Conference Agenda (All times are shown in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) unless otherwise noted)

The 23rd Annual SIG-USE Research Symposium is focused on the evolving nature of the human side of information research. As technology and society continue to evolve, it is becoming increasingly important to consider the human aspects of information research - human information practice, innovative approaches, and interaction and ethical challenges. The primary goals of this symposium include information researchers sharing their experiences and supporting others in the field and facilitating information exchange among esteemed and emerging scholars and professionals, to engage critically with the field, and provide feedback on preliminary work. Participants will be involved in a discussion with a panel of experts who will share their research and insights relating to this year’s theme. Participants will further engage in dynamic break-out discussion sessions with extended abstract presentations, as well as with lightning talks that focus on different aspects of the evolving nature of the human side of information research.

The 19th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium is focused on the use of networked technologies to highlight the state of academia and work in recent years has led to intense polarization and fragmentation across cultural, political, and geographic boundaries. During this past year, the vast utilization of ChatGPT underscores its capacity to impact our society, bringing about a range of benefits and drawbacks. These sociotechnical crises have joined other persistent environmental, geo-political, and global economic concerns. As a result, we cannot ignore the ways in which the deployment of ICT has been handled so far and the gaps between research and action and policy. This year, the ASIS&T Special Interest Group (SIG) Social Informatics (SIG-SI) will present a workshop about turning research into action in alignment with the ASIS&T Annual Meeting theme, “Making a Difference: Translating Information Research into Practice, Policy, and Action.” Papers accepted to this workshop will focus on the interaction of people, technology, and society, in order to turn research into change. Additional registration fee applies. 

This half-day workshop strengthens the AI community within ASIS&T by bringing together researchers, educators, students, and practitioners interested in the responsible use of AI and in conducting research on AI from LIS perspectives. The workshop has two streams. The first seeks to bring together all researchers studying the uses of AI in everyday life and work, and of designing, implementing, and evaluating AI applications in the context of library and information environments. The second stream seeks to identify and highlight the unique value and contribution that information science can bring to Human-centred AI (HAI), and utilize ASIS&T, which is the best scholarly communication platform for information science, as the venue to conduct, share, and record the knowledge exchange between information science and HAI. Through the World Café method of rotating breakout sessions and plenary discussion, participants will come together to identify common research questions and opportunities for collaboration. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of Preben Hansen, Stockholm University, Sweden, in preparing this workshop proposal. Additional registration fee applies.

METSI 2023 is a full-day workshop that provides a platform for research presentations and discussions related to the measurement of information production and use and the analysis of scientific and technical information by students, early-career and established researchers, information professionals, and librarians. The workshop will address relevant fields representing, or of interest to the SIGs’ communities, such as bibliometrics, scientometrics, informetrics, altmetrics, research evaluation and research integrity, scientific and technical information, and science and technology policies. Our goal is to strengthen the exchange of these. Keynote speaker: Mike Thelwall, University of Sheffield, UK. Additional registration fee applies.

Visual research centers upon images, not words or numbers. Over the past century, visual research has proliferated across the social sciences and today there are innumerable variations. This in-person Workshop “rounds-up” students, scholars, and practitioners engaged in Visual Research across Information Science. Our goals are: 1) to fortify a shared understanding of fundamental concepts associated with visual methods; 2) to showcase the diversity of image-based projects across Information Science, while offering constructive commentary and seeding friendships; and 3) to brainstorm a compelling Research Agenda that maximizes our effort and unifies our community into the future. We hope this workshop will not only deepen everyone’s understanding of visual methods, but also foster a supportive community that encourages productive collaborations among researchers focused on visual media and methodologies. Additional registration fee applies.

The 3rd Annual Workshop on Social Media Research, Challenges, and Opportunities aims to promote discussion and disciplinary convergence on the topic of social media research focusing on issues related to mis/disinformation, social bots, online communities, and emerging social media platforms. Social media has become a mainstream channel of communication where users create, consume, and exchange information. The ASIST community is uniquely positioned as a diverse community of researchers and educators with different backgrounds and expertise. This workshop aims to: 1) highlight current social media research opportunities and challenges, 2) discuss the threats and opportunities of newer social media platforms like TikTok, 3) identify and connect social media researchers, 4) disseminate research findings from the latest papers on social media, and 5) serve as a learning platform for new researchers who are interested in social media. The workshop willbe beneficial for advancing our knowledge and understanding of the changing socio-technical landscapes around social media. By bringing together scholars and practitioners from different disciplines, the workshop will facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and foster new research agendas. Additional registration fee applies.

The thematic narrative, composed of precise excerpt-commentary-units, is a disciplined and effective way to capture and convey the rich detail and multivocality of qualitative research (Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 1995; Hartel, 2020). The workshop will teach the essentials of this writing strategy. While the same material was featured in an online format at the 2020 ASIS&T Annual Meeting, the offering at hand is new and improved. Participants will be taught to write a thematic narrative: a gradually unfolding descriptive account that relates vivid pieces of field data to relevant concepts in the scholarly literature. Then they will learn to create excerpt-commentary units: rhetorical structures that contain four distinct and purposeful elements. Along the way, many interactive exercises – writing – will occur. Our session suits doctoral students near finishing, experienced social scientists who wish to fortify their writing, and those who supervise or edit qualitative research. The lead instructor, Dr. Jenna Hartel, has taught this method to more than 300 students at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. The workshop’s facilitators, Keith Munro, Hugh Samson, and Niloo Sohljoo are doctoral candidates with a passion to mobilize a next generation of expert writers of Information Science. Additional registration fee applies.

Collaborative interpretation is an inherent aspect of research in many disciplines but can also pose challenges. In this workshop, we invite participants to collectively explore what makes collaborative interpretation both rewarding and challenging, share our experiences in collaborative work, and brainstorm ways to develop infrastructures to support collaborative interpretation, with the high-level goal that participants can incorporate insights from the workshop into their own research and work practice. Introduction and challenges: Starting with a short introduction with short challenge papers, participants will present a 5 minute lightning talk introducing an important challenge problem they see in collaboration and their perspective on how to address it. Then all workshop participants engage in interactive breakout discussions. Collaborative activity: Participants engage in a collaborative interpretation of text from a corpus of personal diaries from 19th century Ottoman Iraq. The diaries are publicly available at https://www.svobodadiariesproject.org/, but we will provide additional guidance, materials, and a platform to engage in collective interpretation, with flexibility to shape the interpretive process based on workshop participants’ own research approaches. Additional registration fee applies.

This half-day workshop is for discussion and give and take between participants and the Editors-in-Chief of ASIS&T publications: Steve Sawyer for the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Lisa Given for the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST), and Chirag Shah for Information Matters. The workshop will consist of three separate 60-minute sessions of discussion and Q&A for each journal, plus some time for discussion and Q&A with all three Editors-in-Chief and editorial board members. Pre-workshop, participants will submit “Ask the Editor” questions on how to write a successful article at any of the publications. During the Information Matters session, Chirag Shah will answer questions, address current IM topics and discuss how to write the specialized IM article. For JASIST, Steve Sawyer will organize small groups to review synthetic abstracts to seed a discussion of the criteria JASIST uses to assess submissions, and will answer questions about how to submit a successful JASIST paper. For ARIST, Lisa Given invites participants to submit “Expression of Interest” paper ideas for workshopping during the session, will explain the “Expression of Interest” pitch process for new submissions, and give tips for writing comprehensive reviews for ARIST. Additional registration fee applies.

The roles and values of theory, theoretical frameworks, and theory building in library and information science (LIS) research have been the focus of attention of many scholars for decades. However, current practices in scholarly publishing have undermined these roles and values, creating a paradox in scholarly publishing and raising questions regarding a. whether research should be theoretically grounded, b. the impact of these practices on theory use and theory building; c. the roles of scholarly journals in encouraging the use of theory, d. the adequate preparation of LIS doctoral graduates to use and develop theory, and e. the roles theory play in the master’s level of LIS curricula. This panel of researchers and experts will share their work and map out their perspectives on the roles of theory, theorizing, theory building, and theoretical frameworks in scholarly publications. Attendees will share insights with the panelists about their experiences in using theory in research.

Information is not just for humans. And humans do not only live with, care for or interact with other humans. It is not surprising that information, the red thread that goes through all animal lives, could be studied from many directions and perspectives (Bates, 2022). So, we can learn from multiple species, whose lives are intertwined with us, when it comes to information. Information Science, lagging behind most other social sciences, has not yet broached a public conversation about the multispecies turn. This panel aims to attract attention to the timely and important question of “What is Multispecies Information Science?”. An introduction to the topic and key concepts will be established, followed by the provocative reflections on theoretical, methodological, ethical, and practical aspects of the topic. Panelists will bring their own examples of multispecies research, teaching, and design in Information Science and related fields. The discussion about the potential and implications of including Multispecies in Information Science would encourage empathy to non-human animals we live with, and start a new turn in the field.

This is the first extensive research on the information practices of Finnish transgender people. This research focuses on embodied information, which is defined as information derived from the sensory and sentient experiences of people in practice. The findings contribute to the developing knowledge on transgender individuals’ experiences of the ways that senses, affects, body-related self-observations and observations of other people’s bodies are a part of information practices. The conceptual framework of the research builds upon a theorisation of information behaviour and practices, transitions and queer theory and transgender studies in an interdisciplinary fashion. Methodologically, interpretive phenomenology informs the research. The thesis is founded on four peer-reviewed articles (Studies I, II, III and IV), and a compilation report combining their results with a focus on transgender individuals’ embodied experiences. The empirical material was

collected through 12 interviews in 2013 (Study I) and 25 interviews in 2016 (Studies II, III and IV) with Finnish people who identified as transgender. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis and queer phenomenology. The findings of this research illustrate how personal and interpersonal factors shape information practices of transgender individuals, including information encountering, seeking, creation, sharing, use, avoiding and hiding.

Nowadays, users trusting search engines appears fundamental, although this claim is build on little research. In face of new developments of search, the question comes up again: to what extent users trust a search engine, how it is build and which consequences does it imply. Based on interdisciplinary research on trust, the individual concepts of trust, trustworthiness,

and trust-related behavior are outlined and applied to the web search context. To date, there is not an adequate instrument for collecting the ambiguous concept of trust for technical artifacts like search engines. Therefore, a trust measure will be developed with the help of a qualitative laboratory study and validated with an online survey. Afterwards, the measure will be applied

in an experiment to the search engines Google and Ecosia and scenarios from the health and finance domain. The expected results indicate the causes and effects of trust in a search engine. In consequence, misplaced and legitimate cases of trust in search engines can be identified and discussed among civil society, researchers, and policymakers.

In recent decades, there has been an alarming increase in the number of university and college students struggling with intensifying psychological distress, which has become a mental health crisis on campuses. To address this issue, this study proposes social VR as a potential platform to promote social interaction and improve mental well-being for college students. In this study, 68 students explored a variety of social VR applications in a classroom setting. Results showed that a) virtual space, audio, avatar, communication types, and activities were key contributing features that facilitated social interaction among college students in social VR and have the potential to enhance mental wellness, and b) the anonymous nature, communicative cues, and designated private areas provided by social VR platforms were effective in facilitating self-disclosure, indicating social VR’s potential in delivering mental health services such as individual and group counseling and therapy. This study provides evidence that social VR can enhance social interaction and communication while serving as a platform for professional mental health care, a venue that has yet to be explored in previous studies.

Pakistan is a densely populated South Asian country facing numerous health challenges. With limited resources, the government is struggling to provide better healthcare facilities to the people. Like other developing countries, digital divide is another area of concern in Pakistan. To address the issue of digital divide, the government established e-libraries as a pilot project in 2018, which are functioning as community centers in the largest province of the country. This paper examines the role of these e-libraries in creating health awareness and providing health information to the public. The study utilized a qualitative research design based on focus group discussions with the head librarians of all 20 e-libraries. The findings revealed that e-libraries are actively involved in creating health-related awareness and connecting the public to health advisors. The e-libraries were engaged in four types of health-related activities, including seminars, awareness campaigns, open health camps, and special health days celebrations, with high attendance from the public. Attendees of these programs returned to librarians with additional health-related queries. The study suggests that there is a need for more liaison between the community and local health care institutions to make these programs more effective in helping individuals manage their health.

Threats against electronic medical and health records are on the rise. These threats include phishing attacks, malware and ransomware, encryption blind spots, cloud threats, and most important one is the internal threat caused by gaps in the level of awareness and knowledge of the employees and health practitioner of handling sensitive healthcare data. Cyber hygiene is a term used to describe both the technical and non-technical threats. In the same way, personal hygiene practices are used to maintain one’s own health and protect against diseases, cyber hygiene security practices are important in protecting and preserving sensitive electronic health information systems. In this paper, we report on the findings of a cyber hygiene study carried out in Kuwait with the objectives of assessing the level of awareness, knowledge and experience of physicians and healthcare professionals. The study identified seven different areas or barriers that impacted the cyber hygiene and the adoption of electronic health medical records in Kuwait. The seven areas include financial barriers, time, difficulty of using technology, lack of management support, negative attitude toward the use of electronic medical records, legal and ethical issues, as well as cultural barriers.

Despite older adults being one of the most important groups of users of eHealth services, including patient accessible electronic health records, these are claimed not to be designed to suit older users, and to not necessarily fulfill their information needs. User-centered design methods often utilized when developing eHealth services have also been claimed not to work well for older adults. This paper suggests an alternative way of collecting ideas and feedback on eHealth from older adults, by including open-ended questions in the data collection of larger studies on eHealth information behavior. When data are collected by methods like focus group interviews and surveys, older adults can be requested to envision an eHealth service that suits their needs. Results from studies in Finland are presented, and show that current eHealth services do not fulfill all information needs of older adults, as answers to the question in both focus group interviews and surveys contain practical suggestions for additional and more comprehensible information, easier ways of searching for needed information, and alternative channels for communication. Open-ended questions can be a cost-effective and timesaving way to help in the design and development of patient accessible electronic health records and other types of eHealth services.

History has repeatedly shown that when it comes to healthcare, there exist significant disparities across different sub-populations. Part of this problem is challenges with access to healthcare services and providers. In recent years, we have seen solutions emerge that attempt to address this issue, namely telehealth. But little to no work has been done to glean insights into factors contributing to lower access and whether telehealth adequately supports populations that struggle with physical access issues. In this paper, we present findings from an exploratory, cross-dataset analysis of healthcare access in Virginia, USA. We conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses lyses to determine correlations between socioeconomic factors and physical access. We found that population density significantly impacts physical access to healthcare. We also found that lower income communities in rural areas appear to be less satisfied with the quality of care and less likely to have adequate access to alternative options such as telehealth services. Our work has implications for research aimed at understanding healthcare access and practice that aims to derive solutions to close the healthcare access gap.

This panel focuses on researching phenomena in virtual and physical environments, and features research with participants from underrepresented groups, including LQBTQIA+ communities. Scholars will address their involvement in ongoing projects, which were all impacted by the shifting between physical to virtual methods during the turbulent times of pandemic response and recovery. The panel will discuss the challenges and creative solutions touching on both benefits and limitations of conducting research in multiple environments. One outcome is to parlay the clear advantages of virtual work for accessibility and inclusivity in research design and employ these benefits into other contexts.

