Spring 2010
Chair's Column
Hello, LACASIST members and friends!
Can't believe that it's already been more than half a year since our last issue. I hope it's been as productive for you as it has been for LACASIST. Since November, we've had a number of events:
- November: Collaborative Tools
- December: Holiday Program with SLA-SSC
- February: CISTA Award Program with Dr. Peter Ingwersen
- May: Size Matters
Our stamina and energy levels seem to be lightening up in the upcoming summer months, but don't let that fool you! We're gearing up for another action-packed year for 2010-2011 with plans for a grand 50th year Chapter Anniversary event. We're coming up with even more workshop and conference ideas. You're starting to see us on Facebook and twitter (Are we friends yet? Are you following me?).
While you won't be seeing much of me next year (I'm having a baby!), I hope you can join us at one of our monthly Board meetings either in person or online.
Signing off for the summer,
Grace Lau, 2009-2010 LACASIST Chair
Table of Contents
Program Report: Collaborative Tools
by Sarah Buchanan
LACASIS&T presented its Fall program, "Collaborative Tools: Best Practices and New Trends" on Thur., Nov. 19, 2009 at the UCLA School of Law. This program featured presentations by members of LACASIS&T and of LA-UX (Los Angeles User Experience Meetup). The presenters discussed collaborative documentation and team productivity, as well as specific use of technology in a case study.
The program was introduced by Weston Thompson, founder of LA-UX (1997). Weston is an Information Architect at The Capital Group, and a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Information. Weston invited announcements of professional concern from the floor, and brief business was discussed. This event was noted to be the first joint activity between the two organizations. The first presenters, Grace Lau and John Khuu, strove to illustrate the societal and technological background behind the relatively recent development of online platforms to support team projects. As organizations address complex and geographically diverse phenomena, staff members are tasked with working on these issues outside of office spaces. Combined with the ubiquitous use of the internet to deposit and store content (i.e. advertisements and registrations directing readers to Web sites rather than phone numbers and addresses, general writings which are only posted online, and “cloud computing”), work can often be carried out from multiple physical locations. The coordination of some (global-in-scope) project assignments and deliverables often cannot take place face-to-face, and managers continue to draw from a suite of tools which support collaboration. Specific activities which require such support include text-based communication (email, chat, faxing, wikis, publishing and versioning) and audio-visual communication (synchronous conferencing, remote desktops). Some companies’ products were described in terms of collaborative functionality, including Google Groups, Google Wave (currently invite-only), Skype, Dimdim, Ustream, WebEx, and Yugma. Through video conferencing, it was noted that facilitating this type of real-time participation can give a project focus simply through visual confirmation.
While these services focus on communication, other programs provide overall project management. These programs – including Google Apps, Google Maps, BaseCamp, and Scrumy - provide general support and annotation to the more specific, single-activity communiqués supported by collaborative tools. Still more online services are available which support early- and mid-stage project planning activities such as brainstorming, wireframing, and diagramming; e.g. Creately and MindMeister (Mac-based). Considerations which were discussed regarding potential use of these applications included appropriateness, cost, bandwidth, storage capacity, platform, browser versus software, permission levels, and of course security.
Presenter Dutch Steutel, an Application Producer at Razorfish, then described a focused process of team collaboration with attention to agile project management through the Confluence wiki and JIRA. Steutel explained that Razorfish was engaged in the creation of Web sites, and required a system to conceptualize and organize individual project designs. Building on the concept of user experience, the project managers allotted some weeks to produce creative direction and build scenarios. The “design, build, and test” phase then built on knowledge previously gained. Through progression of various stages, managers ultimately determined future directions of the projects. Steutel emphasized that collaborative tools functioned as “aids” in support of both the people involved and overall goals.
During questions, one attendee from LA-UX inquired whether a “collaborative tools comparison” chart might help potential users determine which product fits individual need. One related effort, Robin Good's “Best Online Collaboration Tools” was later brought to our collective attention (http://www.mindmeister.com/12213323). The event offered an avenue for professionals involved in information resources throughout Los Angeles to discuss matters usually kept within individual workplaces, with many unique practitioners. Attendees from both professional organizations as well as the UCLA M.L.I.S. program were able to converse with one another over topics of shared concern, often without having interacted together before; catering was also provided. Slides from Khuu and Lau's presentation have been made available on the LACASIS&T Web site, and are accessible from http://sn.im/lacasist09-collab.
