Information Studies Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2780
Browse
10 results
Search Results
Item Archives in the Attic: Exile, Activism, and Memory in the Washington Committee for Human Rights in Argentina(2019) Pyle, Perri; Rosemblatt, Karin; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Spurred by the human rights violations committed by the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983), exiled Argentines in Washington, D.C. formed the Washington Committee for Human Rights in Argentina (WCHRA) to facilitate the transnational exchange of information between those under threat in Argentina and political actors in the United States. This thesis outlines the story of the WCHRA through the records they created - kept for nearly forty years in an attic - and oral interviews with former members. The collection consists of letters, testimonies, petitions, and notes that reflect the group’s extensive network and provide insight into how Argentine exile groups inserted themselves into the larger human rights movement. By critically examining how one small group of activists came together, I explore how archival records enhance, challenge, and reveal new insights into the politics of exile, activism, and memory, as seen through the lens of the records they kept.Item SCHOOL DISTRICT LIBRARY SUPERVISORS AND THEIR ROLE IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR BUILDING-LEVEL SCHOOL LIBRARIANS: A BASELINE STUDY(2019) Kodama, Christie; Weeks, Ann C.; Butler, Brian; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The advent and ubiquity of mobile technologies, the Internet, and broadband have allowed people to access, use, and create a seemingly endless amount of information in unprecedented ways. This has led to an information world that is more connected, more complex, and more overwhelming than ever before. For children, learning how to use these 21st century advances is important not only for their current needs in and out of school, but also for their future as they go on to college and enter the workforce. As information specialists, school librarians play a unique role in ensuring students are equipped to access, use, and create information in ways that are meaningful and productive. However, with the ever-changing landscape of technology and the multiple literacies now necessary for children’s success, school librarians need to remain current in their knowledge and skills related to these topics. Continuing professional development (PD) is a way for practicing school librarians to stay up-to-date on digital literacies and information and communication technologies (ICTs) so that they are able to be the information specialists and experts the students in their school communities need. Using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Framework for Human Development (1977, 1988, 1994) and what the education literature states is effective PD as the foundation, this dissertation first describes the multiple parties responsible for the effective PD of school librarians. It then examines the role that one party responsible in librarians’ PD, school district library supervisors, play in the planning and implementation of PD for building-level school librarians through a nationwide survey of 267 library supervisors and semi-structured follow-up interviews with 8 supervisors. School district library supervisors are those individuals who work at the district-level and are generally responsible for creating and providing PD for building-level school librarians. This dissertation is a first attempt at illustrating what PD looks like for school librarians in districts nationwide and to compare what is being done to what the literature says are effective means of PD. Findings show that supervisors are providing PD for their librarians that adheres to at least one or two of the characteristics of effective PD. Supervisors are using the affordances of technology to create avenues and spaces for their librarians to connect and collaborate with each other. Findings also showed that the content of PD sessions were widely varied and ranged from more traditional library skills that focused on traditional literacy and administrative skills to more current topics such as makerspaces and digital literacy. As a whole, supervisors revealed a need to grow in the areas of providing long-term PD for their librarians and creating a coherent plan for the PD they provided. This study also illustrated several conditions that facilitate effective PD, including having a culture of continued learning with leaders who support this growth and a budget to support these PD activities. These findings provide an initial look into the PD that is offered to school librarians as planned by the district-level library supervisor and the areas in which PD for librarians can be improved.Item A NICE PLACE ON THE INTERNET: AN EXPLORATORY CASE STUDY OF TEEN INFORMATION PRACTICES IN AN ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY(2018) Waugh, Amanda; Subramaniam, Mega; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on the everyday life information practices of teens in the Nerdfighter online fan community known as Nerdfighteria. Nerdfighteria is the community of fans of vloggers John and Hank Green. This study examines aspects of everyday life information seeking (ELIS) by 1) focusing on an understudied demographic, teens between the ages of 13 to 17; 2) focusing on a fan community, Nerdfighteria, which has many members, but has been rarely studied in the academic literature; and 3) investigating everyday life information practices using a single community that utilizes multiple online platforms (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Discord, and YouTube), rather than centering on a single platform. This