Neutrality is a concept that has been under significant critique both within wider society and library and information science. Supporters cite it as a worldview that respects the choices of individuals and that no one view of the common good should prevail in a pluralistic society. Critics argue that it reflects an out-of-date concept that enshrines power structures created by those already powerful and limits the choices and opportunities for those without power. This panel reflects on the arguments and considers what a library and information science ethic that does not build itself around neutrality might look like.

Uncivil behaviors like rude or hate speech have been a persistent problem on social media, which could lead to negative user experience or even affect the psychological well-being of users. Automatic detection and moderation of such behaviors are critical to creating a supportive online community for effective user communication and positive user experience. In this tutorial, we propose methods to study online incivility, which includes data collection from a social media platform, i.e., Reddit, automatic detection of incivility with pretrained deep learning classifiers, and statistical and visual analytical methods to investigate the combination of community characteristics and users’ interactive patterns that relate to the occurrences of incivility. Similar methods can be applied to understand other information misbehaviors online, such as misinformation, dissemination of rumors, and cyberstalking. Hosted by SIG-SM.

Early social informatics research focused primarily on ethnographic, site-specific observations within organizations and was based on smaller case studies. The rising of social media and big data availability have made large-scale data analysis accessible and easier. This has informed social informatics perspectives by examining the roles and impacts of social media in our work and social lives. The panel aims to utilize principles of social informatics approach to understand emerging issues related to social media, which are pervasive in almost every aspect of our daily lives, and to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) more broadly. To push social informatics research forward, the panelists will address the questions regarding the future of social informatics. Hosted by SIG-SI

This article provides a theoretical background on participatory approaches in (health) information behavior studies. Furthermore, it introduces and discusses the implementation of a visual participatory approach applied in two explorative health information behavior studies, each conducted online via Zoom and with the virtual whiteboard Miro. One study examined the health information behavior and digital well-being of individuals with social anxiety (n=22), while the other explored health information behavior in the context of false information and scientificity (n=21). The approach aimed to actively engage participants within the interview setting through creative and visual elaboration and representation of health information interactions using the virtual whiteboard Miro. Findings show that using visual materials during face-to-face interviews facilitated the communication about sensitive health content and supported to capture key statements in situ, promoting the externalization of tacit knowledge during the interviews. Despite the content differences of the two studies, the unifying aspect examined in this article is how the implementation of the visual participatory approaches could enhance interview settings and lead to gathering rich data. This article fills a gap for methodological considerations of participatory techniques within (health) information behavior studies.

Attempting to understand visual frame perspectives in social movement posts online is important to develop an account of how social movements communicate and for what purpose. This paper builds a Mixed-Methods Matrix framework that combines computational applications with visual methodologies to discover frames of meaning making in a large image collection. Frame analysis and Critical Visual Methodology are reviewed and used in the framework to work in tangent with quantitative research methods. The quantitative methods consist of network analysis applications and network structure analysis. Visual sentiment analysis is explored using methods of computer vision. The methods framework is presented in the form of a matrix that enables researchers to identify applications for looking at social movements online through theoretical and computational approaches. The broader implication for the framework is to help researchers understand how online image collections can show meaning through perspective.

LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) activism has played a significant role in effecting legislative and social change in New Zealand and overseas, promulgating public attitudinal shifts towards tolerance and inclusion. These societal changes do not however appear to have resulted in the visible representation of LGBTQ+ communities in New Zealand’s GLAMU (galleries, libraries, archives, museums and universities) institutions. Using a survey, this study investigated what has been occurring in GLAMU institutions with respect to LGBTQ+ collecting and donating through a queer theory lens. The findings indicated that broad, inclusive collection policies do not equate to representation when coupled with passive collecting and little connectivity not only with LGBTQ+ communities but between GLAMU institutions. The evident need revealed by the research findings, particularly the facilitation of GLAMU interconnectivity, offered the chance to alter the existing state of affairs. This paper shows how ongoing research can be applied as the opportunity arises to inform current practices and initiate change.

This paper presents results from a participatory action research study with 46 LGBTQIA+ community leaders and 60 library workers who participated in four community forums at public libraries across the US. The forums identified barriers to LGBTQIA+ communities addressing their health questions and concerns and explored strategies for public libraries to tackle them. Forums followed the World Café format to facilitate collaborative knowledge development and promote participant-led change. Data sources included collaborative notes taken by participants and observational researcher notes. Results revealed that barriers experienced by LGBTQIA+ communities are structurally and socially entrenched and require systematic changes. Public libraries must expand their strategies beyond collection development and one-off programming to meet these requirements. Suggested strategies include outreach, community engagement, and mutual aid initiatives characterized by explicit advocacy for LGBTQIA+ communities and community organizing approaches. Public libraries can readily adopt strategies overviewed in this paper for LGBTQIA+ health promotion.

Research in information behavior has examined search difficulties and how people learn during searches but has not fully examined how searchers solve the difficulties on their own and gain new knowledge during this process. This study introduced the concept of insight learning during search to provide a new perspective for the studies in Search as Learning (SAL) and to optimize searchers’ experiences in a more efficient, innovative, and joyful way to combine search and learning. As a preliminary study, we conducted self-reported interviews with 30 participants to collect cases of insight learning during the search process. Based on thematic analysis of the data, we summarized the benefits of insight learning during search, described the process of how aha! occurred after impasse, and identified the antecedent, key, and consequence of insight during the search process. We aimed to help generate more insights by providing three dimensions of key factors to think about. A preliminary understanding of the insights formed in this study could contribute to further discussion about learning during the search and could help design new search tools that support effective learning.

In this concept paper, we make the case that variables related to reading and comprehension are relevant to the design of searching as learning environments. We propose that measures of cohesion – the lexical and grammatical connectedness within and between texts – be used as signals in retrieval and ranking algorithms for such environments, as cohesion is an important factor in text comprehension and learning. In illustrating this concept, we introduce a use case for learning-oriented search in which the task is to retrieve a multi-document set that functions as a spontaneous learning environment. For this task, features of the document set as a whole are important in addition to features of individual documents. In this paper we focus on the goals of achieving a mid-range level of readability and cohesion across a set of texts in order to balance comprehensibility with challenge and stimulation.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of various readability measures when assessing the difficulty of film materials for English Language Learners (ELLs). Library materials catering to ELLs are frequently limited to formal instruction texts and fiction materials. This study explores the feasibility of less laborious, computational text assessment methods to better understand library holdings from the perspective of ELL appropriateness. The investigation applies traditional formulaic readability measures and modern cohesion methods to film subtitle data. While text difficulty assessment with readability measures has been widely studied, there is a need to investigate which measures are most suitable for film application. In addition to evaluating existing readability measures, a more robust composite score is also presented, combining aspects of traditional readability formulas and modern cohesion methods. The experiments were conducted on real-world datasets and tested on film data marked for difficulty by ELLs.

User search performance is multidimensional in nature and may be better characterized by metrics that depict users' interactions with both relevant and irrelevant results. Despite previous research on one-dimensional measures, it is still unclear how to characterize different dimensions of user performance and leverage the knowledge in developing proactive recommendations. To address this gap, we propose and empirically test a framework of search performance evaluation and build early performance prediction models to simulate proactive search path recommendations. Experimental results from four datasets of diverse types (1,482 sessions and 5,140 query segments from both controlled lab and natural settings) demonstrate that: 1) Cluster patterns characterized by cost-gain-based multifaceted metrics can effectively differentiate high-performing users from other searchers, which form the empirical basis for proactive recommendations; 2) whole-session performance can be reliably predicted at early stages of sessions (e.g., first and second queries); 3) recommendations built upon the search paths of system-identified high-performing searchers can significantly improve the search performance of struggling users. Experimental results demonstrate the potential of our approach for leveraging collective wisdom from automatically identified high-performance user groups in developing and evaluating proactive in-situ search recommendations.

Leveraging open data to drive knowledge-based intelligent governance is crucial because it enables evidence-based decision-making, improves service delivery, increases transparency and accountability, and enhances citizen engagement. However, there are challenges associated with the use of data and technology in intelligent governance, including departmental data sharing and openness, practicality and user engagement of government platforms, and security issues. Therefore, our panel invited experts from various fields to discuss and provide solutions to these theoretical and practical challenges. We aim to deeply analyze and reveal the existing problems in theory and practice, and provide solutions to promote the development of knowledge-based intelligent governance. The importance of this panel lies in the promotion of evidence-based decision-making and the development of innovative digital public service capabilities to improve government responsiveness and citizen trust.

Many universities are now developing inclusive curricula with the intention that all students have an equal opportunity to achieve learning outcomes. But what in practice is an inclusive curriculum? This panel will explore understandings of inclusive curricula by engaging with academics from different regions including Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and the UK. By gathering together a multiplicity of practices and perspectives from panel members and the audience, we seek to create a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities in developing inclusive curricula. Hosted by the European and South Asia Chapters.

Tertiary students, as future citizens, require new attributes to function ethically in the challenging world of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and the emerging Society 5.0. How can students be prepared to handle ethical challenges, particularly presented by the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Educators need to re-evaluate their current praxis and be proactive in redesigning the current Information Ethics (IE) curricula. The purpose of this panel is to stimulate discussion on these burning issues. This panel will consist of six themes to unpack the role of Society 5.0 in teaching and learning of the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (EAI). It is essential to achieve an understanding of key concepts and definitions. The relation between IE and EAI needs to be considered. Not only do we need to interrogate the North-South IE dynamics, we must deliberate the positioning of EAI in tertiary LIS education

This panel/round-table discussion will explore contemporary challenges within our everyday personal information management practices when it comes to how we select, store, and prepare our life histories for ourselves and others. With all the affordances and access provided by digital technologies, we collect information across a variety of platforms, modes, and mediums, be they documents, text files, images, or audio. Not all of this information is meaningful to us in the long-term, but nevertheless, some of our most valuable information does get entangled in this chaos. Issues discussed include maintaining, organizing, and accessing our information, not to mention how others access what we want to pass on to them. Challenges include technological obsolescence, privacy concerns, cultural and generational changes, family dynamics, and even memory loss as we age. We will also explore solutions and propose and ‘idea box’ for how we can prepare for the future of our personal information, such as creating and implementing information legacy plans, digitization, storage, and access permissions.

The goals of open science are driven by policies requiring data management, sharing, and accessibility. One way of measuring the impact of open science policies on scientific knowledge is to access data that has been prepared for re-use. But how accessible/available are data resources? In this paper, we discuss a method for exploring and locating datasets made available by scientists from federally funded projects in the US. The data pathways method was tested on federal awards. Here we describe the method and the results from analyzing fifty federal awards granted by the National Science Foundation to pursue data resources and their availability in publications, data repositories, or institutional repositories. The data pathways approach contributes to the development of a practical approach on availability that captures the current ways in which data are accessible from federally funded science projects –ranging from institutional repositories, journal data deposit, PI and project web pages, and science data platforms, among other found possibilities. This paper discusses some background and motivations for such a method, the method, research design, barriers encountered when searching for data resources from projects, and how this method can be useful to future studies of data availability.

Data users need relevant context and research expertise to effectively search for and identify relevant datasets. Leading data providers, such as the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), offer standardized metadata and search tools to support data search. Metadata standards emphasize the machine-readability of data and its documentation. There are opportunities to enhance dataset search by improving users’ ability to learn about, and make sense of, information about data. Prior research has shown that context and expertise are two main barriers users face in effectively searching for, evaluating, and deciding whether to reuse data. In this paper, we propose a novel chatbot-based search system, DataChat, that leverages a graph database and a large language model to provide novel ways for users to interact with and search for research data. DataChat complements data archives’ and institutional repositories’ ongoing efforts to curate, preserve, and share research data for reuse by making it easier for users to explore and learn about available research data.

This paper explores sociotechnical perceptions of formats as they relate to work in the recovery and reuse of scientific data from historical, archival, and defunct data sources. The paper utilizes data gathered from 23 qualitative interviews with practitioners involved in various processes within scientific data curation lifecycles, ranging from marine biologists to data librarians. This paper focuses on how these practitioners understand, engage with, and utilize formats within their data curation work. Additionally, this paper enumerates the formats present throughout the scientific data curation process during the creation, preservation, curation, and redistribution of data. The paper explores how practitioners creating and curating scientific data encounter, make sense of, and utilize formats by identifying format types and their functions. Specifically, the paper focuses on practitioner perceptions concerning formats around the following themes: how practitioners' historical relationships to challenging formats inform their ongoing work with format-based curation, the importance of contexts in prioritizing or ignoring formats within scientific curation work, and how formats reveal more significant sociotechnical issues within the curation of science. The paper concludes by exploring practical and theoretical implications for navigating formats within the recovery and reuse of scientific data and offers suggestions on reconfiguring formats within data curation.

This paper aims to investigate the Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) process by examining the communication practices and risk communication dynamics among auditors during the audit. Through an in-depth, qualitative analysis of the audit process and the interactions between auditors, this paper provides valuable insights into the importance of diverse backgrounds, effective communication, and consensus building in the assessment of TRAC checklist requirements. Furthermore, the paper highlights potential areas of improvement within the audit process, addressing concerns related to disagreements, reliance on leadership, and the comprehensiveness of risk identification and communication.

Searching as a learning process implies that learning occurs during a search process and might happens incidentally, influenced by the context the search takes place and the system that is used. Searching and learning are not isolated but co-occurring events. Research investigates how search systems can be improved to foster learning processes, integrate information literacy enhancing methods and support user’s sense-making of information. Regarding the advancement of AI algorithms and their implementation in search systems, the concept of searching as a learning process can help to better understand human-computer interactions and future information-seeking processes. The panel advances current research on search systems for learning in non-formal settings, with a focus on investigating the relation between searching and learning processes that influence people’s understanding, assessing and use of information. It will focus on the contributions of information science research and the expectations of future searching behavior with respect to emerging advances in AI.

As we recover from this pandemic with changing workforces and work environments, we need to reimagine career development in Information Science from the lenses of a multiple-role journey toward success. The purpose of this panel is to discuss the following areas proposed by the ASIS&T Member Match Program: Research Advancement, Research Collaboration, Professional Networking, Career Advancement, and Leadership Skills Development. This panel is presented by 5 international LIS professionals from 3 continents (Africa, Europe and North America), 4 different countries (South Africa, UK, Sweden, and USA). Each panelist has unique and diverse academic and career experience to interact with the audience on the above five discussion areas. Hosted by SIG-III and the Professional Development Committee.

In response to the global disaster of COVID-19, every country has implemented various policies. China, as a developing country, has issued policies to combat COVID-19 that could serve as a reference for future pandemic prevention and control efforts, and may offer lessons for national governance. This paper employs bibliometric methods, text mining, and network analysis to mine and characterize the evolution of China's policies against COVID-19. Specifically, we extract policy targets and identify the policy tools from each policy, cross-compare the policy tools used for different policy targets, and characterize their evolution during the pandemic. Our findings show that policy targets have shifted over different stages to balance epidemic prevention with economic development. We also identify several shortcomings in distribution and utilization of policy tools. To improve policy implementation, it is crucial to align policy targets with appropriate policy tools and ensure a balanced and functional approach to policy implementation.

The outbreak of COVID-19 posed one of the most serious threats to humanity in recent times. The rapid transmission of this virus across the globe and presence of various information imperfections (e.g., absence of information, confusing information, misinformation) made the craft of developing an effective information policy during this pandemic extremely difficult. This study has analyzed the COVID-19 information environment of Australia with an aim to understand the important features of the information flow which, in part, helped Australia to achieve one of the lowest COVID-19 test positivity rates. The findings of this study carry important implications for the design of future information policy imperatives aiming to deal with pandemics, natural catastrophes, and human-made disasters.

