Keyword searching and controlled vocabularies such as Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH) proved to work well together in automated technologies and the two systems have been considered complimentary. When the Internet burst onto the information landscape, users embraced the simplicity of keyword searching of this resource while researchers and scholars seemed unable to agree on how best to make use of controlled vocabularies in this huge database. This research looked at a controlled vocabulary, LCSH, in the context of keyword searching of a full text database. The Internet and probably its most used search engine, Google, seemed to have set a standard that users have embraced: a keyword-searchable single search box on an uncluttered web page. Libraries have even introduced federated single search boxes to their web pages, another testimony to the influence of Google. UNT's Thesis and Dissertation digital database was used to compile quantitative data with the results input into an EXCEL spreadsheet. Both Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH) and author-assigned keywords were analyzed within selected dissertations and both systems were compared. When the LCSH terms from the dissertations were quantified, the results showed that from a total of 788 words contained in the 207 LCSH …

Mobile banking services have changed the design and delivery of financial services and the whole banking sector. Financial service companies employ mobile banking applications as new alternative channels to increase customers' convenience and to reduce costs and maintain profitability. The primary focus of this study was to explore the Saudi bank customers' perceptions about the adoption of mobile banking applications and to test the relationships between the factors that influence mobile banking adoption as independent variables and the action to adopt them as the dependent variable. Saudi customers' perceptions were tested based on the extended versions of IDT, TAM and other diffusion of innovation theories and frameworks to generate a model of constructs that can be used to study the use and the adoption of mobile technology by users. Koenig-Lewis, Palmer, & Moll's (2010) model was used to test its constructs of (1) perceived usefulness, (2) perceived ease of use, (3) perceived compatibility, (4) perceived credibility, (5) perceived trust, (6) perceived risk, and (7) perceived cost, and these were the independent variables in current study. This study revealed a high level of adoption that 82.7% of Saudis had adopted mobile banking applications. Also, the findings of this study identified a …

Online communities of practice (CoPs) provide social spaces for people to connect, learn, and engage with one another around shared interests and passions. CoPs are innovatively employed within industry and education for their inherent knowledge management characteristics and as a means of improving professional practice. Measuring the success of a CoP is a challenge researchers are examining through various strategies. Recent literature supports measuring community effectiveness through the perceptions of its members; however, evaluating a community by means of member perception introduces complicating factors from outside the community. In order to gain insight into the importance of external factors, this quantitative study examined the influence of factors in the professional lives of educators on their perceptions of their CoP experience. Through an empirical examination of CoPs employed to connect educators and advance their professional learning, canonical correlation analysis was used to examine correlations between factors believed to be influential on the experiences of community members.

While journalists were once viewed as gatekeepers, dispensing news and information via one-way communication channels, their role as information provider has evolved. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the social networking site Twitter, where information seekers have unprecedented access to information providers. The two-way communication that these information seekers have come to expect can be challenging for organizations such as ESPN who have multiple Twitter accounts and millions of followers. By designating one team of people as responsible for the organization's largest Twitter account, SportsCenter, ESPN has sought to establish manageable methods of interacting with this account's followers, while furthering the goals of the organization and providing sports news around the clock. This study provides a better understanding of the group responsible for ESPN's SportsCenter Twitter account: the motivation and strategies behind the group's Twitter use as well as the dynamics of this network, such as information flow and collaboration. Relying on the Information Seeking and Communication Model, this study also provides a better understanding of information exchanges with those outside the network, specifically a selection of the account's Twitter followers. Additionally, the role of journalist as information provider and certain themes that emerged from the content of the …

Although there has been research conducted in the area of information seeking behavior in children, the research focusing on young children, more specifically on pre-kindergarten students, is almost nonexistent. Children at this age are in the preoperational developmental stage. They tend to display curiosity about the world around them, and use other people as a means to gain the information they are seeking. Due to the insistence from President Obama to implement pre-kindergarten programs for all low and middle class children, the need to understand the cognitive, emotional, and physical needs of these children is becoming increasingly imperative. To researchers, the actions displayed by these young children on a daily basis remain vital in determining the methods by which they are categorized, studies, and even taught. This study employed Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory (SDT), Dervin's sense-making theory, Kuhlthau''s information search process model (ISP), and Shenton and Dixon's microcosmic model of information seeking via people to lay the theoretical foundational framework. This ethnographic study aimed to fill the age gap found in information seeking literature. By observing young children in the school setting, I gained insight into how these children seek information. The resulting information collected via field observations and …

