A paper authored by Drexel University College of Computing & Informatics (CCI) PhD in Information Science candidate Deborah Garwood and Assistant Professor Alex Poole, PhD won Best Student Paper award at the 84th annual meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) (Oct. 30 – Nov. 2) – the premier international conference dedicated to the study of information, people and technology in contemporary society.
Titled “Archivists’ Information Work Lines: Affective, Information Management, and Hybrid Onsite-Remote Work Performance,” their paper is among the first to investigate information work concepts in the archival context.
The paper details a qualitative case study relying on two rounds of semi-structured interviews with information professionals at medical history collections in Philadelphia. These interviews were conducted six months before and after the COVID-19 pandemic’s onset.
Garwood and Poole analyzed three lines of information work that evolved as these archivists shifted the work context to their home environments: affective effort, information management, and hybrid onsite-remote work performance. Their findings suggest that tasks such as processing, digitizing and curating resources (invisible pre-pandemic) and reference services (visible pre-pandemic) overlapped in archivists’ hybrid onsite-remote work performance during the pandemic.
“In recognizing the links between archivists’ information work and work performance as a holistic approach to studies of the information-intensive archival context,” their abstract states, “this research has implications for the centrality of work context, purpose, and value in the archival context.”
Garwood and Poole were also recently recognized as runner-up for the Best Short Research Paper award at iConference 2021.
A qualitative researcher in the field of library and information science (LIS), Garwood’s current research interests are archives, data Curation, information behavior, information practice, and metadata. She is also affiliated with Drexel’s Metadata Research Center. Garwood holds an MS in Library and Information Science from Drexel University, a Master of Fine Arts degree from Hunter College, CUNY, and a BA from Oberlin College.
Poole’s research areas include digital curation, archives and records management, digital humanities, and diversity, inclusivity, and equity. He is the recipient of the 2019 Jesse H. Shera Award for Distinguished Published Research from the American Library Association, and the Dr. Bob Williams History Fund Best Paper Award from the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIST) (in 2018 and 2017). He earned his PhD in library and information science from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill.
Poole will also present two other short papers at ASIS&T 2021: “’It Makes Me Sad’: Archival Pedagogy in a Time of Covid-19” (with Jane Zhang, PhD of Catholic University of America) and “LEADING the Way: A New Model for Data Science Education.”
Other Drexel CCI faculty and students participating in ASIS&T 2021 include:
- Panel: “Documenting Information Processes and Practices: Paradata, Provenance Metadata, Life-Cycles, and Pipelines” Learn More
Alice B. Kroeger Professor and Metadata Research Center Director Jane Greenberg, PhD
- Short paper: “Text to Insight: Accelerating Organic Materials Knowledge Extraction via Deep Learning” Learn More
Jane Greenberg, PhD; Information Science PhD Student Xintong Zhao; and Professor Xiaohua Tony Hu, PhD
To learn more about the conference, visit the ASIS&T 2021 conference website.