Many Black Americans expressed skepticism and hesitancy about the Covid-19 vaccine. The objective of this research is to examine whether there is a relationship between Covid-19 vaccine status, Covid-19 vaccine knowledge, and information seeking about the coronavirus. A national online questionnaire of 222 Black identified individuals completed the instrument in the Summer of 2021. We conducted data analysis using ANOVA and nonparametric correlation tests among the variables. Findings show that individuals who have received the COVID-19 vaccine exhibited greater COVID-19 vaccine-related knowledge compared to people who declined the vaccine, or were hesitant adopters. There is no significant difference in the level of knowledge between those who are hesitant about the vaccine and those who declined it. Finally, there is a moderate positive correlation between COVID-19 vaccine knowledge and engagement in COVID-19-related information seeking. We conclude with strategies to improve the Black American health information environment by way of practice, policy, and action.

This paper details the findings from a study investigating the efficacy of community-based and -organized information sessions for dispelling public health misinformation around COVID-19. The authors used community-engaged participatory action research methods to co-organize town halls with community members, groups, and officials to disseminate COVID information for two New Jersey towns and townships with differing demographic compositions in late 2020 through 2021. These sessions aimed to share reliable, trustworthy public health and safety information around the COVID-19 pandemic. This small-scale, qualitative study suggests that this type of hyper-localized information session where residents can interact with local leaders and talk openly about local problems around public health can be a point of connection for people with their community, that helps them access and address localized public health problems in myriad ways. In so doing, this study suggests ways to re-imagine public health information and communication practices to promote informational justice.

This poster proposes a conceptual model to understand how digital events promote intangible cultural heritage (ICH) from a user experience perspective. The model is tested using survey data from 149 valid respondents. Our results indicate that two important attributes of digital events (event design and historical re-enactment) significantly contribute to users’ positive perception of ICH promotions. This positive perception further leads to increased attraction, user satisfaction, and engagement with ICH promotions. The value perception of ICH promotions includes three components: perceived utilitarian value, perceived hedonic value, and perceived symbolic value. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

The decision-making process for potential college students in the United States is overwhelming because of the volume of information available and the complexity of higher education systems. Prospective students must consider institutional rankings, academic programs, and financial aid opportunities in addition to completing the numerous forms. For some students, there exist personal and professional resources to assist with navigating the process. Others with less social and cultural capital must figure out the system with little or no assistance while facing other barriers. Public libraries can be a resource for the college-bound community; however, research shows that public libraries are not actively engaged in supporting this user group. To provide focused, quality information services to any demographic, it is important to understand the perspectives of frontline information workers. Thus, through an online survey, this study seeks to learn staff perspectives on the role of public libraries in serving prospective college students.

In the rapid flow of digital transformation, kiosks have naturally become part of our daily lives. In this study, we targeted visually impaired college students in their 20s, the primary user group of kiosks. We evaluated the usability of a self-service certificate issuance and fast-food restaurant kiosks. Based on Nielsen's five usability evaluation criteria, we presented experimental tasks to the visually impaired college students, monitored their performance, and conducted interviews to assess usability. Through this process, we aimed to understand the usage difficulties of visually impaired people when using kiosks and identify their specific requirements. Furthermore, we aimed to provide insights into improving the accessibility and usability of kiosks for this population and offer practical implications for developing kiosk education programs.

This work-in-progress study explores users' perceived credibility of health-related YouTube videos and proposes a credibility evaluation framework consisting of twelve criteria across four levels: source, content, creator, and interaction. College students who use YouTube for health information were invited to participate in an online survey. A pilot study was carried out with a small sample size. The findings from the pilot study showed that participants frequently accessed health videos, mainly for specific diseases, treatments, mental health, nutrition, and fitness. There were statistically significant associations between source and interaction, as well as source and creator. Further analyses with a larger sample size will be performed and reported at the 2023 ASIS&T annual meeting. We believe the findings from this study could enhance the understanding of users' attitudes and behaviors of seeking and sharing health information on YouTube.

This paper presents an overview of coverage of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in media outlets from November 2022-March 2023, a comparison to previous media coverage of the chatbot Tay across the same outlets, and a count of ChatGPT media articles pertaining to government legislation and regulation. The New York Times, Wired, Gizmodo, The Globe and Mail, and The Guardian were searched for coverage. Across all five outlets there is an uptick in media coverage surrounding ChatGPT, with total numbers of included articles per month being 0 in November, 39 in December, 68 in January, 104 in February, and 143 in March. Findings exemplify the trend of increased coverage of ChatGPT in media public discourse, which contrasts with previous smaller media coverage of Tay. Examination of headlines and subheadings of included articles reveals minimal coverage (0.057%) dedicated to government legislation of ChatGPT. Future research will evaluate what is being said about ChatGPT within these media outlets.

This study reviewed qualitative studies that focused on library practices for supporting early literacy development. A meta-ethnography approach was used to locate, evaluate, and synthesize the findings of these studies. Based on a search in the Web of Science and a nationwide database developed by the National Central Library, 16 articles were included in the synthesis. Drawing upon Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, the findings identified five key themes (i.e., diverse collections, innovative activities, proactive intermediary role of librarians, print-full environment, and community partnership) related to library practices that support early literacy. By interpreting the findings of the review, suggestions and implications were discussed for library services supporting early literacy.

Although open government information awareness has enhanced since China implemented the Open Government Information Regulation, the complaints about the information disclosure work also increased. Previous research has ignored the impact of the department’s responsibilities on information disclosure, which are essential as some departments handle information that should not be disclosed. From this standpoint, this paper is the first to analyze the differences in departments’ open government information performance from their annual information openness reports. Variance and correlation analysis show that the potential harm of disclosure to third parties’ legitimate rights and interests, the availability of relevant information, and duplicate requests can explain their differences in government information disclosure on request. Besides, this paper calls for an elastic criterion for openness evaluation and finds that the benchmark effect in previous research does not apply to departments with different responsibilities.

Vicarious learning (VL), a concept widely explored in organizational behavior, has also received attention in social media research in recent years. Compared to live streaming e-commerce and online communities, less VL has been studied based on danmaku, an instant commentary in video sites. We consider the characteristics of human information interaction in danmaku contexts and focus on exploring the core elements of coactive vicarious learning (CVL). Five core elements are identified: experience sharing, analysis & explaining, emotional support, controversy & debate, and content extension. We will further explore the influencing factors through content analysis and semi-structured interviews.

There are many valuable insights on jobs and professions in different sectors of society based on their imminent and ascribed characteristics. Studying such characteristics traditionally was done by action research, surveys, questionnaires, etc. which typically take much time and resources to be concluded. In this study we examine vocational education and training data on Twitter. While we present a generic framework to retrieve, process and analyze tweets, we will discuss two research questions from computational social science: First, how can we make Twitter data interoperable to other available resources, e.g. classifications of occupations, tools and skills? Second, do we have enough data to process job collocational prestige analysis on a geographical basis? This presents a novel approach towards labor market research, making novel data interoperable which has not been considered in previous literature. Our approach and pipeline is generic and could be easily extended to other languages. It also contributes to prestige research by widening the question of ascribed prestige to the question how information on occupations is collocated and what these contextualisations tell us about how occupations are seen.

This study investigated the patterns of undergraduate engineers’ information use as they transition from students to emerging professionals. We administered a questionnaire to 54 undergraduate engineers at a large research university, and compared the information use of 2nd and 4th year students. The results showed that 4th year students reported using more genres associated with professional contexts, such as technical reports, and fewer classroom-based genres, such as textbooks, than 2nd year students. However, a significant proportion of all students reported that they do not frequently use professional genres. These findings have implications for information literacy instruction by highlighting students’ need for further training on the relationship between genres and tasks.

Knowledge distance, representing the dissimilarity between different knowledge units, has been considered as an important dimension of recombination novelty and technological innovation. Previous measurements merely rely on the citation relationship and ignore their directions and weights. To fill this gap, this study proposes a network embedding method which not only capture the unequal citation relationship but also comprise multiple information to depict the distance. The results have shown that our method can accurately portray the knowledge distance in both scientific areas and technical fields.

Open Government Data (OGD) is essential for improving governance transparency, encouraging social participation, and inspiring collaboration between the public and private sectors. In order to realize the OGD Movement development in Taiwan via a practical perspective, this study adopts a qualitative approach to investigate 35 data practitioners’ behaviors based on the philosophy of grounded theory. The result indicates that the OGD practitioners’ behavioral pattern has seven phases, namely “Requirement Analysis,” “Functionality Design,” “OGD Awareness,” “OGD Access,” “Data Cleansing,” “Implementation,” and “Optimization and Maintenance.” Meanwhile, this study identifies “OGD quality” and “Interaction with the government” as significant necessities for the data practitioners’ development process. Finally, particular suggestions to improve the OGD utilization environment and further research recommendations are proposed.

This study explored whether harmonic counting, which emphasizes the position and role of authors in the author byline, produces researcher rankings (based on the number of articles published) that differ from those produced through full counting in multiple authorship–oriented research fields. An analysis of articles published during a 10-year period (2012–2021) by 377 chemical engineering professors or associate professors revealed a significant and positive correlation between full counting rankings and harmonic counting rankings. This finding indicates that when multiple authorship is the predominant trend for researchers within a given field, full counting can be performed to quickly determine researcher productivity rankings because it is more straightforward than harmonic counting. Future research should explore other research fields with diverse publishing trends.

The governance of health misinformation has been a hot topic in both social practice and academic research. Due to its proactive and timely nature, prebunking represents an emerging and efficacious intervention. However, previous research on prebunking primarily focuses on presenting arguments or techniques to the public in a direct and coercive manner, which remains limited in its scope and efficacy. This study aims to implement prebunking in social media by utilizing a milder approach, namely digital nudging. We conduct a web-based pre-experiment to test the effectiveness of warning, social and disclosure nudge, and obtain data from 104 participants. The preliminary results show that the warning and social nudge can mitigate the credibility of misinformation and decrease individual’s sharing likelihood. Furthermore, eHealth literacy acts as the moderator in the impact of social nudge. This study broadens the comprehensions of the misinformation governance and digital nudging, and furnishes practical implications for the implementation of prebunking in social media.

Scholars seek to translate research into practice through science communication, but the overwhelming use of English makes it challenging for some local community actors to access and implement research findings. Machine translation (MT) tools can help, but the underlying data-driven approach does not work equally well for all languages and research domains. If plain language summaries can be rendered more MT-friendly, this could make it easier for speakers of other languages to access research. This poster compares guidelines for plain language and guidelines for writing for MT to determine their compatibility and potential usefulness for creating reader- and MT-friendly plain language summaries.

This poster introduces an ongoing project to develop a scale for measuring information credibility on current and newly emerging interactive web platforms. The poster reports on preliminary findings from an initial phase in the project to generate an item pool based on an analysis of existing scales for credibility (n = 3) and empirical studies in the library and information science literature on web credibility assessments in the social media context (n = 19). Results show that in most papers analyzed (16 of 19; 84.2%), credibility was conceptualized as a one-dimensional construct and often measured with only one item (e.g., credible, believable), despite the common view among scholars that credibility is a high-level, multifaceted concept. The analysis also identified 59 semantically distinct items as an initial pool, which will be validated and tested with empirical data in subsequent project phases.

Data papers, a new class of scholarly publication emerging from the open-science movement, foster data discovery and reuse by offering comprehensive descriptions of research data. Yet, despite their promising growth, the role of data papers in scholarly communication remains underexplored. This study therefore investigates the perceived contributions and functions of data papers to scholarly communication by interviewing 14 data-paper authors op-erating in the field of natural science. Using conceptual frameworks adopted from Borgman (2007) and Van de Sompel et al. (2004), we identify four general functions of scholarly communication (i.e., legitimization; dissemi-nation; access, preservation, and curation; and rewarding). Additionally, our data lead us to propose that verifica-tion is a distinct scholarly communication, underscoring the importance of data papers in validating research find-ings in the context of ensuring research transparency. By elucidating the crucial role that data papers now play within the scholarly communication ecosystem, this study seeks to raise the academic community’s awareness of their fundamental position, as well as their co-existence with other forms of data publication, in advancing scien-tific research.

This preliminary study reports citizens' perceptions of using artificial intelligence (AI) in instrumental and value-added decision-making. We analyzed 5,153 responses from the Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel Survey, collected in 2021. The findings suggest that concerns outweigh excitement when it comes to adopting AI systems for complex value-added decisions while they welcome AI systems for instrumental tasks on behalf of humans.

This poster discusses Automated Research Workflows (ARWs) in the context of a FAIR data ecosystem for the science of science research. We offer a conceptual discussion from the point of view of information science and technology using several cases of “data problems” in the science of science research to illustrate the characteristics and expectations for designers and developers of a FAIR data ecosystem. Drawing from a 10-year data science project developing GenBank metadata workflows, we incorporate the ideas of ARWs into the FAIR data ecosystem discussion to set a broader context and increase generalizability. Researchers can use these as a guide for their data science projects to automate research workflows in the science of science domain and beyond..

Deepfake research has gained traction in recent years. There have been surveys that summarize work on the detection and generation of deepfakes. However, a more comprehensive and quantitative overview that encompasses both technical and non-technical areas is lacking. In this paper, we address this gap by utilizing BERTopic to discover deepfake research topics found in academic publications. Our results show that while detection techniques topics dominate the research field, other areas, such as privacy and legal research, offer potential avenues for further exploration. This study provides a clearer picture of current and potential research directions for deepfakes.

The development of research infrastructures (RIs) for social sciences and humanities (SSH) research is still incipient. Few of the existing facilities face several challenges that complicate researchers’ interactions with RIs and its digital tools and materials. This study explores the creation of an information service for conducting data-intensive SSH research by placing the end-user at the center. Particularly, the study investigated what factors affect the development of the RI and if this process is integrating all the information needs of end-users, putting a special focus on how these facilities should be evaluated. A qualitative analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews with SSH scholars and computer/data scientists revealed three themes: developing a RI, needs and expectations of the RI, relationship with user feedback and user interactions. Based on our findings, we were able to raise several design implications to create more successful and sustainable information services for supporting SSH research processes.

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI), a branch of AI capable of generating new content from human input, has the potential to impact every aspect of our society. However, as with any emerging technology, the benefits and detriments of GAI may not be evenly distributed, leading to digital inequality. Aspects like AI access, effective usage, and usage outcomes could define this emerging and evolving GAI divide. To fill the current research gap on GAI inequality, this study aims to empirically explore the factors that may contribute to a GAI divide to ensure that the benefits of this technology are distributed equitably throughout society. To address these challenges, an online survey will be conducted to examine both macro and micro-level factors that may potentially proliferate and ameliorate the GAI divide.

This poster highlights the connections between independent media, information activism, and disability through a case study of the podcast Death Panel and its listeners. Death Panel is a leftist podcast that explores issues of affordability in medical care and the dearth of public health resources. The ongoing project explores the independent media created by disabled people that concern their frustrations with societal and governmental neglect, and their desires to build community and a collective political movement for social change. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the podcast’s listenership has grown substantially. Similarly, the number of members in the Death Panel Discord group has increased to over 2,000 members over the past two years. As of February 21st, 2023, there are 2,954 members in the Discord server. For many members, especially those who are disabled and chronically ill, the podcast’s Discord has served as a significant site of politicization and community-building during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through semi-structured interviews, this project will explore the political and activist implications of information for marginalized people.

