Courses

LIS-S 690 Information Science Research Seminar I

3 credits

• Prerequisite(s): None
• Delivery: Online

Description

Information Science Research Seminar I is an engaging course designed to cultivate advanced research skills and foster a deep understanding of historical and contemporary issues in information science. This introductory course provides an overview of major subareas within information science, encompassing information organization, curation and management of information, information services, information needs and seeking, information retrieval, human–computer interaction, bibliometrics, information sharing and reuse, and more. Each week focuses on a distinct topic with paired readings, exploring historical, foundational, and modern papers. Students will learn to discern various contributions, understand problem selection, research execution, evaluation implementation, and the reporting of results through critical discussions in weekly sessions. Through the discussion and the assignments, students will further develop their interests in the field of information and library science.

Rationale and relationship to the current curriculum. Students must take LIS-S 690 in the first semester of their doctoral studies. Seminar discussions will help students identify research questions of particular interest to them and provide a context for initial explorations.

Topics

Program Learning Goals Supported

Instructors map their courses to specific LIS Program Goals. Mapped program goals drive the design of each course and what students can expect to generally learn.

The Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program prepares students to become reflective practitioners who connect people and communities with information. The program goals (PGs) were adjusted to the following effective fall 2023:

• Connect core values and professional ethics to practice
• Facilitate engagement in the information ecosystem
• Curate collections for designated communities
• Lead and manage libraries, archives, and other information organizations
• Organize and represent information
• Conduct systematic research to inform decisions
• Innovate professional practice with information services and technology
• Examine systemic inequalities to improve library and information practices through equitable and socially just interventions

Each student should read the assigned material and arrive at a competent understanding of it prior to discussions and assessments. These measures will be used to assess student learning outcomes.

Learning Outcomes

Instructors develop learning outcomes for their courses. Students can expect to be able to achieve the learning outcomes for a given course after successfully completing the course.

1. Critical Analysis of Literature: Evaluate and synthesize critically existing literature, identifying gaps and opportunities for making original contributions to the field.
2. Advanced Research Exploration: Conduct innovative information science research while mastering advanced research methods, both quantitative and qualitative.
3. Theoretical Frameworks: Evaluate theoretical frameworks relevant to information science to situate research within broader disciplinary contexts.
4. Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Examine how information science intersects with other fields to develop a holistic approach to research.

Course Overview

Instruction is in Canvas. Lessons are organized into Modules whose length may vary.

This course cultivates advanced research skills and a profound understanding of historical and contemporary information science issues by exploring information organization, retrieval, and human–computer interaction. The course equips students with critical analysis skills and encourages their development of research interests in information and library science.

Module 1. Course Introduction

• Introduction, course overview, being a doctoral student, topics you would like to address this semester

Module 2. History and scope of Information Science

• Evolution of IS, IS pioneer, Interdisciplinarity
• Examples of reading:
  • Bates, Marcia. "The Invisible Substrate of Information Science." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50, no. 12 (1999): 1043-50.
  • Buckland, Michael. "What Kind of Science Can Information Science Be?" Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 63, no. 1 (2012): 1-7.
  • Saracevic, Tefko. "Information Science." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50, no. 12 (1999): 1051-63.
  • Tuomaala, Otto, Kalervo Järvelin, and Pertti Vakkari. "Evolution of Library and Information Science, 1965–2005: Content Analysis of Journal Articles." Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 65, no. 7 (2014): 1446-62.

Module 3. Research methods and theory

• Naturalistic and experimental design
• Examples of reading:
  • Alter, Steven, and Alan R. Dennis. "Selecting Research Topics: Personal Experiences and Speculations for the Future." Communications of the Association for Information Systems 8 (2002).
  • Lincoln, Yvonna S., and Egon G. Guba. Naturalistic Inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1985.
  • Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1967.
  • Chatman, Elfreda A. "The Impoverished Life-World of Outsiders." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 47, no. 3 (1996): 193-206.