dissertation is a case study incorporating a survey of 241 teens and semi-structured interviews with 15 teens about their experiences in Nerdfighteria, followed by a month-long diary activities. The study also included observations of public communities and review of documents related to the Nerdfighter community. Data analysis was iterative and incorporated grounded theory techniques. This study finds that teen Nerdfighters use their fan community to engage in a wide variety of everyday life information seeking around topics that are related to their personal development. Social, cognitive, emotional, and fan topics were predominant. Teen Nerdfighters engaged across platforms and were likely to switch platforms to find the optimal technical affordances while staying in Nerdfighteria. The teens viewed these changes as staying within the community rather than changing from one platform to another—illustrating the primacy of the community to the teens in meeting their information needs. Teens were drawn to Nerdfighteria because they believed it to be a unique place on the Internet, which valued intellectualism, positivity, and kindness. In many cases, teens preferred to observe other’s interactions in order to gain the information they needed or wanted, and waited to engage via posting or responding when certain criteria were met. These findings describe the complicated interplay of the ELIS topics sought, the preferred practices for meeting an information need, and the reasons for choosing one community over another.Item SCHOOL DISTRICT GOVERNANCE AND KNOWLEDGE-FIT IN DECISION RIGHTS: HOW DISTRICTS RECRUIT AND HIRE SCHOOL LIBRARIANS(2016) DiScala, Jeffrey Michael; Carlson Weeks, Ann; Butler, Brian S; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines the organizational structures and decision-making processes used by school districts to recruit and hire school librarians. For students to acquire the information and technology literacy education they need, school libraries must be staffed with qualified individuals who can fulfill the librarian’s role as leader, teacher, instructional partner, information specialist, and program administrator. Principals are typically given decision rights for hiring staff, including school librarians. Research shows that principals have limited knowledge of the skills and abilities of the school librarian or the specific needs and functions of the library program. Research also indicates that those with specific knowledge of school library programs, namely school district library supervisors, are only consulted on recruiting and hiring about half the time. School districts entrust library supervisors with responsibilities such as professional development of school librarians only after they are hired. This study uses a theoretical lens from research on IT governance, which focuses on the use of knowledge-fit in applying decision rights in an organization. This framework is appropriate because of its incorporation of a specialist with a specific knowledge set in determining the placement of input and decision rights in the decision-making processes. The method used in this research was a multiple-case study design using five school districts as cases, varying by the involvement of the supervisors and other individuals in the hiring process. The data collected from each school district were interviews about the district’s recruiting and hiring practices with principals, an individual in HR, library supervisors, and recently hired school librarians. Data analysis was conducted through iterative coding from themes in the research questions, with continuous adjustments as new themes developed. Results from the study indicate that governance framework is applicable to evaluating the decision-making processes used in recruiting and hiring school librarians. However, a district’s use of governance did not consistently use knowledge-fit in the determination of input and decision rights. In the hiring process, governance was more likely to be based on placing decision rights at a certain level of the district hierarchy rather than the location of specific knowledge, most often resulting in site-based governance for decision rights at the school-building level. The governance of the recruiting process was most affected by the shortage or surplus of candidates available to the district to fill positions. Districts struggling with a shortage of candidates typically placed governance for the decision-making process on recruiting at the district level, giving the library supervisor more opportunity for input and collaboration with human resources. In districts that use site-based governance and that place all input and decision rights at the building level, some principals use their autonomy to eliminate the school library position in the allotment phase or hire librarians that, while certified through testing, do not have the same level of expertise as those who achieve certification through LIS programs. The principals in districts who use site-based governance for decision rights but call on the library supervisor for advisement stated how valuable they found the supervisor’s expertise in evaluating candidates for hire. In no district was a principal or school required to involve the library supervisor in the hiring of school librarians. With a better understanding of the tasks involved, the effect of district governance on decision-making, and the use of knowledge to assign input and decision rights, it is possible to look at how all of these factors affect the outcome in the quality of the hire. A next step is to look at the hiring process that school librarians went through and connect those with the measurable outcomes of hiring: school librarian success, retention, and attrition; the quality