CISTA to Peter Ingwersen
by Sarah Buchanan
Peter Ingwersen addressed the Los Angeles Chapter of ASIS&T with a presentation titled "Frameworks for IR Research" on Tues., Feb. 23, 2010. Dr. Ingwersen's talk was delivered upon his acceptance of the 2009 Contributions to Information Science & Technology Award (CISTA). The award and honorarium were presented by current Chapter Awards Chair, Dr. Zorana Ercegovac. The event was held at the UCLA School of Law.
In her introduction, Ercegovac highlighted the international nature of Ingwersen's research in the areas of polyrepresentation and data fusion, as well as his work organizing conferences such as CoLIS (Conceptions of Library and Information Science), LIDA (Libraries in the Digital Age), and ACM-SIGIR (Association for Computing Machinery-Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval). In teaching at the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark, Ingwersen has been honored both for his research and his teaching activities by American and international associations. His scholarly foci include the cognitive approach to interactive information retrieval and the notion of Webometrics, which looks at the Web as an information retrieval system. She also noted several of his articles, conference papers, book chapters, and books which were further contextualized by Peiling Wang. She noted that Ingwersen became the 21st recipient of the CISTA since it was first awarded jointly to Harold Borko and Robert Hayes in 1989.
Ingwersen first defined information retrieval (IR) in the context of information behavior, stating that IR studies the "processes involved in the representation, storage, searching, finding, filtering, and presentation of information relevant to a requirement for information desired by a human user" (his definition). He emphasized that information behavior is a broader set of studies that considers the dynamic effects of time and use. He then contrasted research frameworks (e.g. the laboratory and integrated-cognitive) with models, emphasizing the latter's interactivity and central variables. From here, Ingwersen described his conception of an integrated framework - one which acknowledges the interactive behaviors of users, interfaces, and information objects. In particular, an integrated framework is receptive to analyses of socio-organizational and cultural contexts, and how external environments affect the retrieval actions performed. The interactive information retrieval (IIR) framework, about which Ingwersen has written extensively, contains nine individual dimensions which can be categorized as 1) socio-organizational, 2) actor, 3) algorithmic, and 4) interactive. Ingwersen described how this framework allows one to study a multiplicity of work task (WT) and search task (ST) variables in binary combination with one another. Not only does the IIR framework allow one to study distinct variables in information behavior, but it also allows the researcher to conceive of relevance and personalization on the part of the actor. More recent research has shifted the centrality of the actor from the "outside" (i.e. a visitor) to the nucleus of a circular set of forces which comprise systemic and social contexts in information seeking. Ingwersen noted a recent book by Iris Hong, Interactive Information Retrieval in Digital Environments (2008), which applies this idea. Ingwersen concluded with the idea that use of the IIR framework allows researchers to compare queries performed within dissimilar collections and contexts alongside "known quantities" of interaction features and tasks in a semantic environment. He returned to the illustrated models several times in responding to questions posed by attendees including Gene Golovchinsky on the design and visualization of the models.
The presentation addressed a complex set of ideas within information science, yet Dr. Ingwersen facilitated an engaging conversation with the audience as he explained how his work sought to carry forward the conceptual "framework" idea into one which integrated "variables" such as personal information behaviors and situations. In particular, his slide illustrating a "visitor" to the "cave" of laboratory information retrieval seemed to synthesize in a humorous way his method of evaluating the interactions that occur in the process of retrieving information from a certain system or database. This model is contextualized with other frameworks in detail in his and Kalervo Järvelin's monograph The Turn: Integration of Information Seeking and Retrieval in Context (2005). Another of Ingwersen and Järvelin’s collaborative works, "User-Oriented and Cognitive Models of Information Retrieval," appears in the recently published Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (3rd ed.). In conversations with members of LACASIS&T following his talk, Dr. Ingwersen discussed more informally his conduct of research with colleagues both in Denmark and in the U.S., as well as his experiences at annual meetings of ASIS&T. Attendees shared additional insight related to Chapter programs and the work of other Chapters such as the European Chapter, established in 1993.
Dr. Ingwersen's biography is available through lacasist.org and his Web site, http://www.db.dk/pi. Video of Dr. Ingwersen's presentation has been made available on the LACASIS&T Web site (with thanks to Kristen LaBonte), and is accessible from http://lacasist.org/event/2010/peter-ingwersen-frameworks-ir-research.
Upcoming Board Meetings
- July 3, 2010 - Email only
- August 7, 2010 - Dimdim
- September 4, 2010 - To be determined
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