Modeling the "thick description" of photographs began at the intersection of personal and institutional descriptions. Comparing institutional descriptions of particular photos that were also used in personal online conversations was the initial phase. Analyzing conversations that started with a photographic image from the collection of the Library of Congress (LC) or the collection of the Manchester Historic Association (MHA) provided insights into how cultural heritage institutions could enrich the description of photographs by using informal descriptions such as those applied by Facebook users. Taking photos of family members, friends, places, and interesting objects is something people do often in their daily lives. Some photographic images are stored, and some are shared with others in gatherings, occasions, and holidays. Face-to-face conversations about remembering some of the details of photographs and the event they record are themselves rarely recorded. Digital cameras make it easy to share personal photos in Web conversations and to duplicate old photos and share them on the Internet. The World Wide Web even makes it simple to insert images from cultural heritage institutions in order to enhance conversations. Images have been used as tokens within conversations along with the sharing of information and background knowledge about them. The …

Cyber aggression came about as a result of advances in information communication technology and the aggressive usage of the technology in real life. Cyber aggression can take on many forms and facets. However, the main focus of this study is cyberbullying and cyberstalking through information sharing practices that might constitute digital aggressive acts. Human aggression has been extensively investigated. Studies focusing on understanding the causes and effects that can lead to physical and digital aggression have shown the prevalence of cyber aggression in different settings. Moreover, these studies have shown strong relationship between cyber aggression and the physiological and physical trauma on both perpetrators and their victims. Nevertheless, the literature shows a lack of studies that could measure the level of acceptance and tolerance of these dangerous digital acts. This study is divided into two main stages; Stage one is a qualitative pilot study carried out to explore the concept of cyber aggression and its existence in Saudi Arabia. In-depth interviews were conducted with 14 Saudi social media users to collect understanding and meanings of cyber aggression. The researcher followed the Colaizzi’s methods to analyze the descriptive data. A proposed model was generated to describe cyber aggression in social media …

This dissertation examined how previous information literacy training, law student gender, age, and previously obtained education affects first, second, and third year law students selection of information sources, their understanding of common knowledge, and their decision of whether or not to give attribution to these sources. To examine these factors, this study implemented a paradigm called the principle of least effort that contended humans in general tended to complete the least amount of work possible to complete presented tasks. This study sought to discover whether law students follow this same path of completing the least amount of work possible to finish presented tasks, and whether this behavior affects information source selection, citation, and understanding of common knowledge. I performed six focus groups and crafted and disseminated an online survey to examine these factors. Via this data collection, it was discovered that law students do exhibit some differences in understanding of citation and citation behavior based on age and their year in law school. They also exhibited some differences regarding common knowledge based on their year in law school, where they received their information literacy training, and where they attend law school. Yet, no statistically significant differences were discovered regarding where …

Information plays a significant role in the success of investment strategies. Within a non-advisory context, individual investors elect to build and manage their investment portfolios to avoid the cost of hiring professional advisors. To cope with markets’ uncertainty, individual investors should acquire, understand, and use only relevant information, but that task can be affected by many factors, such as domain knowledge, cognitive and emotional biases, information overload, sources’ credibility, communication channels’ accuracy, and economic costs. Despite an increased interest in examining the financial performance of individual investors in Saudi Arabia, there has been no empirical research of the information behavior of individual investors, or the behavioral biases affecting the investment decision making process in the Saudi stock market (SSM). The purpose of this study was to examine this information behavior within a non-advisory contextualization of their investment decision-making process through the use of an online questionnaire instrument using close-ended questions. The significant intervening variables identified in this study influence the individual investors’ information behavior across many stages of the decision making process. While controlling for gender, education, and income, the optimal information behavior of individual investors in the SSM showed that the Experience factor had the greatest negative effect on …

