Information Studies Theses and Dissertations

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Information Use and Meaningful Learning
(2003) Chung, Jin Soo; Neuman, M. Delia; College of Information Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
This study investigates how high school students use information to learn. Conducted within the broad conceptual framework of a constructivist adaptation of learning theory, the study defines the "success" of students' infonnation seeking as it relates to their meaningful learning experience as a whole. In order to study students' information seeking as a meaningful learning experience, four foreshadowing questions were set out: 1) How do students initially understand information and information sources? 2) How do information structures of information sources affect students' understanding about their topics? 3) What strategies do students use for restructuring information? and 4) How is students' inforn1ation use reflected in their products related to learning tasks? Within the methodological framework of naturalistic inquiry, the study used a combination of concept maps and interviews as a unique method for investigating changes in students' understanding based on their use of information. Twenty-one high school juniors in an honors class in persuasive speech were observed in their library media center while perfonning required learning tasks; eight of the students, their teacher, and the library media specialist were interviewed. Data were analyzed both manually and with the support of data management software. Overall, the findings suggest that students' learning in an information-rich enviromnent is dynamic and that students learn interactively and serendipitously. Several streams of analysis suggest more specific findings within these larger ones. To structure part of the analysis, Mayer's (1999) three processes for meaningful learning-selecting, organizing, and integrating--were extended to include two additional processes particularly important in infonnation seeking: gathering and using. Findings suggest that all of these five processes are intertwined and dynamically related and the process of "using" information had a particular effect on students' understanding about their topics as they created their final products. Additionally, four types of changes were identified as students conducted their information seeking and created their final products: simple, analytic, organizational, and holistic. Analyzed within the framework of the revised Bloom's Taxonomy ofEducational Objectives (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001 ), the data revealed that students' learning progressed through all six levels of the taxonomy as they engaged with information.
The Effect of an Integrated Knowledge Management Architecture on Organizational Performance and Impact: The Case of the World Bank
(2003) Fonseca, Ana Flavia; Soergel, Dagobert; Information Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
Using the World Bank as Case Study, this dissertation investigates the impact of knowledge management programs on the organization performance by using a combination of three methods: Records Analysis, Interviews and Outcome Mapping. The study had two phases: quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. The Knowledge Management Program of the World Bank has had a direct and beneficial impact on its operations. The Program changed internal staff behavior, improved the sharing of information and knowledge within the organization, and promoted the design and application of participatory knowledge strategies in the countries. New knowledge products as well as strong country participation and ownership to the projects studied resulted from these changes. However, the study also shows that this impact is far from being sufficiently significant to influence or help make the knowledge management program fully integrated with the organization core processes and products. The gap between the KM Program architecture and other programs and initiatives focusing on making this concept operational within the Bank remains an issue. In spite of the fact that knowledge management principles are being mainstreamed in core services, the difference is still very wide between the overall goals of the Knowledge Bank and their translation into the implementation of knowledge products and services in the countries. The research did confirm previous research in the field of knowledge management and validated the findings from other case studies. The results of the study also allowed for the identification of 10 criteria for mainstreaming knowledge management programs within organizations and identified characteristics of knowledge delivery processes that were effective for knowledge absorption . . The importance of "how to" and "procedural knowledge"; the importance "horizontal knowledge exchanges" and a number of other elements, were confirmed as factors affecting knowledge absorption and positive changes in user behavior.
Bigger, Better, Faster, More: Jet Fighter Development and Grand Strategy in the United States Air Force, 1947-1953
(2003-12-15) Linden, Jeremy Ryan; Sumida, Jon T.; Eckstein, Arthur; Olson, Keith; History/Library & Information Systems
United States Air Force jet fighter development and strategy in the post-World War II period is illustrative of the beginning stages of the strategy of annihilation that the United States has adopted in the late-20th and 21st centuries. Development and procurement of fighters is a complex process that must take into account the potential mission and purpose of the aircraft in overall strategy, the impact of that technology upon existing forces and missions, and the continuum of costs versus performance. The Air Force chose a developmental path for jet fighters which concentrated on the assurance that qualitatively superior aircraft could outperform greater numbers of technologically comparable enemy aircraft. The first section of this thesis provides documentary and secondary evidence concerning the transformation of air warfare due to jet technology. Section two argues the strategic significance of jet fighter development as a precursor of a strategy of annihilation.