Understanding the interactions between science and technology (S&T) is crucial for driving major innovations. Previous studies have typically focused on identifying scientific and technical topics separately and analyzing their association through semantic or citation. In this study, we propose a novel approach to identifying linked topics that directly reflect the interactions within the S&T domain. Our approach integrates semantic characteristics and citation relationships, allowing for a comprehensive analysis of the specific content and structure of these interactions. We test our approach using a dataset of 2,821 patents and 4,626 papers from the field of genetic engineering vaccines, spanning the years 1980 to 2020. The results demonstrate that our approach provides a more direct and detailed understanding of the content and structural characteristics of S&T interactions. This research contributes to the methodology of linked topics identification in the field of S&T, offering new insights and analytical perspectives for related studies.

In the past, high-tech enterprises aimed to apply for patents to protect their innovation and obtain a competitive advantage. However, Open Innovation models encourage enterprises to open and exchange knowledge to accelerate technology development because of higher innovation complexity. Nonetheless, the impacts of open knowledge on follow-on innovation are unclear. Tesla’s patent openness event provides a better opportunity to observe a causal relationship between open knowledge and follow-on innovation as it is an exogenous shock for the whole Electric Vehicle (EV) field. Against this backdrop, this poster uses patent data of Tesla and EVs before and after the open-patent events from Derwent Innovations Index (DII) between 2003 and 2020. The difference-in-difference regression results show that patent openness has an inhibition effect on follow-on patents and patentees and the high-value open patents will strengthen this inhibition effect. Surprisingly, once technologies were shocked by openness, more open patents would stimulate them to boost in the future.

This study investigates the impact of digital reading patterns on comics, specifically examining page-by-page and scrolling formats. We compare the unique layout characteristics of each format and scrutinize the level of reader engagement elicited by these two distinct types of comics. In this study, we conducted a between-subject, eye-tracking experiment and the following semi-structured interviews with 20 reader participants. Results highlighted that readers of page-by-page comics scan quickly, while scrolling comics require navigating through each panel. The research concludes that page-by-page comics enhance reading efficiency but increase cognitive burden, while scrolling comics provide more breathing room but may seem redundant. These findings contribute to understanding reader perspectives on comics reading behaviors, providing insights for the digital transformation of the comic industry.

The growth rate of older adult produces demographic shift in Bangladesh. The objectives of this study is to explore how public libraries in Bangladesh can work or support for positive ageing. This study is a small part of larger survey study of the public libraries in Bangladesh. Data were collected from two open-ended questions which were used in the larger quantitative survey. Out of 59 responses received from the public librarians, only 15 librarians responded to open-ended questions. The answers of these two open-ended questions were coded and analyzed. Public libraries do not offer exclusive services for the older adults but many of the general services are used by the older adults. However, public librarians have come up with significant ideas to support older people for promoting the positive ageing. Findings also focused how this helps to achieve some of the UNSDGs in the context of Bangladesh.

Online nonsuicidal self-injury communities commonly create and share information on harm reduction strategies and exchange social support on social media platforms, including the short-form video sharing platform TikTok. While TikTok's Community Guidelines permit users to share personal experiences with mental health topics, TikTok explicitly bans content depicting, promoting, normalizing, or glorifying activities that could lead to self-harm. As such, TikTok may moderate user-generated content, leading to exclusion and marginalization in this digital space. Through semi-structured interviews with eight TikTok users with a history of nonsuicidal self-injury, this pilot study explores how users experience TikTok’s algorithm to create and engage with content on nonsuicidal self-injury. Findings demonstrate that users understand how to circumnavigate TikTok’s algorithm through algospeak (i.e., codewords or turns of phrases) and signaling to maintain visibility on the platform. Further, findings emphasize that users actively engage in self-surveillance and self-censorship to create a safe online community. In turn, content moderation can ultimately hinder progress toward the destigmatization of nonsuicidal self-injury and restrict social support exchanged within online nonsuicidal self-injury communities.

This paper proposes “information borderlands” as a framework for bounding a unique information environment that is constituted by individual and community level practices, physical landscapes (natural and human-shaped), as well as large-scale sociotechnical systems and systems of documentality. Taking the borderlands of the U.S. Southwest as a unique case, existing research literature is reviewed and directions forward for future research are suggested.

Information triangulation is a complex practice involving seeking and assessment. Although a newer model, it has begun to be tested and expanded in subsequent research. This poster presents early results of a study of the information triangulation of 23 pregnant and postpartum people in Massachusetts, USA, who were making decisions about cannabis use. Interview transcripts and notes were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, in an emic-etic approach, and findings were compared against the six previously identified types of information triangulation. All six types were evident, although specific source types and pathways differed among populations. Further, participants described both explicit weighing of sources against each other and heuristics they used to determine source credibility.

Deepfakes are AI-generated multimedia that convincingly graft or replace one person's likeness onto another, resulting in remarkably realistic yet fabricated content. These sophisticated manipulations challenge users’ ability to discern factual visual information as they portray individuals engaging in actions and uttering words that never occurred. This research takes a unique approach by delving into the perspective of deepfake creators through the analysis of 15 tutorial videos on YouTube. By examining creators' information-sharing practices, this study aims to identify creators' motivations for disseminating knowledge on deepfake creation and their understanding or lack of understanding of the ethical implications of sharing such information. Achieving such an understanding can play a vital role in informing the development of regulatory measures. By examining creators’ intentions and comprehending their societal impact, patterns, and characteristics, this research can contribute to the creation of effective detection technologies and strengthen content platform guidelines. Analyzing deepfake creation tutorials can facilitate the implementation of targeted and comprehensive regulatory measures, enhancing protection against potential risks and misuse.

This poster presents research investigating the health information use of older adults with diabetes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results-to-date showed self-reported changes in using health information during the pandemic; that is, some participants endeavored to protect themselves during the pandemic, they carefully made health-related decisions, and they had a challenging time following their caregivers’ suggestions (e.g., taking medicine and exercising) even though they knew they should. However, other participants reported no changes during the pandemic.

We are living in a world where a lot of people maintain constant connectivity through sending and receiving messages and calls. Contemporary research has focused on how smartphones disconnect us from our physical environment. Yet, in a digital disconnect, almost daily, people choose not to respond to certain messages or calls, which can make the sender anxious and adversely affect their communication. The first phase of this project consisted of an interview study of 24 participants which led to publications covering the sender and receiver perspectives. A follow-up large-scale survey of 4,001 respondents was carried out to investigate the receiver’s reasons for not responding including the role of power, the psychological impact on the sender, and other communication. Theories on information avoidance, power, interpersonal deception, and emotions inform this study. Preliminary findings are shared here. The findings will inform the fields of information science, communication, psychology, and mental health, and should help software designers build tools to help users communicate their context to each other.

This research in progress presents a deep learning-based approach to identifying named entities, including geographical locations and poetic imagery in ancient Chinese poetry. By leveraging association rule mining, this study establishes a connection between historical events, spatial-temporal trajectories of poets, and sociocultural phenomena of the age. From the perspective of digital humanities, we hope to be able to provide new evidence for socioeconomic status, cultural openness, or historical events at different ages, and to picture a better view of the development of classical Chinese.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies shape the ways information is created, delivered, accessed, evaluated, and used, but empirical research on AI and human information practices has remained scarce. This study makes use of a nexus analytic research strategy and co-research methods to study the impact of AI systems in the everyday lives of young people with an emphasis on the information practices that are reshaped due to the use of these technologies. The overall aim is to better understand how AI systems impact young people’s information practices and in conjunction to them, their autonomy, wellbeing, possibilities to participate in society, and access to rights. The empirical research will engage young Finnish people in meaningful conversations about their everyday encounters with AI systems and, using co-research methods, explore how these interactions shape their information environments, practices, agency, and identities.

Understanding the aspects of a restaurant that contribute to people's sentiment is crucial for restaurant owners and marketers to improve customer experiences. A sentiment ontology for restaurant review sentiment analysis was proposed in this study. The proposed ontology identified six aspects of a restaurant evaluation: food, service, ambience, cleanliness, location, and price, based on 1,000 annotated Yelp data. Applying the proposed ontology in the annotated Yelp data showed that it helped improve the sentiment analysis accuracy by 11.2% on average. We believe that this study provides insights into the key factors that contribute to restaurant review sentiments.

Scientific breakthroughs have the potential to revolutionize the course of research and shape the trajectory of scientific knowledge. This study investigates the characteristics of Disruptive Citing Papers (DCP) and Consolidating Citing Papers (CCP) associated with Nobel-winning scientific breakthroughs, aiming to provide insights into the mechanisms of knowledge creation and dissemination. By analyzing a dataset of Nobel-winning papers and their citation networks, we find that Nobel-winning papers tend to attract a higher proportion of DCP compared to CCP. However, CCP exhibit a higher impact, as evidenced by their citation counts and likelihood of becoming hit papers. Furthermore, DCP are associated with larger research teams, highlighting the collaborative nature of disruptive research, while CCP employ a higher degree of professional language style characterized by shorter titles and specialized jargon. These findings deepen our understanding of the role played by disruptive and consolidating impact in scientific breakthroughs, shedding light on the dynamics of knowledge creation and dissemination in the scientific community. This research contributes to the broader understanding of scientific progress and provides valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders in the scientific ecosystem.

In this poster, we report the results of a research study examining the presence of demographic data and other community-based data and their grouping in visualization on the COVID-19 dashboards developed by the 50 state governments across the USA and the government of District of Columbia. It was found that while all dashboards included some level of demographic data, there is notable inconsistency in the groupings, and a very limited number of the state-level dashboards included visualization filtering beyond the basic demographic attributes. Several dashboards included additional data grouping capabilities such as underlying health conditions, residence/business clusters, employment status, or social vulnerability index. Both the inconsistency/gaps in demographic grouping and the fact that only handful dashboards contained further community-based information shows the lack of awareness of state government on the importance of incorporating detailed grouping in demographic data as well as other community-based datasets. Public health dashboards, including those reflecting emergency or crisis situations such as COVID-19 dashboards, are in serious need to accurately, comprehensively, and inclusively represent and display the data patterns of all members of the community, especially the often overlooked and marginalized communities.

This study addresses the need for a shared understanding of humanities data to enhance data curation. Through interviews with 27 scholars, it identifies two ways scholars conceptualize data - by format or role in research. It highlights three unique aspects of humanities data: diversity in required processing levels, significance of authorship and perspective, and the dual role of tertiary sources. The study suggests prioritizing provenance, facilitating data documentation, curating tertiary sources for wider use, and establishing scholarly communication mechanisms for effective data curation.

During global health crises, identifying the key factors of the misinformation dissemination process on social media can provide decision support for public health management. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this study characterizes the effects of content types and social capital of social media users on the virality of misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We used scale, depth, and width to quantify the extent and structure of the virality of misinformation spreading on social media. The findings reveal that both the social capital of users and the content types have major influences on the dissemination of misinformation. Surprisingly, we discovered that the number of followers a user possesses has a varied influence on the dissemination scale, width, and depth, demonstrating the importance of considering dissemination structure.

The present study discusses the methods and outcomes of a project conducted at the University of Brasília with the aim of providing information services to the community of the Federal District (Brazil) on COVID-19 prevention and vaccination, as well as addressing domestic violence. Employing social marketing strategies, such as content marketing and viral marketing, the project sought to disseminate pertinent information and engage the target audience through social media platforms, primarily Instagram. The content marketing approach entailed the creation and distribution of reliable information utilizing authoritative sources and visual resources, such as illustrations, graphs, infographics, and diagrams. Simultaneously, the viral marketing strategy endeavoured to identify emerging subtopics of interest by leveraging the Google Trends tool and relevant commemorative dates. These integrated strategies yielded a remarkable 700% surge in the project's Instagram account reach alongside heightened audience engagement. The study concludes that community information services should prioritize the dissemination of contextually relevant information for various population segments, particularly those that are historically marginalized.

A core aspect of the scientific process is the verification of the credibility of findings. In research with a qualitative approach, there is an ongoing discussion about the most effective method to validate results. Discussed in this poster is the efficacy of community validation as a novel method to determine trustworthiness of research findings, with reference to a study into the adoption and use of public library services by forced migrants that was completed in 2022. Community validation involved research with ‘not-yet-participants’ to explore the accuracy of researcher findings from previous interviews. The use of community validation here resulted in increased the interpretive power of initial results, and of new results to develop understanding of the topic. It is concluded that community validation expands upon current methods of determining trustworthiness in research with a qualitative approach. It is particularly useful for research with participants who are not the population of direct interest, but informants who supply data based on their own observations of the members of the target population, such as LIS practitioners.

Data quality assurance (DQA) is critical to research data sharing and reuse. There has been a growing recognition of data transparency, reproducibility, credibility, and validity in research. Although the research data curation literature is large, it lacks data quality theory-guided examinations of DQA practices in research data repositories. This poster paper reports on the preliminary findings of a larger study that examines DQA practices in research data repositories, including their use of DQA ontologies, standards, and metadata vocabularies. In particular, the paper examines two quality standards and an ontology for their conceptualization of DQA activities and their structure. The authors used the findings of the analysis and the data quality literature to synthesize an initial model of a DQA process in research data repositories that conceptualizes three DQA activities: evaluation, intervention, and communication. This paper can inform the development of ontologies and best practice guides for designing and evaluating DQA workflows in research data repositories.

We propose a bottom-up, data-driven pipeline to uncover the structure of biodiversity subject metadata using a combination of text mining approaches. In this study, we analyze 721,035 subject terms in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). We utilize named entity recognition and word-embedding methods to systematically label and group terms based on their vector-space distances. The results show that the subject terms from BHL are clustered into several prominent themes relating to environmental regulations, geographic locations, organisms, and subject access points. We hope that our approach can serve as a first step to group similar subject terms together in large-scale, constant growing digital collections with aggregated metadata from multiple sources. Ultimately, we hope the next phases of this project can become a basis for biodiversity digital libraries to standardize their vocabularies.

Large amounts of samples have been collected and stored by different institutions and collections across the world. However, even the most carefully curated collections can appear incomplete when aggregated. To solve this problem and support the increasing multidisciplinary science conducted on these samples, we propose a method to support the FAIRness of the aggregation by augmenting the metadata of source records. Using a pipeline that is a combination of rule-based and machine learning-based procedures, we predict the missing values of the metadata fields of 4,388,514 samples. We use these inferred fields in our user interface to improve the reusability.

All over the world, libraries are facing fraught political and economically insecure times; books are being banned, marginalised communities are being protested, and Library and Information Professionals (LIPs) are struggling to narrow the digital divide to support a well-informed society. This poster explores the connection between the competencies required by two professional library organisations and the reality of Irish library and information professionals in their actual work context. Our initial data collection consisted of a quantitative survey with 897 Irish library-based participants. The preliminary analysis suggests the need for the strengthening of an Irish national code of professional and ethical framework, which would be of benefit to LIPs and Irish society. These ethics and values statements are the foundational pillars on which knowledge, skills, and professional abilities are built.

The prevalence of deepfake technology has led to concerns about the ability of people to spot real videos from fakes. We address these concerns through a diary study to elicit strategies people use to identify deepfake and real videos. Results indicate that different strategies were associated with deepfake and real video identification. Interestingly, popular strategies were often not as effective as less popular ones. Implications of our work are discussed.