Written notation has a long history in many musical traditions and has been particularly important in the composition and performance of Western art music. This study adopted the conceptual view that a musical score consists of two coordinated but separate communication channels: the musical text and a collection of composer-selected performance marks that serve as an interpretive gloss on that text. Structurally, these channels are defined by largely disjoint vocabularies of symbols and words. While the sound structures represented by musical texts are well studied in music theory and analysis, the stylistic patterns of performance marks and how they acquire contextual meaning in performance is an area with fewer theoretical foundations. This quantitative research explored the possibility that composers exhibit recurring patterns in their use of performance marks. Seventeen solo piano sonatas written between 1798 and 1913 by five major composers were analyzed from modern editions by tokenizing and tabulating the types and usage frequencies of their individual performance marks without regard to the associated musical texts. Using analytic methods common in information science, the results demonstrated persistent statistical similarities among the works of each composer and differences among the work groups of different composers. Although based on a small …

Energy and the natural environment are central concerns among stakeholders across the globe. Decisions on this scale often require interaction among a myriad of institutions and individuals who navigate a complex variety of challenges. In Denton, Texas in 2014, voters were asked to make such a decision when tasked with a referendum to determine whether the city would continue to allow hydraulic fracturing activity within its borders. For social scientists, this situation requires further analysis in an effort to better understand how and why individuals make the decisions they do. One possible approach for exploring this process is a method of poststructuralist critical rhetorical analysis, which is concerned with how individuals’ identities change through interaction with institutions. This study reflects upon the texts themselves through a poststructuralist critical rhetorical analysis of images employed by those in favor of and those against Denton’s ban on hydraulic fracturing in an attempt to identify images that alter the grid of intelligibility for the audience. The paper includes deliberation about the relative merits, subsequent disadvantages, and possible questions for further study as they relate to the theoretical implications of critical rhetorical analysis as information science. Ultimately, the study identifies poststructuralist critical rhetorical analysis as …

Following the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011), which struck down the state of California’s appeal to restrict the sale of games deemed to have “deviant violence” to those 18 or older and the court’s recommendation that parents use the ESRB Ratings System instead, this ethnographic study sought to better understand what parents thought of laws on video games and how they used the recommended ratings system. A total of 30 interviews using semi-structured open-ended questions were conducted and analyzed to reveal what parents thought of laws on video games, how they used the ESRB Ratings System to assess video game content, and what other methods they used for video game content assessment in addition to the ratings system. This research utilized Dervin and Nilan’s (1986) sense-making methodology as a way to learn how parents bridged their knowledge gap when it came to learning about video game content and how they made sense of the knowledge gained to determine the content appropriateness for their children. Analyses of the collected data provided the foundation for a model on the effects of the parent-child relationship on parental information behavior.

Boundary spanners-in-practice are individuals who inhabit more than one social world and bring overlapping place perspectives to bear on the function(s) performed within and across each world. Different from nominated boundary spanners, they are practitioners responsible for the 'translation' of each small world's perspectives thereby increasing collaboration effectiveness to permit the small worlds to work synergistically. The literature on Knowledge Management (KM) has emphasized the organizational importance of individuals performing boundary spanning roles by resolving cross-cultural and cross-organizational knowledge system conflicts helping teams pursue common goals through creation of "joint fields" - a third dimension that is co-jointly developed between the two fields or dimensions that the boundary spanner works to bridge. The Copeland and O'Connor Nondeterministic Model of Engineering Design Activity was utilized as the foundation to develop models of communication mechanics and dynamics when multiple simultaneous interactions of the single nondeterministic user model, the BSIP and two Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), engage during design activity in the Problem-Solving Space. The Problem-Solving Space defines the path through the volumes of plausible answers or 'solution spaces' that will satisfice the problem presented to the BSIP and SMEs. Further model refinement was performed to represent expertise seeking behaviors and the physical …

This study investigates a semi-automatic method for creation of topical labels representing the topical concepts in information objects. The method is called rotated latent semantic indexing (rLSI). rLSI has found application in text mining but has not been used for topical labels generation in digital libraries (DLs). The present study proposes a theoretical model and an evaluation framework which are based on the LSA theory of meaning and investigates rLSI in a DL environment. The proposed evaluation framework for rLSI topical labels is focused on human-information search behavior and satisfaction measures. The experimental systems that utilize those topical labels were built for the purposes of evaluating user satisfaction with the search process. A new instrument was developed for this study and the experiment showed high reliability of the measurement scales and confirmed the construct validity. Data was collected through the information search tasks performed by 122 participants using two experimental systems. A quantitative method of analysis, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), was used to test a set of research hypotheses and to answer research questions. The results showed a not significant, indirect effect of topical label type on both guidance and satisfaction. The conclusion of the study is …