Sugar Allies: How Hershey and Coca-Cola Used Government Contracts and Sugar Exemptions to Elude Sugar Rationing Regulations
(2004-04-29) Hostetter, Christina; Olson, Keith W; History/Library & Information Systems
In 1927, Hershey Chocolate Corporation and Coca-Cola struck up a business relationship based on sugar sales. Hershey Corporation supplied Coca-Cola and Hershey Chocolate Corporation with sugar through a common broker. During World War II, companies such as Hershey and Coca-Cola faced severe sugar shortages that could potentially ruin their companies. Both companies used their ability to influence government policies in order to receive the goods they needed to maintain production levels while increasing profits. Through their corporate connections and strong lobbying efforts, Coca-Cola and Hershey used the government's willingness to write contracts to ensure that they did not suffer a loss in profits or lower production levels due to the war. This government aid provided both companies with a chance to expand on a global scale in the post-war years. Coca-Cola took advantage of the opportunity by expanding worldwide, while Hershey chose to expand within the domestic market.
Matching Meaning for Cross-Language Information Retrieval
(2005-12-06) Wang, Jianqiang; Oard, Douglas W; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Cross-language information retrieval concerns the problem of finding information in one language in response to search requests expressed in another language. The explosive growth of the World Wide Web, with access to information in many languages, has provided a substantial impetus for research on this important problem. In recent years, significant advances in cross-language retrieval effectiveness have resulted from the application of statistical techniques to estimate accurate translation probabilities for individual terms from automated analysis of human-prepared translations. With few exceptions, however, those results have been obtained by applying evidence about the meaning of terms to translation in one direction at a time (e.g., by translating the queries into the document language). This dissertation introduces a more general framework for the use of translation probability in cross-language information retrieval based on the notion that information retrieval is dependent fundamentally upon matching what the searcher means with what the document author meant. The perspective yields a simple computational formulation that provides a natural way of combining what have been known traditionally as query and document translation. When combined with the use of synonym sets as a computational model of meaning, cross-language search results are obtained using English queries that approximate a strong monolingual baseline for both French and Chinese documents. Two well-known techniques (structured queries and probabilistic structured queries) are also shown to be a special case of this model under restrictive assumptions.
"SCIENTIFIC TRUTH, RIGHTLY UNDERSTOOD, IS RELIGIOUS TRUTH": THE LIFE AND WORKS OF REVEREND EDWARD HITCHCOCK, 1793-1864
(2005-12-13) Segal, Ariel Jacob; Gilbert, James B; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Reverend Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864) was an important figure in 19th century American science. He contributed to the fields of geology and paleontology, and was the founder of paleoichnology. The overriding passion of Hitchcock's life was the reconciliation of science with evangelical Protestant Christianity. For most of his career, he located all of geological time in a "gap" between the first two verses of Genesis, but later tended to view the Creation days themselves as symbolic. Hitchcock also dealt intensively with the scientific understanding of Noah's flood. At first, he advocated a Deluge covering the entire planet. Subsequently, he held that the Deluge only affected the portion of the planet inhabited by humanity during the time of Noah. Hitchcock used evidence from science to support both natural and revealed religion. He combined this synthesizing with an increasingly extravagant romanticism, and confidently looked forward to continuing his scientific investigations in Heaven.