This poster considers the role that information and context may play in health management. We employ a well-known taxonomy of techniques for promoting behavioral change to consider how social media authors describe their recovery from substance use. We harvest discussion posts from subreddits, or discussion forums, about alcohol, cannabis, and opioids, and perform content analysis to identify behavioral change techniques (BCTs) described in the content. We then consider the role that the context of information use plays in these BCTs, as well as how interventions and technologies might be leveraged to better support the recovery process.

Scientific retractions can be an indicator that misinformation is present in a research paper. Retractions are therefore an interesting research object to explore news coverage of misleading scientific information. This poster presents how problematic research (before and after retraction) is portrayed in news outlets, the impact of the retraction on these reports and the relationship of retracted scientific results and the spread of false information. Starting from a list of 270 retracted COVID-19 papers from the Retraction Watch blog , we analysed news articles of 16 retracted publications, that were immensely discussed in journalistic formats. By presenting three different use cases, we show how misinformation emanates from retractions and how problematic research is presented in media. Our research contributes to a better understanding of how retractions are used and perceived in propagating scientific misinformation on one hand and in mitigating it on the other.

The aim of this study is to investigate the reciprocal relationship between negative emotions and protective behaviors of older adults and the moderating effect of online health information seeking (OHIS) change on the relationship. Based on a sample of over 20,000 individuals from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe project, the study used a cross-lagged panel design(CLPD) on 2 waves of Corona Survey to analyze the relationship between negative emotions and protective behaviors with OHIS change as a moderator. The findings suggest that the number of negative emotions can positively predict protective behaviors, and OHIS can have moderating effects on negative emotions and protective behaviors. The result pinpoints the substantial potential of mental health and OHIS to combat infectious diseases in this vulnerable population.

Access to higher education is a form of capital that is not always equally distributed. First-generation doctoral students (FGDSs) face unique challenges and barriers which can make it difficult for them to navigate academic and institutional structures and access key resources and support. We present preliminary findings from interviews with 8 FGDS participants who pursue doctoral degrees in the field of information science in Canada. Interviews focused on identifying FGDSs’ information practices in their pursuit of higher education. An inductive thematic analysis revealed the diverse information needs and sources utilized by this understudied population. The results provide insights about affective dimensions of information seeking and the role of mentors as key information intermediaries in supporting more diverse, inclusive, and equitable space for FGDSs. The poster concludes with implications for practice to improve the interfaces between FGDSs and higher education institutions as well as the broader academic landscape.

Author keywords attached to academic papers are often used in intellectual structure analysis. However, the length and selection criteria for keywords vary across publications and, even some publishers do not require keywords for their articles. To explore the opportunity to overcome such keyword inconsistency issues, this study compared author keywords from papers focused on the digital divide with those extracted using the language models, BERT and ChatGPT. Preliminary findings reveal structural variations across the keyword networks and suggest a potential need to revisit keyword-based research. Future research will expand the scope of the dataset and conduct an in-depth analysis of keyword patterns across the language models.

Journal policies play a crucial role in facilitating the sharing of research data. This study examined the Data Sharing Policies (DSP) and Supplemental Materials Policies (SMP) of ten journals from 22 disciplines in 2023, comparing the findings to those of previous surveys conducted in 2014 and 2019. Among the 220 journals analyzed, 91.4% implemented DSP, whereas 95.0% adopted SMP. Compared with the surveys conducted in 2014 and 2019, a greater number of journals exhibited more stringent requirements for DSP, particularly in the fields of Engineering, Economics & Business, and Computer Science. Although the percentage of journals that accepted supplemental materials increased, only 12.7% strongly required their submission. Furthermore, this study compared the changes in Journal Impact Factors (JIF) between journals that adopted DSP (either requiring or recommending it) and those that did not have DSP in 2019. These findings suggest that DSP has a significant effect on JIF in the Economics & Business and Psychiatry/Psychology fields.

YouTube has become an important platform for political communication and information, but little research has been done on users' behaviors regarding political content. This study uses digital trace data and survey data from over 9,000 users to investigate political information consumption, content, and network on YouTube. This study also examines political polarization and partisan bias in videos. By exploring the intersection of digital culture and political attitudes, the study will contribute to a better understanding of the role of digital media in shaping people's understanding of politics.

Investigating the writing styles of different disciplines is crucial for comprehending the scientific language in scholarly communication. This study examines the variations in scientific writing styles across disciplines using a large-scale analysis on 14 million abstracts from the Microsoft Academic Graph database. Writing styles are quantified in four aspects: symbolic, lexical, syntactic, and readability. The t-tests were employed to explore potential trends in the evolution of writing style and investigate linguistic differences across disciplines. Results indicate an overall trend towards increasing complexity and informativeness in writing, with significant changes observed in Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, and Psychology. Disparities of linguistic features in writing styles were observed across disciplines. The findings shed light on the distinct language use in scholarly communication across disciplines.

Commentaries are derivative texts formed by commentators’ interpretations of classics texts, which not only reflect the commentators’ understanding and values in their era but also play an irreplaceable role in contemporary people's understanding of classics texts. At present, the literature in which commentaries are written collected by the library is organized in commentator-centered and it is difficult to efficiently collect all the commentaries of the same classic texts and analyze the citations in the annotation texts. The development of Semantic Web technology has changed the way of knowledge representation and provided new ideas and methods for the organization and sharing of commentaries. We use the seven-step method to design the HERU ontology. Finally, we conduct a semantic annotation experiment using some commentaries of the Analects of Confucius as an example to illustrate the practicality of the ontology in constructing annotation diachronic evolution and citation data. This study is of great significance to the inheritance and interpretation of Chinese classics and has reference significance for the semantic management between classic texts and their commentaries in other countries.

Stack Overflow (SO) represents one of the most vibrant Question Answering Communities (QACs), providing a crucial platform for developers to pose and respond to questions. A unique attribute of SO is the existence and retention of duplicate questions, these questions are preserved due to their potential for furnishing additional insights or suggestions. In this paper, we delve into the study of duplicates within SO, with the objective of unraveling their positive value, particularly through the lens of knowledge networks and the evolution. We propose a categorization of knowledge evolution within QACs into two key dimensions: depth and breadth. Our exploration reveals that duplicate questions play a constructive role in fostering both the depth and breadth of knowledge evolution. This finding illuminates the underestimated value of duplicate questions, underlining their significance for the ongoing expansion and enrichment of knowledge within QACs.

We observe a growing universe of machine-readable knowledge organisation systems (KOS) or even wider ‘semantic artifacts. We see at the same time, various attempts to bring semantic artifacts together via registries, catalogues and via cross-walks among ontologies. This poster reflects how newest research on semantic interoperability informs current practice for research data repositories and registry service providers. We focus on the domain of humanities and cultural heritage, using different examples from Europe and the Netherlands: The European Archaeological Data Infrastructure Ariadne, services of the Dutch Cultural Heritage Network and two Data Stations (for Archaeology and for SSH) hosted at DANS-KNAW. For those cases we report on current efforts to include ‘semantic artifacts’, together with opportunities and challenges. This poster is a practice report combined with an invitation to reflect about the context of semantic interoperability itself.

In the "intangible cultural heritage" digital humanities project, crowdsourcing plays a key role. Based on the related theories of gamification and narrative, it takes the traditional Chinese opera Henan Yuediao as a case, designs a humanistic contextualized crowdsourcing platform based on interactive digital narration, and tests its usability and feasibility. The research is conducive to promoting the in-depth mining and utilization of archives.

Information horizons is a theory and method that embraces behavioral, cognitive and social aspects of information seeking, sharing, and use. As the first method originating in information science that uses a graphical data collection technique (Hartel, 2016), it has served as the underpinning methodology for numerous investigations for over 20 years. The method is often applied in studies of diverse communities not traditionally included in research, such as lower socio-economic populations. Information horizons is also valuable in teaching master’s and doctoral students about information behavior and importance of theoretical constructs. For example, over 700 master’s students at the University of Toronto have completed exploratory, empirical studies using the method. A strength of the method is its extensibility; researchers have extended and adapted the method for use with different populations and to investigate different types of information behavior. This panel will explore the varied applications of the information horizon method, engage the audience in open discussion about the information horizons method for research and teaching, and explore how theoretical and methodological approaches can be more effectively shared across the information science and related communities.

While the potential and benefits of research-practice partnerships are well documented, there is limited discussion around approaches and challenges of establishing and sustaining public library-university partnerships in LIS research to bridge the gap between research and practice. This panel brings together five groups of panelists to highlight a diversity of public library-university partnerships within LIS and their approaches, models, practices, and implications toward consequential pedagogies and programming at public libraries. Through a collaborative panel discussion, this 90-minute panel will convene scholars and members of the ASIS&T community to improve concrete approaches and practices involved in public library-university partnerships to develop pedagogies and programming that are informed by the voices, needs, and interests across various communities.

This paper explores the relationship between cultural heritage and collective memory through the lens of information. We explicitly frame the heritage-memory-relationship as constituting a theoretical foundation for the field of Cultural Heritage Informatics. In framing heritage and memory as information phenomena, we leverage two information frameworks that appear most suitable to host, translate, and overlay heritage and memory theory: Context, relevance, and labor (Fremery and Buckland, 2022) and Information as thing (Buckland, 1991). Altogether, this preliminary exploration 1) establishes a terminological understanding of cultural heritage, collective memory, and information/informatics; 2) maps these concepts with recourse to the Context, relevance and labor framework (Fremery and Buckland, 2022); 3) articulates cultural heritage informatics as the intersection of heritage and memory focused on processes of selection, transfer, and integration of historic information in the service of identity maintenance; and 4) offers a cultural heritage information framework that highlights the unique potential of Cultural Heritage Informatics to guide future information research in cultural information studies.

The primary goal of this paper is to explore users' desires for digitized historical image collections, examining their desires based on different use purposes and information interaction activities. In addition, we investigate the image attributes that users wish to search from the collection. To accomplish this, we conducted 21 qualitative interviews with active users of a digitized historical photograph archive. Our findings suggest that users' desires relate to three contexts: tools, collection, and socio-organizational issues. Moreover, our results indicate that users require support for various information interaction activities, not just searching. We found that users' desires vary based on their specific use purposes, and that users prioritize conceptual access points that can already mostly be generated through automated annotation methods. Ultimately, this study contributes to a better understanding of users' real-life image needs and offers implications for improving access to digital image collections.

Digital, community-based knowledge infrastructures confront complex, systemic challenges to their sustainability over time. From digital community archives to computationally amenable corpora, databases, or data models created by and serving research communities, these sites of grassroots knowledge production tend to be maintained without long-term institutional commitments. Yet, they hold unique cultural evidence of enormous value. Prior work on the sustainability of digital humanities scholarship has surfaced numerous factors in project sustainability, including technical, organizational, and financial concerns. The roles of communities themselves in sustaining community-based knowledge infrastructures, however, are under-studied. This qualitative, multi-case study of digital humanities projects and digital community archives addresses community-centered approaches to understanding and implementing sustainability for digital knowledge infrastructures. This study finds that communities of various kinds—from public communities to networks of research practice—conceive of the sustainability of their digital projects as inextricably linked to the sustainability of communities themselves. We offer an exploration of factors in the mutual relationship of sustainability between communities and their knowledge infrastructures, including how they support the wellbeing of individuals and cohesion among communities, and how they promote activism and advocacy efforts within broader publics and disciplinary cultures.

The open data movement is hyped as a sweeping strategy to democratize science, promote diverse data reuse, facilitate reproducibility, accelerate innovation, and much more. However, it is rare that the potential perils of open data are studied and discussed at the same level as these promises. As we invest more into open data, we need to study the full spectrum of what open data facilitates in practice, which can then inform future policy and design decisions. This paper does this by describing the data practices of one contrarian community, anthropogenic climate change (ACC) skeptics, specifically how they process, analyze, preserve, and share data through an investigative digital ethnography. Skeptics often reuse data in ways similar to conventional data reusers, although to unorthodox ends, with differing levels of trust and expertise. ACC skeptics’ data practices call into question the assumption that open data is a universal good. These findings have implications for data repositories and how they might curate data and design their database with this type of reuse in mind.

This paper reports on a qualitative meta-analysis that aimed to identify, qualify, and conceptualise territorial barriers to interorganisational data sharing (IDS). The meta-analysis adopted a total of 69 semi-structured interview transcripts, gathered in two previously completed case studies in China. Case study 1 aimed to develop strategies to overcome barriers to interagency sharing of government data in the development of China’s smart government services. Case study 2 was carried out to investigate and resolve the lack of inter-hospital sharing of patient data in China’s healthcare referral services. By adopting a thematic analysis approach, the meta-analysis pointed to 21 territorial barriers to IDS, which emerged in three themes: psychological ownership, territorial behaviours, and interorganisational dynamism. Territorial barriers that hinder IDS have not been systematically investigated to date. This paper offers a theoretical basis for future studies and serves as a call for more research on territorial barriers in data sharing activities.

Research data sharing is embedded in policies, guidelines and requirements commonly promoted by research funding organizations that demand data to be “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” and FAIR. This paper discusses the challenges of balancing privacy protection with data sharing in a PhD project involving long-tail, small-sized qualitative human subjects’ data. Based on experiences and feedback from project participants, we argue that privacy protection is about respecting the participants and their self-image. This can be achieved through dialogue and involvement of the participants building on the principles of shared stewardship. Further, we suggest that de-identification and plain language consent materials are better at protecting privacy than anonymisation, which in a digital data environment is difficult to achieve and not necessarily a sensible approach for qualitative data, where the gold is in the details. The literature indicates that it matters to participants whether data are reused for research or other purposes, and that they trust the institutions. This supports our claim that research data services must find better solutions for restricted sharing when necessary.

This study develops a grounded theory of how social scientists use resources to facilitate qualitative data deposit and the impacts on making data FAIR and CARE. Drawing from 15 semi-structured interviews with U.S. academic social science faculty who deposited data to ICPSR, I take a resource-centric perspective to address the need for theorizing scientists’ use of resources to bridge the gap between underspecified, heterogeneous data practices and repository requirements. The two primary contributions of the study are: First, I identify three types of resources that social science faculty use to structure data deposit routines: 1) bottom-up, 2) top-down, and 3) borrowed resources. Second, I import a theory from crisis informatics, ‘routine infrastructuring’ to explain how social scientists deposit data to ICPSR. Results reveal that the resources social scientists use function as ostensive routines. I argue routine infrastructuring is not only a way to enact routines, but also one that creates routines. Findings also show that scientists’ use of resources developed ‘in-house’ has a mix of beneficial and negative impacts for making data FAIR and CARE. The study advances the small but growing body of literature that examines routine dynamics from a resource-centric perspective to explain successful data deposit to repositories.

Large investments of public funds to curate huge volumes of various physical samples acquired and stored over decades, and in some cases centuries, provide ample reasons to make these items as openly accessible, as easily discoverable, and as well-documented as possible to ensure this investment results in reuse. The purpose of this study is to understand the curation behaviors of managers of physical collections. Six focus groups were conducted with twenty participants from several physical sample communities. Participants responded to open-ended questions that relate to the entire data lifecycle for their research objects. Results indicated that physical collections would benefit from use of universal metadata and data storage standards to increase sharing across domains. Both of these factors contribute to access and use obstacles all these collections face in different ways. In the context of managers requiring more investments to encourage reuse of these invaluable items, this study hopes to provide preliminary domain-agnostic data to inform design of collections cyberinfrastructure, resources, and services using actual curation behaviors.