Scholarly and scientific communication has a long history, while the Open Access (OA) movement began to take part in this communication with the emergence of Internet in the late 1960s and the web that emerged in mid-1990s. OA is beneficial for sharing knowledge because the OA movement demands scholarly literature freely available on the internet and it is free of most licensing restriction copyright. OA will close the barrier of access to knowledge. The OA movement in Indonesia may be considered slow. So far, only 33 academic libraries have registered their repositories with OpenDOAR, which is still small compared to the total number of HE institutions in Indonesia. Those 33 OARs vary in the stages of development. Some have already had large size of contents, while others are still developing. Using Weiner’s theory of organizational readiness for change, this mixed method investigates the readiness of academic librarians for Open Access Repository implementation. The results show that academic librarians in Indonesia are somewhat familiar with OA and OAR. However, their understanding of OA is still limited to the technical nature of it. They also know the benefits of OA in relation to scholarly communication and are ready to implement OAR, but …

Automatic language identification has been applied to short texts such as queries in information retrieval, but it has not yet been applied to metadata records. Applying this technology to metadata records, particularly their title elements, would enable creators of metadata records to obtain a value for the language element, which is often left blank due to a lack of linguistic expertise. It would also enable the addition of the language value to existing metadata records that currently lack a language value. Titles lend themselves to the problem of language identification mainly due to their shortness, a factor which increases the difficulty of accurately identifying a language. This study implemented four proven approaches to language identification as well as one open-source approach on a collection of multilingual titles of books and movies. Of the five approaches considered, a reduced N-gram frequency profile and distance measure approach outperformed all others, accurately identifying over 83% of all titles in the collection. Future plans are to offer this technology to curators of digital collections for use.

This mixed-method study explored cataloger’s judgment through the presence of text as entered by catalogers for the 11 electronic resource items during the National Libraries test for Resource Description and Access (RDA). Although the literature discusses cataloger’s judgment and suggests that cataloging practice based on new cataloging code RDA will more heavily rely on cataloger’s judgment, the topic of cataloger’s judgment in RDA cataloging was not formally studied. The purpose of this study was to study the differences and similarities in the MARC records created as a part of the RDA National Test and to determine if the theory of bounded rationality could explain cataloger’s judgment based on the constructs of cognitive and temporal limits. This goal was addressed through a content analysis of the MARC records and various statistical tests (Pearson’s Chi-square, Fisher’s Exact, and Cramer’s V). Analysis of 217 MARC records was performed on seven elements of the bibliographic record. This study found that there were both similarities and differences among the various groups of participants, and there are indications that both support and refute the assertion that catalogers make decisions based on the constructs of time and cognitive ability. Future research is needed to be able to …

This study began with an interest in corporate libraries and a genuine curiosity in the information preferences and resources valued by executive leaders at JET Aircraft Co. Executive information preferences and the downward trend in special libraries initiated the investigation of information seeking among executive leaders and yielded the inquiry: What resources do JET Aircraft Co. executives value when they need information? Employing an ethnographic approach, this study investigated what JET Aircraft Co. executives know about information resources, what they believe about information resources, and how they act when they require information. While JET Aircraft Co. maintained a special corporate library called the Company Research Library (CRL), the purpose of this study was to determine what resources were of value to executives at JET Aircraft Co., understanding that the CRL may or may not be a resource executives’ value. As a byproduct, this study also sought to establish executive information preferences and perceptions of the CRL. Information seeking at the executive level, studied through an ethnographic lens, provided insight into how executives at JET Aircraft Co. work and what they prefer, and it established a baseline for the Company Research Library’s position among the resources valued by executives.

This research explored the information needs of patient families and hospital staff at a pediatric hospital system in Dallas, Texas. Library statistics recorded in four hospital libraries from 2011 - 2013 were used to analyze the information requests from patient families and hospital staff. Crosstabulations revealed the extent to which patient families and hospital staff used the libraries to satisfy their information needs. The data showed that patient families used the libraries very differently than hospital staff. Chi-square tests for independence were performed to identify the relationships between the Classification (Patient Family, Hospital Staff) and two descriptors of information needs (Request Type, Resources Used). There were a total of 1,406 information requests analyzed. The data showed that patient families and hospital staff information requests differed greatly in the number of information requests, the type of information requested, the resources used and the time the library staff spent on the requests. Chi-square analyses revealed relationships statistically significant at the p < .05 level; however, the strength of the relationships varied.