Relevance judgments and query reformulation by users interacting with a speech retrieval system
(2006-04-27) Kim, Jinmook; Soergel, Dagobert; Oard, Douglas W.; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation presents a framework for searcher behavior that can be used as a basis for designing future speech retrieval systems. It reports on an exploratory study that examines: the criteria searchers of oral history interviews use when judging the relevance of a recording or a passage; the attributes on which those judgments are based; the moves searchers adopt for information need refinements (INR); and the types of query reformulation by which those moves are realized. Eight participants that include faculty, Holocaust scholars, a film producer, and a high school teacher searched the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation's collection that consists of 116,000 hours of 52,000 testimonies in 32 different languages from the survivors, liberators, rescuers and witnesses of the Holocaust. Each participant performed a series of searches based on his/her own interests over a period of three to nine days. Data were collected through observation and screen capture, think aloud, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions; coded; and analyzed by looking for patterns. The cognitive process of relevance judgment and query reformulation occurred interactively during a search. As a result, some relevance criteria (topicality, comprehensibility, novelty of content, and acquaintance) and INR moves (clarification alone, specialization, restriction, and note for later) were observed during both processes. Some criteria, such as richness and emotion, were medium (i.e., speech) and domain (i.e., oral history) specific. The findings identified four different types of attributes of a recording or a passage that included spoken-content attributes (person, place, event/experience, organization/group, ), audio and/or visual attributes (facial expression, voice, gesture, displayed artifact, ), non-content attributes (cache, digitization, language, ), and biographical attributes (name of interviewee, date of birth, gender, occupation, ). Searchers used different query reformulation types, such as adding a condition, narrowing a condition, new term, broadening a condition, removing a condition, and modifying a condition, in order to achieve different INR moves. Some important implications for indexing and metadata assignment, support for search and browsing, and task-oriented system and interface design are drawn from the findings. It then concludes with discussions on limitations and ideas for future work.
Communication structures in computer-supported cooperative learning (CSCL) environments for adult learners in distance education
(2006-07-12) Verdines, Patricia; Neuman, Delia; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This qualitative study addresses the research question: What is the nature of the instructional communication process sustained by computer-supported cooperative learning (CSCL) environments for adult learners in constructivist distance education? The target audience was adult learners; the constructivist learning paradigm guided the analysis of the teaching/learning interactions and communication events. A course was selected as the unit of analysis by following a theoretical construct sampling strategy. Relevant information selected purposively from the course archive was analyzed using conversation analysis to explore the nature of the instructional communication process (the "macro" level") and content analysis to identify the types of teaching/learning interactions, the types of knowledge and the cognitive processes that occurred in the chosen environment (the "micro" level). The study develops a model that characterizes online conversations as instructional communication events, and establishes a framework for the systematic analysis of online conversations in CSCL environments. At the "macro" level of analysis, the participants' discourse in the synchronous conversations moderated by the instructional team was well-structured and composed of a set of phases - opening, instructional delivery, and closing - as in face-to-face classroom discourse research. In contrast, the unmonitored asynchronous conversations were characterized as ill-structured; only the opening phase or the instructional delivery phases were represented in the discourse. At the "micro" level, extensive and diverse types of interactions occurred in the asynchronous conversations, but fewer types were evident in the synchronous conversations, which were structured by the instructional team to limit active participation to only a few students. These findings suggest that online instructional conversations can be characterized as student-centered, teacher-centered, or a combination of both, according to the type and variety of interactions that occur among participants. The analysis also identified the types of knowledge constructed and shared by students as well as the cognitive activity represented in their discourse, which were characterized as instances of specific learning processes - such as collaborative problem solving and collaborative argumentation - and diverse learning outcomes consistent with the learning goals in the course selected in the study.