This panel aims to discuss and critique the position of Information Science (IS) in European countries. This will be achieved through panel presentations and through critical discussion of key questions amongst the participants in the session. The introduction to the panel will identify issues that emerge from studies of IS in European countries, and in particular points that emerged from two previous ASIS&T Annual Meeting Panel Sessions. Presentations on the current situation of IS in the United Kingdom, Portugal, and countries from the former Yugoslavia will be given and briefly compared. The focus will then move to session participants, whose views on the state of IS in their own country will be solicited in a structured manner. Hosted by the European Chapter,

While the focus of information science and technology research is in information, sometimes the lack of information, information gaps and non-information can make an equally great or even greater difference. The purpose of this panel is to nuance the understanding of the absence of information and addressing the gap in theorising, investigating and working with information gaps and ‘non-information’ across the information field. Panelists present research conceptualising, documenting, and describing information gaps and non-information and how they are dealt with in the information field specifically addressing: 1) how conceptualisations of information gaps and non-information influence how they emerge as describable entities; 2) what approaches to manage information gaps and non-information exist in information science and technology research; 3) what aspects of information gaps and non-information different approaches address, make visible and invisible; and 4) how novel insights from the current state-of-the-art research can be translated to practice, policies and actions. Prof. J. Tuomas Harviainen (Tampere University) has participated in developing the panel.

With the development of technologies in big data and AI, data has become more and more central to users for various tasks in different contexts. Yet the concept of data behavior, an emerging concept that captures the actions and interactions of individuals with data in various contexts and situations is not explicitly defined and framed. Data behavior focuses on the observable actions and reactions of users when they encounter, discover, seek, use, or create data for individual or collaborative tasks, while data practice encompasses the entire spectrum of how people work with data, from creating and managing to sharing and reusing data, as well as the intentional and strategic decisions and actions involved in these processes. This panel proposes a conversation and discussion about the concepts of data practice and data behavior by drawing on literature in data practice, data curation, and information behavior. This panel aims to discuss, compare, and bridge data-centric and user-centric approaches to conceptualizing data behavior. It will also present some examples of data behavior research in different domains and scenarios. The panel will highlight the challenges and opportunities of data behavior research for information science and practice.

This panel centers on presentations that address spiritual and/or religious experiences through an information lens. The panelists will initiate a timely conversation about the ways in which individuals and communities make sense of their information worlds post pandemic and in contexts of high uncertainty (e.g., climate anxiety, increased polarization, AI developments). In examining coping strategies of the spiritual and religious kinds, the panel brings together scholars in a range of information fields to address the conference’s themes, including theoretical re-conceptualizations of contexts such as everyday lived religion and spirituality at the intersection of health and well-being, socio-technical arrangements, and evolving and diverse information practices. The short presentations and interactive engagement bring together an international group of emerging and established scholars into conversation, and will coalesce into the formulation of a research agenda on this topic. Speakers’ interventions will revolve around three connected questions: 1) How can religious and spiritual experiences be theoretically contextualized within Information Science? 2) What research approaches are most suitable for exploring spirituality/religion in our digital networked world? and 3)

What ethical challenges do researchers encounter in undertaking this type of research (especially during a pandemic) and how can they be effectively addressed?

Polarization of views (known as ideological polarization) is one of the greatest societal challenges of our time, potentially sewing distrust and hate among individuals and communities and threatening to undermine the fabric of democracy. Divisive issues such as abortion and gun control are ever-present and can drive issue polarization, and even affective polarization—a disdain for ‘the other side,’ which can further divide society. Social media has been flagged as a breeding ground for polarized views, with private groups and personalized algorithms facilitating self-creation of echo chambers that may lead to polarization. While there is prior research on the technological influences on view strengthening, scant Human-centered research exists and most of it has focused on view change in general, rather than view strengthening specifically. To investigate peoples’ experiences of view strengthening on social media, we interviewed 10 people who recently strengthened their views on important topics. While some took steps to avoid creating echo chambers (e.g., by seeking out opposing views), others intentionally created them to allow their views to strengthen without interference. These findings have important implications for designing social media platforms that support careful and conscious view strengthening while mitigating against the risk of information manipulation.

The fear of crime is an emotional response individuals have toward crime or the anticipation related to being the victim of crime. The increasing exposure to crime information presents considerable risks to people’s psychological health and well-being. Nevertheless, the fear of crime in online discourses is under-researched despite abundant conversations about crime. This work presents a mixed-methods study to comprehend how people disclose the fear of crime and what linguistic content or cues are associated with the fear. We gathered conversations about crime in the Baltimore subreddit. The content analysis revealed a necessity to differentiate between "experienced" and "expressive" fear of crime. The regression modeling identified strong factors related to the fear of crime, such as negative sentiment, objective expression, and first-person pronouns. This work extends the conceptualization of the fear of crime in online discourses and suggests potential ways to detect the fear automatically.

The mutual causal interdependence between offensive language use and negative emotions has been largely underexplored in the public event. Using 784,179 posts about the Tangshan violence event collected from Sina Weibo, nine themes were recognized based on framing theory. The mutual causal relationship between offensive language and negative emotions under each theme was examined through Convergent Cross Mapping. Results suggested that the mutual causal relationships between offensive language and negative emotion intensity under various themes were different with bidirectional causality under moral judgement, emotional venting, and power conflict, unidirectional causality under the vulnerable framework and the trust framework, and no causality under other themes. More detailed examination revealed special bidirectional or unidirectional causality between offensive language and some fine-grained negative emotions under the vulnerable framework, the trust framework, and secondary opinion. This study provides insight into the interaction between offensive language and negative emotions and helps emergency managers make targeted strategies to solve the problems of offensive language use and negative emotions.

Twitter has emerged as an important forum for discussion among academic librarians. We took a mixed-methods approach to study the thematic content and sentiment of tweets authored by academic librarians in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. We found differences in the semantic content and themes present in the data from each country that point to differences in how librarians in each country engage on Twitter. We also present a methodological intervention by using two different sentiment analysis methods, VADER, and Zero Shot Learning, to classify posts by academic librarians. While more work remains to be done, we cast new light on how members of professional communities use social media. Our qualitative analysis identified 11 thematic categories in academic librarians’ Twitter discussions, with a focus on professional topics. U.K. librarians exhibited a higher frequency of labor- and employment-related terms compared to their U.S. and Canadian counterparts. Using the state-of-the-art Zero Shot Learning (ZSL) approach for sentiment classification, we significantly outperformed an off-the-shelf classifier like Vader. Sentiment ratios for U.S. and Canadian tweets were similar, while the U.K. displayed nearly double the positive-to-negative tweet ratio.

Today there is increasing emphasis on knowledge exchange (KE), the movement of knowledge and expertise amongst diverse groups to enhance research uptake, use, and impact in healthcare, government, and community settings. Library and information science (LIS) professionals are central actors in KE though community engagement, scholarly communication, literacy, and cultural heritage initiatives, but (how) is this work formally documented and evaluated? Through interviews with 24 information professionals working in varied settings, we considered how KE activities fit into the current library assessment and evaluation landscape. Using thematic analysis, we identified challenges with placing this work within current assessment practices and evaluation frameworks and showing its value, as well as a desire for alternative, more dynamic assessment and evaluation methods. We discuss these findings with respect to previous research in LIS and KE more broadly to consider professional and organizational implications.

Patron-perpetrated sexual harassment (PPSH) is a form of gender-based violence and a pervasive problem in libraries. However, contending with PPSH requires the performance of emotional labour by library workers because of workplace cultures and professional values that prioritize patron and institutional comfort. To better understand library workers’ emotional labour as they respond to PPSH, we analyzed 512 survey responses where participants shared their experiences of, their responses to, and feelings about, PPSH. Three responsive strategies emerged: acceptance, indirect refusal, or direct refusal. Overwhelmingly, library workers reported negative emotions about the incidents. Despite these negative feelings, library workers consistently responded to PPSH by performing emotional labour that upheld “polite and professional” values. Our findings raise concerning questions for the field of library and information studies about the implicit and explicit expectations placed on library workers to perform emotional labour in response to PPSH, particularly within the context of a feminized profession and with the knowledge that PPSH harms library workers. Our goal is to support library workers to “find a way to say ‘no’” to gender-based violence in the workplace.

In modern society, though public libraries must be equal and neutral “places” to address social problems such as the crisis of democracy and social isolation, it is unclear how the roles and functions of “Library as Place” appear in modern library management policies or practices. This study aimed to clarify the characteristics of public library policies in Norway and Oslo and the practices of the Oslo public library from the perspective of the “Library as Place.” Using Kawamoto and Koizumi’s (2023) model, a qualitative content analysis and case analysis were conducted of the roles and functions of “Libraries as Place” in Oslo, Norway, identifying the access to materials and information that libraries have traditionally afforded alongside the implementation of distinctive functions such as Cultural activities, Cutting edge, Improving life skills, and Meeting place as concrete practices. These functions contribute to public libraries becoming places in the heart of the community whose services are accessible to all.

Public library makerspaces are said to facilitate user empowerment, but this empowerment has yet to be fully explored in terms of how or whether it is occurring, or for whom. Libraries need to assess any processes of empowerment to evaluate their support for their users’ needs and to assess the success of their makerspace services. This paper addresses these evaluation needs by describing a checklist developed from ethnographic research in makerspaces based on Ivan Illich’s theory of “convivial tools,” which forward power to their users to decide how, why, and when to use them. This checklist translates research into practice with a tool for practitioners and researchers. It can assist librarians as they explore the impacts of their services on their communities, and can advance research about makerspaces and power for the purposes of social justice. It also offers an example of how to translate research into evaluative practice.

Growing global concerns over food safety, food price inflation, and climate change demand urgent attention in scientific fields. Food information behavior and practice have been a vibrant and growing research area in library and information science, following the user-centered paradigm shift and everyday life information needs, seeking, and use research since the 1970s. Research has shown that people engage with informal and embodied information to guide food practices (e.g., shopping, cooking, eating, and sustainability transitions). Food and health research challenge research methods and approaches in everyday information behavior and inform everyday practices, technological services, policies, and actions. In this panel, following a brief introduction, each panelist will share their research approaches and/or findings about food, health, and information research. We aim to invite and foster an open discussion with audiences to explore research opportunities, challenges, and approaches to studying food in library and information science. Hosted by SIG-HLTH.

This panel presents information research cases translating impact into practice, policy, and action that make a difference in varied contexts of study. Initiatives of collective impact are applied and/or proposed, and the following models of research and research studies, exemplifying critical collective impact and making a difference IN research and WITH communities, are discussed in the following three panel presentations: 1. Towards a Critical Approach to Community-engaged Information Research and Shared Knowledge; 2. From Research to Strategic Planning to Collective Action: A Logic Model Using Theory of Change to Further Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in Public Libraries; 3. Building a Smart City Portal for a Sustainable Future Through a Collective Impact Approach. The presentations are followed by critical engagement with the audience in the session to interrogate making a difference, what contributes to effective community engagement and translatable results, that is, difference in making (process) and making a difference (impact). Panelists represent both practice-based and academic settings who report on their research, projects, and reflections on applying collective impact in making a difference.

In a 2012 ASIS&T panel titled “Humanistic Information Science,” Melanie Feinberg, Jens-Erik Mai, Jonathan Furner, and Joseph Tennis argued that information science as a field “could be richer” if it were to embrace “humanistic approaches to information science” (Feinberg, Furner, Mai, Tennis, 2012). Approximately a decade later, this panel returns to foundational questions about science, the humanities, and information as a field of study to consider the relationship between the digital humanities and information science. How are information science and the digital humanities different? How are they similar? How might work done in one field make a difference in the another? What might digital humanists and information scientists have to say about translation and the transposition of disciplinary knowledge to and from each respective field? How might the translation and transposition of disciplinary knowledge in the humanities and information science inform practice, policy, and action in both and beyond? This panel will provide a forum for attendees to debate answers with leading information scientists and digital humanists from around the world. Hosted by SIG-HFIS and SIG-AH.

Failure in research is an underexplored topic in the information science literature. Many instances of research failure go unreported due to the success-oriented nature of academic culture, and academic publishing in particular. In not discussing, or failing to enable the discussion and reporting of research failures, important learning opportunities are being missed by the information science community. The aim of this panel is to explore these missed opportunities and to consider the need for approaches to research design, research collaboration and relationships, community engagement, publishing, mentorship, and teaching that will make room for such discussions to take place. The panel will bring together prominent information researchers to discuss failure in research in a series of short themed provocations and moderated group discussion activities.

An explosion at the Port of Beirut resulted in over 200 fatalities and displaced many more. Hundreds recorded and thousands shared the event, sparking discourse communities across social media. We provide a mixed-methods analysis of 26 TikTok videos about the port explosion. Our study involved a semiotic analysis of the videos and a content analysis of the related 21,150 comments. The discourse surrounding the explosion extends a growing body of literature on the role of TikTok in disseminating crisis-related information. We use a collective sensemaking framework to investigate how TikTok contributes to the understanding of an event. Our results advance an existing classification of crisis discourse, capturing distinctions between crisis discourse on Twitter and our study. In particular, we find that Middle Eastern content creators contributed more to collective sensemaking about the event than non-Middle Eastern creators. We additionally examine the current state of collective sensemaking on TikTok and provide platform implications.

The concept of ‘information crisis’ is playing an increasingly prominent role within information studies literature and practice. Yet, the term is rarely defined and its meaning often remains both inconsistent and ambiguous. This opacity calls for a greater grounding of the term if it is to become a key concept in the field, including how it operates and what it enforces. This short paper draws upon information studies literature to present a conceptual analysis of the information crisis concept. From this analysis, we argue that an information crisis framing is typically used to either establish the status quo, through centring challenges to established information ecosystems, or maintain the status quo, by outlining the operations needed to renew or protect these landscapes. These findings illustrate how ‘information crisis’ can obscure the very contexts of inequality and injustice through which crisis operates and delimits the possibility of changing/disrupting the status quo.

The aim of this paper is to examine the second- and third-level digital divides in U.S. society through empirical research on 5,253,530 web trajectory data of 642 unique participants. Through systematic analyses of the association between self-reported socioeconomic characteristics and the usage log, the paper exposed the inequality in application usage as a consequence of unequal cultural, temporal and capital resources. The research is strictly data-driven with a theoretical basis on the domestication theory and digital divide literature. This research can advise researchers and policymakers in understanding the multidimensionality of the digital divide and social inequality after the arose of tech giants and platforms.

Hacking is an opening gate to cybercrimes. Millions of hacked accounts are traded underground and misused for fraudulent activities. A majority of previous studies on hacking have been about hacked accounts detection and account security; however, relatively little is known about experiences of being hacked from gender perspectives. This study aims to explore experiences of being hacked with a focus on gender disparities from the perspective of the third-level digital divide—socially constructed gaps of digital use outcomes even among users who have similar digital access and skills. Tweets mentioning accounts hacked were obtained (N=13,731) and analyzed using topic modeling. Gender classification was performed on user profiles. Results show that women reported more experiences of being hacked in all online service types except gaming. Women were more likely to experience negative impacts of being hacked including reputational harm, money loss, and having personalized content modified. Furthermore, gender differences were found in coping strategies. Men were more likely to perform active strategies like warning others, rebuilding accounts, and deducing hackers’ origins. Meanwhile, women were more likely to seek help from others. The findings of this study imply that interventions to tackle cybercrimes need to be developed considering gender differences.

