Software search is not a science, even among scientists: A survey of how scientists and engineers find software

Improved software discovery is a prerequisite for greater software reuse: after all, if someone cannot find software for a particular task, they cannot reuse it. Understanding people’s approaches and preferences when they look for software could help improve facilities for software discovery. We surveyed people working in several scientific and engineering fields to better understand their approaches and selection criteria. We found that even among highly-trained people, the rudimentary approaches of relying on general Web searches, the opinions of colleagues, and the literature were still the most commonly used. However, those who were involved in software development differed from nondevelopers in their use of social help sites, software project repositories, software catalogs, and organization-specific mailing lists or forums. For example, software developers in our sample were more likely to search in community sites such as Stack Overflow even when seeking ready-to-run software rather than source code, and likewise, asking colleagues was significantly more important when looking for ready-to-run software. Our survey also provides insight into the criteria that matter most to people when they are searching for ready-to-run software. Finally, our survey also identifies some factors that can prevent people from finding software

Online support groups: an overlooked resource for patients

Online support groups: history, research, and source

Balancing accessibility and aesthetics in redesigning an asynchronous Information Literacy course

In the summer of 2020, I embarked on a project to redesign an asynchronous Introduction to Research Strategies course. Historically, the course had been used to supplement face-to-face library instruction for undergraduate college composition and student success courses. The author began by evaluating the accessibility of the course and discovered some issues with readability and consistency. After the outbreak of COVID, the library ceased in-person instruction and moved all library instruction online. The number of requests for synchronous sessions declined, but classes were still using the asynchronous course. As a result, these issues with accessibility and usability became even more pressing, since many students would only be receiving library instruction through the course. I consulted both the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) and principles of Universal Design for Learning when reworking the course, adding alternative text to images, using headings and lists, creating meaningful hyperlinks, using high contrast colors, and using readable fonts. Rather than finding that these accessibility measures interfered with the aesthetics of the course, I found that these measures enhanced both the appearance and functionality of the course. This is the entire argument for using the principles of Universal Design for Learning: making materials usable to as many people as possible ends up benefitted all people not just those with or without certain abilities

EmployAbility: A resource guide on disability for employers in Asia and the Pacific

This resource manual contains information to assist businesses and organizations that want to benefit from the business case for recruiting, hiring and retaining people with disabilities as employees. It presents a collection of resources and examples of good practice. It aims to help employers in this region learn more about workers with disabilities and the business case for hiring them. Many employers who want to hire disabled workers have expressed difficulty in finding disability information and sources of disabled job seekers tailored to their needs. While the situation and resources vary in the different countries of Asia and the Pacific, this guide can help. It lists organizations and sources of information to help employers who value a diverse workforce that includes disabled persons. EmployAbility includes the following information: l Information on how to access publications covering the area of employment and disability, many of which are available free and are accessible online; l A list of web sites that are specific to employer needs or that provide general disability information; l Examples of corporate sector policies and good practices related to employment of people with disabilities; l A list of national organizations or government offices that provide direct assistance to employers who want to find disabled job seekers; l Other items such as checklists and fact sheets that provide immediate and brief information

Development and evaluation of clustering techniques for finding people

Typically in a large organisation much expertise and knowledge is held informally within employees' own memories. When employees leave an organisation many documented links that go through that person are broken and no mechanism is usually available to overcome these broken links. This match making problem is related to the problem of finding potential work partners in a large and distributed organisation. This paper reports a comparative investigation into using standard information retrieval techniques to group employees together based on their webpages. This information can, hopefully, be subsequently used to redirect broken links to people who worked closely with a departed employee or used to highlight people, say indifferent departments, who work on similar topics. The paper reports the design and positive results of an experiment conducted at Risø National Laboratory comparing four different IR searching and clustering approaches using real users' web pages

Harnessing Collaborative Technologies: Helping Funders Work Together Better

This report was produced through a joint research project of the Monitor Institute and the Foundation Center. The research included an extensive literature review on collaboration in philanthropy, detailed analysis of trends from a recent Foundation Center survey of the largest U.S. foundations, interviews with 37 leading philanthropy professionals and technology experts, and a review of over 170 online tools.The report is a story about how new tools are changing the way funders collaborate. It includes three primary sections: an introduction to emerging technologies and the changing context for philanthropic collaboration; an overview of collaborative needs and tools; and recommendations for improving the collaborative technology landscapeA "Key Findings" executive summary serves as a companion piece to this full report

Collaborative yet independent: Information practices in the physical sciences

In many ways, the physical sciences are at the forefront of using digital tools and methods to work with information and data. However, the fields and disciplines that make up the physical sciences are by no means uniform, and physical scientists find, use, and disseminate information in a variety of ways. This report examines information practices in the physical sciences across seven cases, and demonstrates the richly varied ways in which physical scientists work, collaborate, and share information and data. This report details seven case studies in the physical sciences. For each case, qualitative interviews and focus groups were used to understand the domain. Quantitative data gathered from a survey of participants highlights different information strategies employed across the cases, and identifies important software used for research. Finally, conclusions from across the cases are drawn, and recommendations are made. This report is the third in a series commissioned by the Research Information Network (RIN), each looking at information practices in a specific domain (life sciences, humanities, and physical sciences). The aim is to understand how researchers within a range of disciplines find and use information, and in particular how that has changed with the introduction of new technologies

Sometimes the Internet reads the question wrong: children’s search strategies & difficulties

When children search for information on a given topic, how do they go about searching for and retrieving information? What can their information seeking strategies tell us about the development of search interfaces for children's digital libraries, search engines and information repositories? We interviewed New Zealand (NZ) school children to seek insights into how they are conducting information searches during their education