Odyssey of an Archives: What the History of the Gordon W. Prange Collection of Japanese Materials Teaches Us About Libraries, Censorship, and Keeping the Past Alive
(2007-05-07) Snyder, Sara Christine; Mayo, Marlene; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In 1949, a professor of German history named Gordon W. Prange obtained a set of rare publications and censorship documents pertaining to the Allied Occupation of Japan. He shipped these materials to the University of Maryland, where for the next fifty years a parade of faculty and staff alternately neglected, protected, exploited, and cherished them. This Master's thesis traces that history, paralleling the rising fame of the Prange Collection with developments in East Asian Studies and Prange's interest in Pearl Harbor. It concludes with a discussion of applied concepts in archival science, arguing that the relatively late development of the American archival discipline coupled with the complicated format of Prange Collection materials meant that the archival qualities of the Collection took many years to recognize. Sources include original oral history interviews and archival research. This thesis contributes to the interdisciplinary field of archival history.
"Children Selecting Books in a Library": Extending Models of Information Behavior to a Recreational Setting
(2007-06-05) Reuter, Kara Anne; Neuman, Delia; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Literacy researchers suggest that book-selection strategies are part of successful literacy development, and in several research studies children reported that finding books they like is the biggest barrier they face to reading. Despite much attention to particular aspects of children's reading habits, few studies have examined the processes children use to select books. Against this backdrop, this study undertook a qualitative investigation of primary-school children's selection of books for recreational reading in a public library over the summer. Book selection was examined from the perspective of library and information science (LIS) models of information behavior and relevance assessment. To expand LIS research into the recreational realm, the study also drew upon reader-response theory in education and uses-and-gratifications theory in communications. Using a multiple-case study design, the study collected questionnaire, interview, and observation data from 20 7- to 9-year-old children and their parents during several sessions at their homes and at the public library. The data were analyzed with a grounded-theory approach. During the study, the children spoke in general of the gratifications--cognitive, emotional, and social--that reading provides. When embarking on book selection at the library, however, they did not mention specific needs they sought to fill. When browsing the library, the children exhibited successively more involvement with books, examining them externally and internally and focusing on a variety of elements. The central aspects influencing children's selection of books were contents and reading experience. Several differences emerged among the children: older children were more purposeful in their behaviors than younger children; girls were more independent than boys; some children had strong preferences that influenced their book-selection practices; and children exhibited distinct book-selection strategies. Finally, children rarely acknowledged receiving formal instruction in book selection and faced a number of obstacles related to library terminology and concepts. Within the LIS field, this research contributes to an expanded understanding of information behavior. The findings have implications for strategies to encourage effective book selection through library instruction and parental involvement as well as for approaches to improve library services and systems, such as readers' advisory, shelf arrangement, and digital libraries.
The Effect of Users' Work Tasks on Librarians' Database Selection
(2007-08-06) Kim, Soojung; White, Marilyn Domas; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
A recent trend in information searching research is task-based information searching, which views a user's task as a central factor for understanding information-seeking behaviors and designing information retrieval systems. To investigate empirically the role of tasks in information searching, particularly in the business domain, this study analyzes the database selection process used by librarians from the perspective of users' tasks. The first part of the study focused on identifying and characterizing business tasks and the associated questions needed to complete the tasks. An inventory of 30 business tasks and 144 associated business questions was developed through content analysis of Harvard Business School cases and other published materials. The second part of the study explored the influence of tasks on database selection by conducting a survey among business librarians in academic institutions. Nine sets of survey questionnaires were created based on the identified business tasks and questions and each questionnaire, containing a total of five business questions for two to three tasks, was disseminated through a Web-based survey tool. Out of 52 sampled librarians, 29 (56 percent response rate) participated in the study. The survey questionnaires focused on participants' use of tasks and related business questions to determine information types likely to answer the questions, to choose databases, and to determine the criteria used to select the databases. The characteristics of business tasks and questions were analyzed and linked to other elements - information types, database selection criteria, and selected databases - to understand the interplay among all elements in the database selection process. The analysis noted the participants' reliance on users' tasks in various aspects of an information searching process. A database selection process was further modeled to describe how five task or context-related criteria - company size, company type, industry sector, geographical setting, and business stage - influence database selection. The inventory of business tasks and questions, along with the patterns among the elements, set the stage for a task-based database selection system.