Data Science is a burgeoning area in the iField. But Data Science practices have far outstripped the field’s ethical safeguards. We argue that Data Science graduate education programs must address this critical problem. In this theoretical and conceptual paper supported by documentary evidence, we develop an ordinary macroethics that we call data flourishing. We contend that this macroethics is most appropriately developed through a holistic, human-centered data science (HCDS)-based pedagogy that concentrates on cultivating communities of ethical practice (COEPs) through social learning. We favor embedding this principle throughout iField programs’ graduate data science curricula and by extension, throughout the entire data science education enterprise. This paper aligns with the 2023 ASIS&T annual meeting theme of translating research into practice, especially the twin themes of “improving decision-making” and “understanding the power of information to develop human happiness, equality, and wellbeing.”

The Z-Inspection® Process is a form of applied research for the ethical assessment of AI systems. It is quickly establishing itself as a robust method to ethically assess AI in Europe. The process is predicated on the European Union's Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, outlining ethical principles intended to guide European AI development. In contrast, the United States has only recently released its holistic version of such guidelines, the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. The aim of this paper is to assess the suitability of the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights as an ethical framework underpinning the use of the Z-Inspection® Process in the United States. This paper provides preliminary findings of comparative analysis of European and United States ethical frameworks for responsible AI development. Findings outline primary ethical concepts that are shared between respective frameworks. Findings suggest the US Blueprint is suitable as an ethical framework for the Z-Inspection® Process. There are notable omissions within the US framework which would require further development for Z-Inspection® use. Discussion will consider opportunities for adapting Z-Inspection® to the United States context, including contributions from the information professions and research.

This paper presents the history, internal processes, and finalized report of the Trans Metadata Collective (TMDC), founded to address the lack of attention paid to trans and gender diverse issues in galleries, archives, libraries, museums, and special collections (GLAMS). The TMDC, an ad-hoc group of nearly a hundred information professionals, developed best practices for the description and classification of trans and gender diverse information resources. These guidelines prioritize transparency, cultural sensitivity, correct identification, explicit descriptions of transphobia, and regular assessment of trans-related content. It examines the effects of commonly used standards and controlled vocabularies such as Resource Description and Access (RDA) and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) on trans and gender diverse people and critiques the inadequacy of these standards’ representation of those communities. The TMDC provides guidance for using existing LCSHs, recommends alternative subject vocabularies, and proposes revisions to improve representation. The paper advocates individual agency in naming and gender identification, with recommendations on contacting creators and documenting their preferences. The TMDC emphasizes the importance of minimizing potential harm and protecting privacy in metadata creation. Overall, the report aims to enhance the representation and inclusion of trans and gender diverse communities in GLAMS institutions.

Extant discourses in Indigenous Knowledge Management [IKM] emphasize the need to support Indigenous self-determination, data sovereignty and self-governance. To channel archival attention in this manner contributes to a larger shift in IKM towards stewardship praxes that empower Indigenous communities through culturally responsive and responsible praxes. The role of radical empathy in motivating this change, however, remains under-explored. In this paper, we introduce eight mutually inclusive empathy-driven propositions to transform the stewardship of Indigenous knowledges through an ethics of care framework. Grounded in a te ao Māori worldview in Aotearoa (New Zealand), we discuss how orienting ourselves to empathy motivates specific kinds of dialogic engagement that gives voice to Indigenous peoples in diverse global Indigenous contexts to share what cultural values should shape their research and knowledge stewardship. In doing so, we offer actionable ways to make positive differences in the lived experiences of Indigenous individuals and communities as they interact with and lead contemporaneous stewardship praxes.

The LIS Forward initiative is addressing the urgent question: As LIS evolves within the context of iSchools, how do we best position our research and education programs to lead the field and the future of libraries? The initiative stems from the recognition that the evolution of iSchools presents opportunities and challenges for LIS and that there is great value in iSchools working together on charting directions forward. The growing coalition of iSchools is working to support LIS in taking full advantage of the multidisciplinary knowledge and expertise within iSchools, foster future leaders who will champion LIS within iSchools, and confront the dynamic tensions in research intensive iSchools. This session aims to engage international, professional, and academic stakeholders to guide activities and coalition building that can continue to strengthen LIS in iSchools. A panel will present highlights from a recent position paper to catalyze interactive, facilitated dialogue within the ASIS&T community on critical issues in LIS research and education. Breakout sessions will generate responses and recommendations to advance collaborative planning and strategy of value to LIS academic programs and the profession.

This panel will present examples of how to conduct critical social justice research in Information Science (IS) that acknowledges intersectionality. Each of the panelists has extensive experience in designing and conducting IS investigations with communities underrepresented in research who may belong to various, interdependent social identities. The panelists will present their specific empirical research and/or make a theoretical contribution that applies the intersectionality framework. Each of the panelists will give a presentation followed by a Q&A session.

This panel considers the bridge between research and practice in cataloging ethics. Cataloging ethics – including indexing and classification – is an important part of practice, yet cataloging ethics research and practice are not always clearly connected. The purpose of this panel is to build towards more evidence-based cataloging ethics practice. Two main areas will be considered. The Cataloging Code of Ethics (2021) is a vital part of these discussions: this major codification of cataloging ethics was the result of both practitioner input and much research. This panel will discuss ways in which the Code can lead to more research-informed practices. Teaching and training is a crucial – and under-discussed – aspect of cataloging ethics, both within library and information science education and workplace training. Therefore, the panel will contemplate how training and teaching can germinate research-based practices. The panel will be in three parts: a panel presentation about cataloging ethics, including each member’s perspectives and experiences on teaching and training in cataloging ethics; small group discussions about real world cataloging ethics scenarios, utilizing the Code to generate discussion; and feedback to the whole group with a closing discussion about strengthening the relationship between practice and research in cataloging ethics.

Information Sciences is deeply invested in improving the future of AI across the globe. Information science researchers are providing a critical voice in the growth of AI by bringing in perspectives related to AI Ethics, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and AI education for all. AI is seeping into everyday life and is often a source of concern for people whose lives are impacted. The concerns of losing employment, inequitable access, and biases create a fear of AI among people. Library and information science educators and researchers have a rich history of working with local communities and representing local contexts. This experience places us in an important position to understand and evaluate AI applications and their varied impact in different contexts; for example, the same library-related AI application would have different results in Europe versus Africa. However, AI and its applications in the global context are yet to be discussed and understood in the information science community.

Academics argue that the COVID-19 pandemic has limited students' ability to learn, with significant digital inequities occurring between students from the global North and the global South. Students and academics from developing nations encountered particular challenges and difficulties with the move toward online styles of learning. Much like their colleagues from developed countries, they were unprepared for this predicament, but on top of the crisis context, deeper issues were having to do with digital inequalities and disparities that were exacerbated by the inadequate digital infrastructure (smart devices/gadgets, internet access, and speed) and online interaction abilities and practices. The goal of this panel is to address the pressing issue of digital inclusion in online education, specifically the broader challenge of ensuring that online education is accessible to all.

Challenges to books in libraries have sharply escalated from 2021—present. While currently concentrated in the U.S, book bans are becoming widespread globally; these challenges often adapt strategies honed in the U.S., such as astroturfing. In this context, astroturfing refers to an illusion of grassroots organizing, in which national, elite-led organizations covertly coordinate local actions. Astroturfing is another manifestation of mis- and disinformation which ends up stoking fires of partisanship and discontent. In this panel, we will examine book bans, astroturfing, and solutions to these challenges, from several distinct yet interrelated perspectives.

Libraries offer an array of programs and services–in and out of the library–that are infused with important learning principles and concepts and can provide children and families, particularly from underserved groups, with valuable access to these principles and concepts. And yet libraries often are unsure how to reach these groups, where significant barriers can hinder community engagement and access. A research study, [removed for blind review], employed value-sensitive design to develop co-designed tools and a toolkit to help library staff interact with and learn from community groups and partners using a strengths-based and social justice approach. Two of the co-designed tools were then tested with MLIS students at two universities, whose feedback yielded several valuable findings. Students indicated that the tools helped them develop a deeper understanding of underserved groups and their values and gave the students the time and space to reflect on their understanding of the socio-cultural and value contexts of their communities and the values they hold. This study can help libraries more effectively design strengths-based learning experiences that are meaningful and relevant to underserved groups and their values, particularly for children and families who do not or cannot come into the library.

Beyond the easy and equal access to massive online contents, will digital reading bring more social welfare values for disadvantaged groups? Take left-behind children (LBC) in rural China as example, whose mental health issue has widely aroused public concern. Lacking of sufficient parental supervision and educational resources leads to insufficient development of psychological resilience and makes them vulnerable to mental health problems. As psychological resilience is a critical protective factor for maintaining mental health, in this paper, we wonder whether digital reading could perform as an alternative way with easy accessibility and numerous resources to supplement LBC’s resilience development. We conducted a field questionnaire study on LBC (N=217) and investigated the predictive effect of digital reading on psychological resilience. After controlling sociodemographic variables and common resilience protective factors, hierarchical regression results demonstrated that digital reading predicted an additional 4.3% of the variation in resilience above the control variables, indicating digital reading a positive promoter of LBC's psychological resilience. Moreover, by systematically exploring the fine-grained digital reading variables, we also found intrinsic motivation to read and recreational digital reading (e.g., reading comics and communicating online) to be the two most stronger predictors of psychological resilience.

While accessibility is a core part of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and social justice (DEIASJ) considerations, disability and accessibility are rarely centered in Library and Information Science (LIS) curricula. The lack of disability and accessibility coverage is problematic since information professionals must have the required knowledge and skills to effectively serve patrons with disabilities. This paper presents preliminary findings from a content analysis of 39 pre-filtered syllabi examining how disability and accessibility topics are covered in LIS courses. While nearly all of the syllabi analyzed contained a high level of detail, only 13 were ultimately determined to contain a “partial” depth of coverage of disability- and accessibility-related content and two a “detailed” level of coverage. Even fewer syllabi included a conceptualization of disability or accessibility beyond simply including the words alone. The paper offers suggestions for LIS instructors to better address disability and accessibility within their syllabi and course content.

The research reported in this paper is part of a larger project focusing on the iSchools’ identity and interactions in a globalized world. This paper presents the research management strategy for conducting a global research project among international research communities, and for investigating the current research focus of iSchools members based on the insights of global iSchools’ leaders. It found that information management was the dominant research area and that digital humanities, data science, and “informatics+ scenarios” are the key growth points. The most significant contribution of iSchools to society lies in social services. The research focuses on and benefits worldwide iSchools by outlining development strategies and strengthening the connection between research and society to increase social awareness, influence and reputation.

This case study describes the development of a management and leadership (M/L) iSchool course. To design a course that balanced traditional topics with current professional needs, we identified M/L topics currently covered in iSchools’ curricula, then assessed the importance of these topics for information professions through a survey of academic and professional communities. Survey participants selected topics in the areas of information economy, organizational management, and project management that they thought were most important for iSchool students to learn. They also suggested additional topics related to communication, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), financial literacy and strategic planning skills. Thirteen survey participants were interviewed by the researchers; they suggested further topics related to emotional intelligence and personal skills, such as time-management, risk-taking and confidence. This paper aims to support a culture of transparency in curricula design and, by sharing methods, findings, and lessons learned, ease the faculty tasks of course development.

Data science may be used to determine similarities between musical scores. Programs are written in C++ to capture note progressions from musical scores and to compare progressions from different songs to identify overlapping areas. These tools enable the study of musical borrowing across musical genres and may assist in copyright violation cases. Results indicate that within the Celtic music genre, borrowing occurs across greater than 10% of the songs.

The citation of scientific papers is considered a simple and direct indicator of papers’ impact. This paper predicts papers’ citations through team-related variables, team composition, and team structure. Team composition includes team size, male/female dominance, academia/industry collaboration, unique race number, and unique country number. Team structures are made up of team power level and team power hierarchy. Team members’ previous citation number, H-index, previous collaborators, career age, and previous paper numbers are a proxy of team power. We calculated the mean value and Gini coefficient to represent team power level (the collective team capability) and team power hierarchy (the vertical difference of power distribution within a team). Taking 1,675,035 CS teams in the DBLP dataset, we trained the XGBoost model to predict high/low citation. Our model has reached 0.71 in AUC and 70.45% in accuracy rate. Utilizing Explainable AI method SHAP to evaluate features’ relative importance in predicting team citation categories, we found that team structure plays a more critical role than team composition in predicting team citation. High team power level, flat team power structure, diverse race background, large team, collaboration with industry, and male-dominated teams can bring higher team citations.

As of spring 2023, the scholarly community has been eager to explore how AI-produced content should be integrated into both academic writing and scholarly publishing. This paper investigates the prevailing responses to the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022 and the interest that has been afforded it by both the academy and the publishing industry. A review of the published literature on aspects of ChatGPT authorship was carried out, finding that government and the publishing industry have unequivocally asserted that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT do not posses the traits of a person and are not able to author texts as a result. Other approaches, including practice, have been less vehement. To assess the integration of instructions on referencing ChatGPT using APA, top Google hits in the .edu domain were collected and analyzed over a 6-week period from March 14 to April 18, 2023, a time during which official recommendations of the APA Style were finalized. Findings reveal that librarians were quick to provide guidance, but slow to update that guidance, contributing to the potential for misunderstanding the affordances of and best practices for work with LLMs.

This article proposes a multilabel poem topic classification algorithm utilizing large language models and auxiliary data to address the lack of diverse metadata in digital poetry libraries. The study examines the potential of context-dependent language models, specifically bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), for understanding poetic words and utilizing auxiliary data, such as author's notes, in supplementing poetry text. The experimental results demonstrate that the BERT-based model outperforms the traditional support vector machine-based model across all input types and datasets. We also show that incorporating notes as an additional input improves the performance of the poem-only model. Overall, the study suggests pretrained context-dependent language models and auxiliary data have potential to enhance the accessibility of various poems within collections. This research can eventually assist in promoting the discovery of underrepresented poems in digital libraries, even if they lack associated metadata, thus enhancing the understanding and appreciation of the literary form.

In this short paper, we employ a month-long autoethnography to investigate the utilization of ChatGPT through metaphor analysis. We conceptualize three metaphors—unreliable narrator, court jester, and sounding board—that possess the most explanatory capabilities in describing what ChatGPT is, when it can be used, and how it can be helpful. We posit that grounding the use of ChatGPT in metaphors could facilitate discussions and streamline the intricate mechanism of Large Language Models (LLMs). Our study indicates that by proffering playful metaphors as substitutes to apocalyptic and arcane ones, we can enhance the accessibility and comprehensibility of ChatGPT for non-experts and policymakers, thereby potentially contributing to more informed and productive dialogues about the role and potential of LLMs in everyday life.

Based on the privacy calculus theory, users’ decision-making on privacy disclosure was traditionally viewed as a trade-off between perceived values and privacy concerns. However, recent studies suggest that the impacts of users’ cognitive style and platform trust cannot be ignored in the context of social media platforms. From a configurational perspective, this study explores how these factors collectively affect users’ privacy disclosure. Data from 452 respondents on a Chinese social media platform were collected through an online survey. The results suggested that users’ decision-making on privacy disclosure in social media is a complex process involving different configurations. For field-dependent individuals, the trade-off between perceived values and privacy concerns is less important than the role of cognitive style. For field-independent individuals, beyond the trade-off between perceived values in different dimensions and privacy concerns, their decisions are also contingent on platform trust.

