Perceptions and Experiences of Qualitative Open Data (PEQOD): Exploratory Pilot

This study examines open qualitative human subjects research data and the experiences with open data policies of researchers who use this type of data. The goal of the overall project will be to generate empirical findings and use them to develop a conceptual and practical framework to help researchers and institutions frame their open data practices for qualitative human subjects data within existing technical systems and in accordance with legal, institutional, funding agency, and publisher requirements. This poster frames the problem of qualitative open data in the context of existing literature and policies and reports the findings of an exploratory pilot study comprising semi-structured interviews undertaken with six qualitative researchers from six disciplines. As the participants considered their own qualitative human subjects data in the context of open data policies, the concepts that emerged include: the situated, co-constructed, non-neutral nature of qualitative human subjects data; ethical obligations and logistical arguments for and against re-use of these data; the “stakes” or implications of the content of the data and its confidentiality; and metadata to support ethical and effective data re-use

Coping in a distance environment: Sitcoms, chocolate cake and dinner with a friend

Students entering distance education programs often find themselves adapting to new learning environments and new technologies. Part of this adaptation involves coping with unfamiliar technology and learning to manage its use within the group, helping them create the environment in which they will learn. Part of it involves developing personal relationships that will ease their work and learning, helping them cope with unfamiliarity and change. Examining suggestions from distance learning students on how to cope with this process yields three-fold results. First, it demonstrates how students, instructors and administrators need to work together to ease student's paths. Second, it helps us in advising distance learning students about what they can expect from distance learning, and how they can contribute to and benefit from their distance learning community. Finally, it provides recommendations to instructors and program directors on how better to help their students cope with this community building transition and distance learning environment

An Introduction to Involving Users

Many libraries, archives, and museums provide their users with social computing environments that include the ability to tag collections, annotate objects, and otherwise contribute their thoughts to the knowledge base of the institution. Information professionals have responded to the world of user-created content by developing open source tools to coordinate these activities and researching the best ways to involve users in the co-creation of digital knowledge. This rapid influx of new technologies and new methods for interacting with users comes at a time when libraries, archives, and museums still struggle to share data across their own institutions, let alone between institutions of different types. Information professionals had barely begun to make progress developing crosswalks and data interoperability standards when, as social computing became the norm on the Web, providing the ability for users to manipulate data changed from a cool toy to a basic expectation. Moving forward—and keeping pace with user expectations—requires the coordination of many different users (in all their variety) as they contribute, participate, shape, and create all types of data in all types of contexts. This issue of Library Trends offers the chance to consider what social computing means for the future of libraries, archives, and museums, and to think carefully about the future trends and long-term implications of involving users in the co-construction of knowledge online. The authors of the following articles have thought broadly about the issues raised when we bring users into the mix in various ways and at various points in the information life cycle. Their efforts contribute to ongoing broad-based discussions about what happens when users are involved in shaping, guiding, and directing the development of online libraries, archives, and museums and their informationpublished or submitted for publicatio

Virtual Scientific Teams: Life-Cycle Formation and Long- Term Scientific Collaboration

Researchers will model the lifecycles of virtual multidisciplinary scientific teams using the facilities of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, an interdisciplinary scientific center with distributed facilities in Tallahassee, Florida; Gainesville, Florida; and Los Alamos, New Mexico. The model will be built from data collected through descriptive multiple-case studies, grounded in an analysis of social and organizational factors related to the concepts of the theory of information worlds: social norms, social types, information values, and information behaviors (Burnett & Jaeger, 2008; Jaeger & Burnett, in press). The researchers hypothesize that when the norms and practices of multiple external worlds represented by team members are integrated into the internal norms and practices of the team itself, the outcomes of the project will more likely be successful, and team members will be more likely to work together virtually again