Government Websites for Special Populations: Toward Content-Based Evaluation
(2007-12-10) Hoffman, Kelly Michele; Jaeger, Paul T; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
E-Government research has traditionally focused on cost-effectiveness and efficiency, operations, accessibility, usability, and information policy. Less attention has been paid to what audiences are meant to use the sites and what topics are being presented to them. This paper proposes an assessment framework that looks at the topics and formats of the information presented on government websites, and compares differences between sites of different structures, for different audiences, and from different countries.
Classifying Attitude by Topic Aspect for English and Chinese Document Collections
(2008-04-25) Wu, Yejun; Oard, Douglas W.; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The goal of this dissertation is to explore the design of tools to help users make sense of subjective information in English and Chinese by comparing attitudes on aspects of a topic in English and Chinese document collections. This involves two coupled challenges: topic aspect focus and attitude characterization. The topic aspect focus is specified by using information retrieval techniques to obtain documents on a topic that are of interest to a user and then allowing the user to designate a few segments of those documents to serve as examples for aspects that she wishes to see characterized. A novel feature of this work is that the examples can be drawn from documents in two languages (English and Chinese). A bilingual aspect classifier which applies monolingual and cross-language classification techniques is used to assemble automatically a large set of document segments on those same aspects. A test collection was designed for aspect classification by annotating consecutive sentences in documents from the Topic Detection and Tracking collections as aspect instances. Experiments show that classification effectiveness can often be increased by using training examples from both languages. Attitude characterization is achieved by classifiers which determine the subjectivity and polarity of document segments. Sentence attitude classification is the focus of the experiments in the dissertation because the best presently available test collection for Chinese attitude classification (the NTCIR-6 Chinese Opinion Analysis Pilot Task) is focused on sentence-level classification. A large Chinese sentiment lexicon was constructed by leveraging existing Chinese and English lexical resources, and an existing character-based approach for estimating the semantic orientation of other Chinese words was extended. A shallow linguistic analysis approach was adopted to classify the subjectivity and polarity of a sentence. Using the large sentiment lexicon with appropriate handling of negation, and leveraging sentence subjectivity density, sentence positivity and negativity, the resulting sentence attitude classifier was more effective than the best previously reported systems.
Advanced Content In State E-Government: Criteria for Evaluation
(2008-05-02) Zammarelli, Christopher Mark; Jaeger, Paul T; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study analyzes the use of five types of advanced content in state e-government: audio and video content, RSS feeds, podcasts, blogs, and participative services. State government portals and governors' websites were reviewed to determine if and how they implemented any of the five evaluation criteria. Points were assigned for the presence of these criteria, with additional points being granted for examples of advanced content that were deemed to be of quality based on defined measures. The study found many state e-government sites have implemented features that set standards for the use of advanced content in an e-government setting.
Efficiency Versus Democracy: Policy Trends and Assessment of State E-government
(2008-05-05) Anderson, David Adam; Jaeger, Paul T.; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Assessments of E-government literature have noted a lack of both broadly-drawn studies and policy-oriented research. This paper addresses this gap through a systematic, content-based assessment of E-government strategic planning documents from 37 states, meant to determine the holistic policy orientation of American E-government. Specifically, this study tests the proposition that state E-government policies can be said to exhibit either an evolutionary or revolutionary orientation towards affecting desired changes in matters of efficiency, democracy, or both. This orientational framework is drawn from examples found in federal E-government policy and academic E-government literature. It is also used to outline biases of existing E-government implementation models, and to frame discussion of a model for gauging progress in "E-democracy." Other issues explored include the ultimate legitimacy of an E-government that fails to implement democracy-oriented tools, the potential Constitutional conflicts of a transformative approach to E-government, and the wisdom of re-conceptualizing citizens as "customers."
