Several faculty and doctoral students from Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics (CCI) will be presenting and participating at the iConference 2014 at the Berlin School of Library and Information Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (March 4-7, 2014). Drexel University was also recently selected to host the 2016 iConference at its main campus in Philadelphia, Pa.
The iConference series is presented by the iSchools organization, a growing worldwide association of Information Schools dedicated to advancing the information field, and preparing students to meet the information challenges of the 21st Century. This will be the first iConference to be held in Europe; all previous iConferences were in North America.
CCI faculty and students will be presenting and/or participating in the following sessions:
- Session 15: Information Sharing
Thursday, March 6, 2014
2:00-3:30 pm
Location: 1.404
Chain of Command: Information Sharing, Law Enforcement and Community Participation (Note)
Kris Unsworth (assistant professor)
Information sharing among law enforcement officers and between law enforcement officers and the public is crucial to creating safe neighborhoods and developing trust between members of society. Since the terrorist attacks on the US in 2001 the US government has implemented a program called the information sharing environment: for both national security agencies and local law enforcement communication and sharing information is a top priority. Human information behavior and human information interaction research has been conducted in a variety of environments yet there is little research related to law enforcement and the public. This note presents early case study research in to this complex information sharing environment. The work builds on the strong tradition of research in information science related to information behavior and hopes to bridge the gap between security and law enforcement conceptions of information sharing and that of information science. This research is being conducted with the collaboration of a major metropolitan police department in the southern United States. The diverse research team brings together an academic, a law enforcement consultant and a constable from Toronto, Canada. While one deliverable of the project is to provide the law enforcement agency with a strategic communication and social media plan; the larger goal is to begin a multiple case research project to develop our understanding of information sharing with these types of unique stakeholders and in these complex environments.
- Session 18: Virtual and Real Rooms
Thursday, March 6, 2014
4:00-5:30 pm
Location: 1.403
Heat Map Visualizations of Seating Patterns in an Academic Library (Note)
Michael Khoo (assistant teaching professor), Catherine Hall (doctoral student), Lily Rozaklis (PhD, ’12), Diana Kusunoki (doctoral student), Michael Rehrig (doctoral student)
Library seating surveys record the use of seats in a library. They estimate library usage and are used to plan library spaces for future use. This paper describes a seating survey in an academic library, which aggregated data from 112 seat counts to generate heat maps to visualize occupancy. Triangulation of the seating survey data with another survey on users’ perceptions of space in the library, revealed an interesting contrast between highly-occupied areas that were perceived as quiet, and less occupied areas perceived as crowded and noisy. Discussion of this finding is framed in terms of Bennett’s (2009) model of a technology-driven paradigm shift in academic libraries from places for solo work to places for group learning.
- In Proceedings Only: Teaching and Learning Online: Contextualizing the Distance Education Classroom as a ‘Safe Space’ for learning LIS cultural competency (Note)
Vanessa Irvin Morris (assistant teaching professor)
Proceedings link: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/47279
*Unfortunately, this paper could not be presented at the iConference*
This paper conveys one LIS professor’s experience with teaching eight students in a newly minted multicultural/diversity course for an ALA-accredited LIS program. The course was taught 100% online with a structure that aimed to incorporate as much reflection and interaction as possible due to the humanistic nature of the topic of the course. This open-forum approach to presenting the course was met with resistance by students in various ways. This research seeks to explore what it means to be a teacher of LIS while simultaneously learning ways in which challenging student discourse in an online context impacts learning and possibly, competent library service in the field.
- iConference 2014 Doctoral Colloquium
Friday, March 7, 2014
9:00 am – 4:30 pm
CCI doctoral student Diana Kusunoki is one of 24 students accepted into this year’s iConference doctoral colloquium. Her research focuses on engaging users in designing tailored evaluation techniques in the emergency medical setting. She is particularly interested in applying this methodology to the participatory design of information systems and displays to support the situation awareness of healthcare providers during the trauma resuscitation process. Diana’s most recent work looks at how emergency medical teams use vital signs monitors through video analysis as well as how emergency medical clinicians perceive the ways information displays can be designed to support their awareness during trauma resuscitations through participatory design workshops.
For a complete listing of the iConference 2014 schedule, please visit the iConference website.