Module 4. Information Retrieval, seeking, and user services

• Historical development of information retrieval systems, from traditional libraries to modern search engines, and their impact on information access.
• Examples of reading:
  • Agichtein, Eugene, Eric Brill, Susan Dumais, and Robert Ragno. "Learning user interaction models for predicting web search result preferences." In Proceedings of the 29th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval (SIGIR '06), 3-10. New York: ACM, 2006.
  • Bates, Marcia J. "The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online Search Interface." Online Review 13, no. 5 (1989): 409-22.
  • Culpepper, J. Shane, Fernando Diaz, and Mark D. Smucker. " Research Frontiers in Information Retrieval: Report from the Third Strategic Workshop on Information Retrieval in Lorne (SWIRL 2018)." SIGIR Forum 52, 1 (2018): 34-90.
  • Kuhlthau, Carol Collier. "Inside the Search Process: Information Seeking from the User's Perspective." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 42, no. 5 (1991): 361-71.
  • Marchionini, Gary. "Exploratory Search: From Finding to Understanding." Communications of the ACM 49, no. 4 (2006): 41-46.
  • Taylor, Robert S. "Question-Negotiation and Information Seeking in Libraries." College and Research Libraries 29 (1968): 178-94.
  • Twidale, M., Nichols, D., Paice, C. " Browsing is a Collaborative Process." Information Processing and Management 33, no. 6 (1997): 761-783.

Module 5. Information organization and representation

• Classification system, metadata, visualization, knowledge graph, social tagging
• Examples of reading:
  • Bates, Marcia. " Rigorous systematic bibliography." RQ 16 (1976): 7-26.
  • Buckland, Michael. “What is a ‘document’”? Journal for the American Society of Information Science 48, no. 9 (1997): 804–809.
  • Codd, E.F. “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks.” Communications of the ACM 13, no. 6 (1970): 377-387.
  • Cleveland, William S., and Robert McGill. "Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods." Journal of the American Statistical Association 79, no. 387 (Sep., 1984): 531-554.

Module 6. LIS and profession

• Critical issues of LIS research and translational impact
• Examples of reading:
  • Pollack, M. E. (2010). TIMELINES: Reflections on the Future of iSchools from a Dean Inspired by Some Junior Faculty. Interactions, 17(1), 66–68.
  • Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think." Atlantic Monthly 176, no. 1 (1945): 101-08.
  • Gleick, James. The information: A history, a theory, a flood. New York: Vintage Books. 2012.
  • Cooper, I.D., & Crum, J. A. "New activities and changing roles of health sciences librarians: a systematic review, 1990-2012." Journal of the Medical Library Association 101, no. 4 (2013): 268-277.
  • Licklider, J.C.R. Libraries of the Future. (MIT Press, 1965)

Module 7. HCI, CSCW, User support

• Critical issues of HCI and CSCW research
• Examples of reading:
  • Dourish, Paul. "What We Talk About When We Talk About Context." Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 8, no. 1 (2004): 19-30.
  • Nielsen, J., & Molich, R. Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces. SIGCHI Conference Proceedings on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 249-256). Seattle: Association for Computing Machinery, 1990.
  • Star, Susan Leigh, and Karen Ruhleder. "Steps toward an ecology of infrastructure: Design and access for large information spaces." Information Systems Research 7, no. 1 (1996): 111-134.
  • Suchman, Lucy A. Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Palo Alto, CA: Xerox Corporation, 1985. (read p. 1-46).

Module 8. IS education

• IS educational approach
• Example of reading:
  • Brown, Ann L. Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. Journal of the Learning Sciences 2, no. 2 (1992): 141-178.
  • Cleveland, William S., and Robert McGill. “Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 79, no. 387 (1984): 531-554.
  • Davis, Lois M., Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, Jessica Saunders, Jeremy N. V. Miles. “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education: A Meta-Analysis of Programs That Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults.” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2013.
  • Nell, Victor. Lost in a book: The psychology of reading for pleasure. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.
  • Wexelblat and P. Maes. "Footprints: History-rich tools for information foraging." In Proceedings of CHI, 270–277. ACM, 1999.
  • Norman, D. A. Living with complexity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2011. P. 1-32.