Understanding and Supporting Visual Communication within Costume Design Practice
(2009) Bradley, Rachael Leigh; Preece, Jennifer J; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Theatres provide artistic value to many people and generate revenue for communities, yet little research has been conducted to understand or support theatrical designers. Over 1,800 non-profit theatres and 3,522 theatre companies and dinner theatres operate in the United States. In 2008, 11 million people attended 1,587 Broadway shows for a total gross of 894 million dollars. These numbers do not take into account College and community theatres, operas, and ballets, all of which also require costumes. This dissertation studied image search, selection, and use within costume design practice to: 1) understand how image use as a collaborative visual communication tool affects the search and selection process and 2) assist an often overlooked community. Previous research in image search and selection has focused on specific resources or institutions. In contrast, this research used case study methodology to understand image search, selection, and use within the broad context of an image-intensive process. The researcher observed costume designers and other theatre members as they located, selected, shared, discussed, and modified images through an iterative design process resulting in a final set of images, the costumes themselves. The researcher also interviewed participants throughout the design process, photographed artifacts, and conducted a final interview with participants at the end of each case study. The resulting data was coded using grounded theory and guided by previous research. Based on the analysis, the researcher suggests a three-stage model that describes image use in costume design and provides a starting point for understanding image use in other collaborative design practices. Participants used a wide range of analog and digital resources, including personal and institutional collections, but often used the same three search and selection strategies regardless of the resource type. Set building and refinement, image comparison, and tagging were all important features of the image search and selection process but are not well supported in most image search systems. In addition, participants continuously added resources to personal collections for future use on individual productions. This research set out to understand search and selection within the context of collaborative use on a single production, but what became apparent was the central nature of collaboration across productions to the search and selection process itself. Personal networks between costume designers and within the theatre community played a central role in solving challenges costume designers encounter as part of their work. This research bridges a gap in current image research by placing image search and selection within the context of a collaborative design practice. At the same time, it suggests guidelines for developing technology to support a community which has long been overlooked. With additional research, the findings from this research can be extended to apply to the theatrical community as a whole and also to other design professionals.
The Impact of Group Interaction on Shared Cognition: An Analysis of Small Group Communication
(2009) Matteson, Miriam; White, Marilyn D.; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This research investigated how small group communication influences the development of shared mental models in a committee of public librarians addressing a problem-solving task. A qualitative study, it examines the influence of communication themes, functions, roles, channels, and rules on the group¹s development of shared mental models about the task and about team interaction. Over a year, data were collected from group meetings, email messages, group documents, and participant interviews. The data were analyzed using existing coding schemes and qualitative coding techniques. The findings indicate that within the group there was a strong superficial convergence around the task mental model and the team interaction mental model but a weaker convergence at a deeper level. Analysis of the group communication data shows that the group focused discussion on understanding the problem and identifying tasks. They enacted group communication roles and rules that facilitated sharing information, and the functions of their messages were focused on task communication. The findings suggest that, in this group, communication themes most heavily influenced the development of a shared mental model about the task, while communication roles, rules, and functions were found to be more influential toward the development of a shared mental model about team interaction. Implications for practice include adopting intentional tactics for surfacing mental models at various points in the group life and anchoring the emerging model within the collective cognition of the group through devices such as narratives, objects, or documentary materials.