Although there is much discussion of the theory/practice gap in library and information science, there is little research about how librarians use formal theory in their practice. Using a card sort and interviews, we explore the extent to which public librarians encounter or use theoretical concepts and models from information behavior in their reference practice. Results from our pilot study show that our procedures, including plain language descriptions of theoretical concepts and models printed on cards, are effective for eliciting examples of theory in practice. Librarians are clear about which concepts are relevant to their practice and can easily provide examples of real-world application. Results of the study will suggest which theoretical concepts might be most important for instructors to teach to students in reference courses and which translate best from the research to the practice environment. In addition, the examples provided by librarians of how they use the concepts in their practice will be useful for instructors as they try to engage students in learning.

Recent research on personalized retrieval technology has been actively conducted to meet the needs of users for seeking adequate information. To refine the retrieval, researchers are considering user behavior patterns in a variety of ways. In this study, we use eye-tracking metadata to predict users’ levels of comprehension as textual evidence for IR processes. Furthermore, we incorporated eye-tracking metadata on the Automated Readability Index (ARI), a readability assessment tool of an English text. Our research is largely divided into two tasks: i) comprehension evaluation task (CET) and ii) comprehension-based retrieval task (CRT). In the CET task, for predicting the comprehension level, we applied various regression models. Among them, the Voting regressor demonstrated the highest performance with a Spearman’s 𝜌 of 0.68. In the CRT task, we incorporated the level of comprehension predicted in the CET task and ARI score into the ranking results. We derived a sentenceBERT to find the relevant text for a query and the Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (nDCG) for evaluating the CRT task. The nDCG score for Comprehension Level only and that with ARI together were 0.65 and 0.78, respectively. Thus, applying ARI resulted in a higher nDCG score compared to comprehension level only.

Information behavior research to date has mainly focused specific cases or representative surveys at the individual level, because each individual has unique contexts that shape their behavior. However, they have not fully benefited from aggregate-level analyses due to mainstream theories’ focus on a contextualized understanding of information. To address this gap, we adopt the theory of local information landscapes, that focuses on the material aspects of community dynamics, and analyze national-level aggregate data on book circulations in public libraries across South Korea. By examining the relationship between socioeconomic status and public library book circulation, we discuss the potential to develop scalable theories and relevant data-driven approaches in information behavior research.

This study aims to explore the factors related to young women's Internet use for reproductive health information, specifically focusing on female college students. The research model is based on the Health Belief Model (HBM) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). A convenience sample of female college students who have recently used the Internet for reproductive health information will participate in an online survey. The survey will collect demographic information, background details on Internet use for reproductive health, and perceptions of reproductive health behaviors. Data analysis will examine correlations among the perceptions and their association with the intention to continue using the Internet for reproductive health information. The findings will contribute to understanding female college students' influential factors and information behaviors, informing the development of educational programs, intervention strategies, and online resources to improve reproductive health outcomes and empower young women.

Introduced by Microsoft in February 2023, Bing Chat is a feature of the Bing search engine that integrates an OpenAI large language model (LLM) customised for search (Mehdi, 2023a). This poster compares the outputs of Bing Chat and a standard existing search engine (DuckDuckGo) in response to identical keyword queries and corresponding natural language (NL) questions. Specifically, we examined: (1) the length of Bing Chat’s responses and DuckDuckGo’s first page of search results, by number of website links; and, (2) the length of Bing Chat’s textual summaries, by number of website links. We found that, on average, significantly fewer websites were linked to in Bing Chat’s responses compared to DuckDuckGo’s search results. Our findings have important implications for website operators, who may receive less traffic and ad revenue if LLM-enabled search engines are widely adopted in the future. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) will inevitably face the need for more research on human information behaviours adaptations in response to the changing search paradigm.

The current study developed a data literacy instrument with 20 contextual questions and conducted a multi-mode survey with 232 pre-service secondary teachers in a university system. Three-way ANOVA was used to test whether pre-service teachers with different characteristics (i.e., field of study, library use, and Internet use) performed differently on data literacy. Pre-service teachers got a decent overall percentage score. They performed better in “identifying problems” and “analyzing data” than in “transforming data” and “collecting data.” While pre-service teachers in humanities and social sciences performed better in “identifying problems,” those in sciences performed better in “analyzing data.” Humanities pre-service teachers with high Internet use scored significantly lower; social science pre-service teachers with high Internet use and low library use scored significantly lower; science pre-service teachers with low library use scored higher. Implications for future data literacy education and instrument design are discussed based on the preliminary findings.

The ICT advancement and people’s increasing cultural needs have stimulated China’s online form of cultural activity organization. With highlights on such a new trend, this paper analyzes the impact of the newly-invented online activity organization form on the participation ratio of parent-child cultural activities, which are vital in China’s public cultural service system. Regression analysis indicates that the online activity organization form reduces the impact of limited available tickets and web browsing. It also relaxes the special time limit for public participation. Such an online form of activity organization deserves further attention considering its flexibility and convenience valued by the public.

Innovation Open Data Contest (IODC) is an effective way to take advantage of public efforts to realize the great potential value of open data in the field of digital humanities. Previous literature focusses more on the challenge open data contest rather than innovation open data contest. Given this, understanding the underlying factors motivating participants to actively engage in the contest is necessary. Based on the task affordance theory and self-determination theory (SDT), this study aims to identify and examine how task presentation affordances of IODC influence participants' motivations and thereby shape their level of effort. We employ partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) techniques to analyze the responses from 215 individuals who have previously participated in the IODC. The findings indicate that participants' level of effort in the IODC is contingent upon their perception of relatedness and competence. Moreover, hedonic affordance and connective affordance positively influence participants' perceptions of relatedness and competence. Our findings contribute to the extant literature by proposing a theoretical model to understand the participants’ motivation and have practical implications for IODC’s organizers.

Understanding and defining cybersecurity-related concepts for the general public can often prove challenging due to their inherent complexity; consequently, visual imaginary emerges as an effective device for articulating and elucidating these abstract ideas. In this study, we leveraged an adapted version of the existing iSquare approach to explore people’s understanding of cybersecurity. We collected 499 iSquares from a broad-spectrum backgrounds of participants attending a prominent international cybersecurity exhibition in Taiwan. Our preliminary findings revealed that metaphors of physical security and warfare were the most frequently employed in participants' conceptualizations of cybersecurity. Participants’ work roles were also observed to influence their respective attitudes and perspectives as expressed in their pictorial representations of cybersecurity.

While accessibility is a core value of the American Library Association (ALA) and represents an important factor in striving for diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and social justice (DEIASJ), coverage of accessibility varies widely in programs intended to equip future LIS professionals to serve patrons with disabilities. This poster presents preliminary findings from a larger research project examining library and information science curricula at 77 North American colleges and universities. Through thematic analysis of course descriptions and syllabi, the researchers found that digital topics in accessibility are addressed more frequently than physical ones. Further, LIS curricula largely overlook the needs of disabled patrons when covering accessibility. These factors present challenges for future LIS professionals serving patrons with disabilities.

In Spring 2020, the murder of George Floyd catalyzed calls for racial justice across the United States, ushering in a series of organizational and institutional responses. One response from Yelp, a popular review-based platform, included its addition of a searchable Black-owned attribute, a tag intended to signal its solidarity with Black businesses and communities. Analyzing a repository of over 300,000 Yelp reviews from Black and non-Black-owned restaurants in Los Angeles, CA, USA and Detroit, MI, USA, we pose the following question: How did the addition of the Black-owned tag impact the online reputation of Los Angeles and Detroit Black-owned restaurants on Yelp? To examine this, we use restaurant review counts and average star ratings as proxy measures for online reputation and track these metrics over the year following the platform design intervention. We find that the addition of the Black-owned tag did not create positive, sustainable change for Los Angeles and Detroit Black-owned restaurants. In all, we call attention to the disparate impacts of platform design features on users and communities, especially for Yelp and digital platforms seeking to effect racial justice through novel platform design interventions.

This study delves into the realm of information behavior research, examining the attitudes and information-seeking patterns of Polish and Ukrainian parents regarding vaccination. Amidst rising vaccine skepticism globally, understanding how individuals acquire and evaluate information about vaccinations is crucial for effective public health communication. Through in-depth interviews and surveys, the study examines how parents acquire information about vaccinations, evaluate the credibility of this information, and identify cognitive authorities that enhance information credibility. Preliminary findings demonstrate distinct information-seeking strategies between pro-vaccination and skeptical parents. Parents in favor of vaccination tend to rely on a single source, typically their doctor, emphasizing the authority associated with their role. In contrast, skeptical parents consult various sources, prioritizing close personal relationships and shared experiences. In contrast, skeptical parents consult various sources, prioritizing close personal relationships and shared experiences. Moreover, opponents of vaccination exhibit a stronger affective dimension when assessing source credibility. The study also highlights the distinctive use of books and articles among vaccine opponents, despite their general mistrust of science. This study contributes to the field of information behavior research, offering insights into parental information-seeking dynamics, and their implications for public health policy and communication strategies.

This research seeks to identify critical factors that have an impact on government knowledge base adoption, which is based on the local government of Yi Chang, a typical third-tier city in China. Firstly, the knowledge base and its development in Chinese local governments are introduced. Secondly, to build the adoption model, factors from the UTAUT and TOE framework were integrated and trust to knowledge base and intention to knowledge reuse are introduced. Thirdly, a questionnaire is designed based on the model and distributed to civil servants from Yi Chang local government. Finally, the proposed model is validated, and the collected data is analyzed by PLS-SEM. The results show the factors (effort expectancy, social influence, competitive pressure, trust to knowledge base, intention to knowledge reuse) have a positive impact on the adoption of knowledge base in Chinese local governments.

This study introduces and examines the “Multi-dimensional Interaction-Attitude-Usage Model” (MIAU Model), drawing from cross-disciplinary theories. The MIAU Model proposes dimensions of interactive data retrieval, including resource, technology, context, and dual-process-based cognition, and explores their relationships with user attitude toward systems and usage intention. To test the MIAU Model, a structural equation modeling analysis was conducted on the questionnaire data. The results support the proposed model. The MIAU Model suggests that resources, technology, contexts, and individual characteristics directly impact data searchers’ dual-process-based cognition. System 1-based cognition has a direct influence on system 2-based cognition. Moreover, dual-process-based cognition and contexts directly affect attitude and usage intention. Additionally, resources, technology, contexts, and individual characteristics indirectly affect system 2-based cognition through system 1-based cognition, and similarly, these factors indirectly influence attitude and usage intention through dual-process-based cognition.

People with shared health conditions, including contested conditions like central sensitivity syndromes (CSSs), are utilizing TikTok to both seek and tell visual illness stories—and to co-create health information in creative, mimetic, and platform-specific ways. This poster presents results from a pilot qualitative content analysis study of 100 TikTok videos and comments by people personally experiencing #fibromyalgia, a pilot codesign session with a CSS TikTok community member, and late breaking results from a dissertation in progress. These studies are the first stages in the goal to understand and support these embodied, creative, and often-collective storytelling abilities, necessary within the CSS community experiencing invisibility, stigma, and difficult diagnoses. The visual poster format enables discussion, with examples of TikTok videos illustrating 7 identified themes, iconographic elements, and examples of reoccurring creative choices and collective storytelling features. Last, of broader interest in our field, this poster presents methodological challenges and sparks for discussion of best methods for TikTok research, including: (1) a novel sampling approach addressing gaps in current research and the slippery definition of TikTok communities, (2) a brief description of preliminary codesign findings and the method’s promise in this domain, and (3) discussion of critical disability studies perspectives guiding this research.

Drug-Drug Interaction (DDI) may affect the activity and efficacy of drugs, potentially leading to diminished therapeutic effect or even serious side effects. Therefore, automatic recognition of drug entities and relations involved in DDI is of great significance for pharmaceutical and medical care. In this paper, we propose a generative DDI triplets extraction framework based on Large Language Models (LLMs). We comprehensively apply various training methods, such as In-context learning, Instruction-tuning, and Task-tuning, to investigate the biomedical information extraction capabilities of GPT-3, OPT, and LLaMA. We also introduce Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) technology to significantly reduce trainable parameters. The proposed method achieves satisfactory results in DDI triplet extraction, and demonstrates strong generalization ability on similar corpus.

There is increasing recognition of the challenges academics working on short-term contracts experience, as well as universities’ increasing reliance on their labor. While discussions of these issues have expanded, there is a lack of empirical research around the information experiences of contract academic staff. This poster reports on initial findings of a qualitative research project that interviewed 34 contract academic staff (CAS) from across Canada, exploring institutional provisions of information, information practices in the workplace, and how marginalization and social inclusion influence workplace information practices. We present preliminary findings in three themes: precarity and uncertainty necessitate holistic and situational understandings, exclusion and isolation are enacted and experienced on many levels, and uncertainty as a barrier to investment and furthering careers, exploring what these findings mean for contract academic staff members.

This study represents our preliminary work focused on the health information seeking of caregivers of ovarian cancer (OvCa) patients and survivors. Previous research has predominantly focused on OvCa patients' needs, while neglecting caregivers' needs independently. Through the analysis of social media posts by OvCa caregivers, this study explores seven categories of information needs desired by caregivers and examines how these needs evolve throughout the disease trajectory. By distinguishing between caregiver-specific needs and those on behalf of the patient, our study contributes to the development of a holistic caregiver support framework.

This study uses the UK as an example to explore the structure, content and governance network of scientific data ethics policies. Adopting grounded theory (GT) and Social Network Analysis (SNA), Nvivo12 is used to analyze and summarize the structure and content of scientific data ethics policy, and Ucinet and Netdraw are used to map governance network reflected in policy. Results indicate that the structure covers governance context, subject and measure. The content of governance context contains context description and data ethics issues analysis. Governance subject consists of defining subjects and facilitating their collaboration. Governance measure includes governance guidance and ethics governance initiatives in the data lifecycle. Governance network indicates that research institution plays a central role in ethics governance and the core of the governance content are ethics governance initiatives and governance guidance.

New media platforms have enhanced the efficiency and diversity of information dissemination, providing new possibilities for the dissemination and promotion of academic papers. Currently, a large number of Chinese academic journals from different disciplines have established WeChat official accounts to promote their papers. This study examines WeChat official accounts from three disciplines: social sciences, natural sciences, and medicine. We analyze the existing paper promotion methods employed by these academic journal official accounts from four dimensions: content presentation format, number of papers promoted in a single post, interactive forms, and publishing time. The findings reveal that the current promotion methods for academic papers on WeChat official accounts are relatively limited, with low utilization of multimedia content. Therefore, there is a need for further improvement in new media promotion for academic papers.

The trend of multilingualism in the web environment has put new demands on the digitization of cultural heritage. However, minority languages in cultural heritage have received little attention in China. This study selects traditional Tibetan festivals, a representative minority cultural heritage in China. Based on constructing a Chinese-Tibetan bilingual ontology, the cultural and tourism data of Tibet are linked. By further constructing a knowledge graph, a Chinese-Tibetan Bilingual Tibetan cultural service platform with traditional Tibetan festivals as the core is established.