Module 9. Fall break

Module 10. STS, Information and social interaction

• Social construction of technology, science policy, citizen science, surveillance studies
• Example of reading:
  • Haraway, Donna. “Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575-599.
  • Hey, Tony, Stewart Tansley, and Kristin Tolle, eds. The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Research, 2009.
  • Star, Susan Leigh, and James Griesemer. "Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations,’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-1939." Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (1989): 387-420.

Module 11. Curation and preservation

• Data curation, open science, cultural preservation
• Example of reading:
  • Hedstrom, Margaret. "Digital Preservation: A Time Bomb for Digital Libraries." Computers and the Humanities 31, no. 3 (1998): 189-202.
  • O'Toole, James. "On the Idea of Permanence." American Archivist 52, no. 1 (Winter 1989): 10-25.
  • Rothenberg, Jeff. "Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents." Scientific American 272, no. 1 (January 1995): 42-47.
  • Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information. Preserving Digital Information: Report of the Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information. Commission on Preservation and Access and Research Libraries Group (Washington, DC: May 1 1996). [read p. 1-10]

Module 12. Data science, NLP, AI

• DS as a field and/or technique, AI adoptions and ethics
• Example of reading:
  • Biber, Douglas. “A typology of English texts.” Linguistics 27 (1989): 3-43.
  • Dean, Jeffrey, and Sanjay Ghemawat (2004), “MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on LargeClusters,” OSDI 2004
  • Harkema Henk, John N. Dowling, Tyler Thornblade, and Wendy W. Chapman. “ConText: an algorithm for determining negation, experiencer, and temporal status from clinical reports.” Journal of Biomedical Informatics 42, no. 5 (2009): 839-51.
  • Keim, Daniel, Andrienko G., Fekete JD., Görg C., Kohlhammer J., Melançon G. (2008) Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges. In: Kerren A., Stasko J.T., Fekete JD., North C. (eds) Information Visualization. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4950. Berlin: Springer, 2008.
  • Stolte, Chris & Tang, Diane & Hanrahan, P. “Polaris: A system for query, analysis, and visualization of multidimensional relational databases.” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 8, no. 1 (2002): 52-65.

Module 13. Informal learning and teaching

• Learning science and technology, collaborative learning
• Example of reading:
  • Kirschner, Paul, John Sweller, and Richard Clark. "Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching." Educational Psychologist 41, no. 2 (2006): 75-86.
  • Barnett, Susan, and Stephen Ceci. "When and Where Do We Apply What We Learn? A Taxonomy for Far Transfer." Psychological Bulletin 135, no. 4 (2009): 631-649.
  • Bandura, Albert. "Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change." Psychological Review 84, no. 2 (1977): 191-215.
  • Bloom, Benjamin. "The 2 Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as Effective as One-to-One Tutoring." Educational Researcher 13, no. 6 (1984): 4-16.
  • Campbell, Donald. "Blind Variation and Selective Retentions in Creative Thought as in Other Knowledge Processes." Psychological Review 67, no. 6 (1960): 380-400.
  • Ericsson, Anders, and Walter Kintsch. "Long-Term Working Memory." Psychological Review 102, no. 2 (1995): 211-245.
  • Chi, Michelene, Nicholas de Leeuw, Mei-Hung Chiu, and Christian LaVancher. "Eliciting Self-Explanations Improves Understanding." Cognitive Science 18, no. 3 (1994): 439-477.

Module 14. Thanksgiving break

Module 15. Information policy and ethics

• Ethical considerations and policies in Information Science, including issues related to privacy, censorship, and intellectual property.
• Example of reading:
  • Human Rights Council. “The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet. United Nations, 2016.
  • La Rue, Frank. “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.” United Nations, 2011.

Module 16. Course wrap up

Policies and Procedures

Please be aware of the following linked policies and procedures. Note that in individual courses instructors will have stipulations specific to their course.

• Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct
• University Policies