Digital Libraries in Schools: The Best Practices of National Board Certified Library Media Specialists
(2009) Massey, Sheri Anita; Druin, Allison; Weeks, Ann C.; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study investigated the digital library integration behaviors of school library media specialists (SLMSs) who have achieved certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). A qualitative interview study design was chosen to convert tacit knowledge related to digital library use into explicit knowledge that can be shared with others. The goal of this research was to identify behaviors and techniques that exemplary SLMSs share when using digital libraries to support the curriculum in K-12 schools. The researcher interviewed and collected artifacts from 10 local National Board certified SLMSs and analyzed the resulting transcripts and materials using thematic analysis. A preliminary coding scheme was derived from the NBPTS Library Media technology innovation standard, which requires candidates to demonstrate expertise in providing technology access, teaching effective technology use, engaging learners with technology, and using technology to enhance the curriculum. Themes related to these four areas emerged from the data, as did sub-themes in the form of barriers the SLMSs encountered and strategies they developed to meet the standard. The barriers are discussed using Ertmer's (1999) first- and second-order classifications. The strategies are the SLMSs' best practices. To provide digital library access the SLMSs made themselves and their assistants available to learners; demonstrated mental and resource flexibility when they encountered obstacles; and, implemented creative funding strategies. To teach digital library use they used the research process to help students bridge knowledge learned in various contexts; provided training; remained abreast of digital library innovations; and, offered suggestions to product developers. To maintain engagement with digital libraries they used proven teaching techniques that build on strong instructional design principles. Finally, they relied on collaborative relationships when integrating digital libraries. They increased collaboration by building trust among colleagues; extending their reach beyond the SLMC in person and virtually, diversifying their role within the school, and gathering curriculum information to incorporate information literacy skills into lessons. Key implications: encourage SLMS-teacher collaboration, build a knowledge management system that captures expertise and supports SLMS communication, reconsider blocking social networking tools in schools to bridge the disconnect between students' home and school information-related behaviors.
Under the Arch of Friendship: Culture, Urban Redevelopment and Symbolic Architecture in D.C. Chinatown, 1970s-1990s
(2009) Khoo, Evelyn; Gao, James Z; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This thesis explores the history of the urban development and architectural changes in Washington, D.C. Chinatown in the late twentieth century. Urban development in D.C. Chinatown traces the way in which local politics, ethnic community elites and the larger international backdrop of geopolitics and the globalizing economy found expression in the visual streetscapes and architecture in the neighborhood perceived to be a predominantly ethnic site. This essay argues that the case of D.C. Chinatown represents a larger call for a spatial turn in Chinese American history, where more emphasis can be placed on the uses of symbolic architecture in determining Chinese American identity and settlement.
Relevance, Rhetoric, and Argumentation: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry into Patterns of Thinking and Information Structuring
(2009) Huang, Xiaoli; Soergel, Dagobert; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation research is a multidisciplinary inquiry into topicality, involving an in-depth examination of literatures and empirical data and an inductive development of a faceted typology (containing 227 fine-grained topical relevance relationships and 33 types of presentation relationship). This inquiry investigates a large variety of topical connections beyond topic matching, renders a closer look into the structure of a topic, achieves an enriched understanding of topicality and relevance, and induces a cohesive topic-oriented information architecture that is meaningful across topics and domains. The findings from the analysis contribute to the foundation work of information organization, intellectual access / information retrieval, and knowledge discovery. Using qualitative content analysis, the inquiry focuses on meaning and deep structure: Phase 1 : develop a unified theory-grounded typology of topical relevance relationships through close reading of literature and synthesis of thinking from communication, rhetoric, cognitive psychology, education, information science, argumentation, logic, law, medicine, and art history; Phase 2 : in-depth qualitative analysis of empirical relevance datasets in oral history, clinical question answering, and art image tagging, to examine manifestations of the theory-grounded typology in various contexts and to further refine the typology; the three relevance datasets were used for analysis to achieve variation in form, domain, and context. The typology of topical relevance relationships is structured with three major facets: Functional role of a piece of information plays in the overall structure of a topic or an argument; Mode of reasoning: How information contributes to the user's reasoning about a topic; Semantic relationship: How information connects to a topic semantically. This inquiry demonstrated that topical relevance with its close linkage to thinking and reasoning is central to many disciplines. The multidisciplinary approach allows synthesis and examination from new angles, leading to an integrated scheme of relevance relationships or a system of thinking that informs each individual discipline. The scheme resolving from the synthesis can be used to improve text and image understanding, knowledge organization and retrieval, reasoning, argumentation, and thinking in general, by people and machines.

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