Terrorist organizations and individuals make use of the Internet for supportive activities such as communication, recruiting, financing, training, and planning operations. However, little is known about the level of computer-based (“cyber”) threat such terrorist organizations and individuals pose. One step in facilitating the examination and assessment of the level of cyber threat posed by terrorist organizations and individuals is development of an assessment tool or methodology. This tool would guide intelligence collection efforts and would support and facilitate comparative assessment of the cyber threat posed by terrorist organizations and individuals through the provision of a consistent method of assessment across time, amongst organizations and individuals, and between analysts. This study leveraged the professional experience of experts to engineer a new functional construct – a structured analytical technique designed to assess the cyber threat posed by terrorist entities and individuals. The resultant instrument was a novel structured analytical construct that uses defined indicators of a terrorist organization/individual’s intent to carry out cyber attacks, and their capability to actually do so as measures of an organization/individual’s overall level of cyber threat.

Instructional communication research clearly indicates that instructor immediacy contributes significantly to effective instruction. However, the majority of immediacy studies have been conducted in traditional (face-to-face) classroom environments. More recently, instructional communication research has focused on assessing the impact of immediacy in online classroom environments. Again, immediacy appears to significantly contribute to effective instruction. The challenge is that most recent immediacy studies use immediacy measurements developed to test immediacy behaviors in face-to-face settings. Considering the lack of nonverbal communication and limited or absent synchronous or verbal communication in online instructional settings, the behaviors contributing most significantly to perceived immediacy, researchers need to reassess the immediacy construct in online environments. The present research explores and identifies behaviors reported by instructors to establish psychological closeness (i.e., immediacy) in online learning environments and assesses to what extent these behaviors are similar to or different from face-to-face immediacy-producing behaviors.

As non-institutional digital image collections expand into social media, independent non-professional image curators are emerging, actively constructing alternative naming conventions to suit their needs in a social collecting environment. This project considers how independent user-curators are developing particular sense-making behaviors as they actively contribute names to large, unstructured social image collections. In order to capture and explore this evolving language adaptation, Pinterest names are analyzed using a matrix composed of Panofsky’s three strata of subject matter, Rosch’s levels of categorical abstraction, Shatford Layne’s image attributes and Wittgenstein’s language game constructions. Analyzing Pinterest image names illuminates previously unnoticed behaviors by independent user-curators as they create shared collections. Exploring the various language choices which user-curators select as they apply this new curating vocabulary helps identify underlying user needs not apparent in traditionally curated collections restricted to traditional naming conventions.

The purpose of the study was to explore faculty attitudes towards institutional repositories in order to better understand their research habits and preferences. A better understanding of faculty needs and attitudes will enable academic libraries to improve institutional repository services and policies. A phenomenological approach was used to interview fourteen participants and conduct eight observations to determine how tenure-track faculty want to disseminate their research as well as their attitudes towards sharing research data. Interviews were transcribed and coded into emerging themes. Participants reported that they want their research to be read, used, and to have an impact. While almost all faculty see institutional repositories as something that would be useful for increasing the impact and accessibility of their research, they would consider publishers’ rights before depositing work in a repository. Researchers with quantitative data, and researchers in the humanities are more likely to share data than with qualitative or mixed data, which is more open to interpretation and inference. Senior faculty members are more likely than junior faculty members to be concerned about the context of their research data. Junior faculty members’ perception’ of requirements for tenure will inhibit their inclination to publish in open access journals, or share …

Early research on just why it might be the case that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” suggested that denial of relevance was a significant factor. Asking why denial of relevance would be significant and how it might be resolved began to raise issues of the very nature of questions. Pursuing the nature of questions, in light of denial of relevance and Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” provoked a journey of modeling questions and constructing a biography of the initial question of this research and its evolution. Engaging literature from philosophy, neuroscience, and retrieval then combined with deep interviews of successful lawyers to render a thick, biographical model of questioning.