should be understood to improve student experience and satisfaction. At the heart of HE, academic libraries serve a significant role in students’ learning and researching and their experience in the academic library constitutes an essential part of the learning experience. Within an interpretive paradigm, this thesis explores how international Chinese students experience the UK academic library in the Digital Age. Mixed methods research was conducted with a largely qualitative stance to explore the complexity of library user experience and to investigate library service delivery in order to enhance the future library user experience design. Library log analysis investigated what students do in the academic library through looking into their information seeking behaviour; cognitive mapping and semi-structured interviews were used to examine how students think and feel about the academic library by probing into their user experience. Demonstrating the complexity and multi-layered characteristics of context, this thesis proposed separating contexts to analyse and understand students’ library experience in distinct contexts. The findings developed an original framework theory of ‘context-perception-sense-making’ to depict a holistic picture of students’ library experience, identifying two vital elements, context and perception, which trigger, shape and alter students’ library experience. This thesis brings together the essential components of information seeking behaviour and user experience into the context of the academic library and defines students’ relationships with and within the library in new ways

Information needs and information seeking behaviour of researchers in an Industrial Research Institute in Nigeria

The entire world needs and seeks information to survive and thrive in the 21st century as a result of information acquisition, with doctors, lawyers, teachers, students and even the elderly all desiring information for their everyday activities. Researchers of different disciplines working at the various federal institutes in Nigeria are no exceptions to the craving for requisite information that will enable them successfully carry out their numerous research projects undertaken towards achieving sustainable national development. The aim of the study was to investigate the information needs and information-seeking behaviour of researchers at the Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi, Nigeria. This study applied both quantitative and qualitative research approaches for the purpose of triangulation. The quantitative approach had a strong dominance over the qualitative approach in this study. This study adopted the positivist paradigm. The questionnaire, interview and observation data collection tools were the chosen tools used to collect data from researchers from the six departments of the Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi and five professional librarians of the institute’s library. Out of 165 questionnaires that were administered to researchers, a total of 121 were returned (resulting in a response rate of 73%). Inaccuracies were identified in seven copies of the questionnaires which were discarded and not analysed. Therefore, usable returns totalled 114 (67%). Wilson’s 1999 model of information behaviour was used as the theoretical framework. This study revealed that both formal and informal sources were consulted by the researchers. It was important to note that the internet was the information source most commonly used by the researchers to obtain information. The institute’s library was poorly used because it contained outdated library materials and was not equipped with an internet facility. The researchers opted for the use of mobile phone/iPad, personally owned or sourced internet access and business centres (supplying internet services outside the institute) to access information sources for information. The study ascertained that there was undoubtedly an instituted library officially established within the institute to provide information to researchers. But due to socio-economic and political problems faced by the country Nigeria, predominantly with respect to the outlook of poor funding of sustainable library development concerns and the government’s lack of interest in research, outdated library collections and poor information provision services have become the given at the institute’s library. This ultimately brought about pessimistic reactions from the researchers. Among its recommendations, the study suggested that funding the institute’s library in order to update and replace outdated library collections is a priority. An information audit should be carried out to ascertain the current state of ICTs within the institute and the institute’s library should be equipped with an internet facility promptly. Adopting these recommendations would enable researchers to have limitless access to items of information they need for research as they seek for information.Information ScienceD. Phil. (Information Science