of school library program services, outreach, and involvement in a school; and the perceptions of the success of the school librarian and the library program as seen from students, teachers, administrators, parents, and other community stakeholders.Item Information at the Nexus: Young People’s Perceptions of Government and Government Websites(2015) Taylor, Natalie; Subramaniam, Mega; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on the perceptions that young people have of federal government websites and of the U.S. government, as well as exploring possible connections between the perceptions of government and government websites. Not only is this a virtually unstudied area of e-government and youth information behavior, but it is also of critical importance as e-government becomes increasingly necessary to Americans’ everyday lives. The case study included 37 youth across four middle-schools in the mid-Atlantic U.S. who all participated in an after-school program at which they met once per week for 10-12 weeks to research a health topic of interest. During these sessions, they participated in several data collection activities, including an interview, a survey, a word association activity, an evaluation of the homepage of a government website, and card-sorting. The study also included over 60 hours of participant observation. The study finds that while participants were slightly more likely to have a negative perception of government than to have a positive one, the majority of participants viewed e-government favorably. Perceptions were based on a variety of factors, though perceptions of government were most commonly made through assessments of policy, while perceptions of e-government most commonly focused on the source of the information (i.e. the government). Perhaps most significantly, while there was no overwhelming connection between overall perceptions of government and e-government, participants’ views of information-related policies frequently were raised during discussions about both government and e-government. More specifically, participants focused on such issues as government secrecy, surveillance, and the security of websites against hackers when evaluating government and e-government. Overall, these findings shed light on the opinions of an understudied population in e-government research, offer insight into political socialization as it relates to government information, and inform both policy-makers and educators on how to best disseminate government websites to youth.Item "It's not just all about the technology": Understanding the role of statewide legal information websites in expanding access to justice in the United States(2015) Gorham-Oscilowski, Ursula; Jaeger, Paul T.; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the past fifteen years, there has been a dramatic increase in the availability of online legal resources and information specifically targeted toward low-income individuals. A network of statewide legal information websites now plays a central role in the access to justice movement in the United States. While these websites now exist in some form throughout this country, it has been more than a decade since they were last studied in depth. This study uses the perceptions and experiences of individuals involved in developing, implementing and maintaining statewide legal information websites (the "Information Providers") as the primary lens through which to explore how these websites facilitate self-help users' access to vital legal information. Three general research questions guided this study: RQ1: What are the principal activities that Information Providers engage in with respect to statewide legal information websites? RQ2: What are the different ways in which states have approached these activities? RQ3: What program development and operational issues have Information Providers faced? Data collection involved three interrelated efforts: a pilot case study, an online survey, and interviews. Themes related to infrastructure, design and implementation strategies, and operational practices emerged and evolved throughout these data collection efforts. Key themes include 1) the role of collaboration in several key areas; 2) barriers to information access faced by target users (and Information Providers' strategies to overcome these barriers); and 3) Information Providers' existing knowledge about users and site usage. In terms of policy and practice, the prevailing lack of connection between Information Providers and their users is perhaps the most significant current challenge. This lack of connection impedes efforts to conduct meaningful program evaluations, thus calling into question the ability of Information Providers to demonstrate the effectiveness of their websites. Thus, this study concludes with a proposed framework for user-centered program evaluation that leverages existing collaborative relationships to provide Information Providers with the information they need in order to provide effective assistance to self-help users.Item Hello Internet! - An Online Starting Point For Adult Digital Literacy Learners(2014) Dodge, Steven; Jaeger, Paul T; Master in Information Management; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While physical access to information technology is critical to actively engaging and participating in an increasingly digital society, having physical access alone is not enough as people need the skills necessary to use the technology to reap its benefits. Teaching adults how to use technology is a challenge that public libraries in the United States are currently confronting through various methods. This paper explores how American public libraries can use an online starting point to help adult patrons learn and practice basic Internet skills. In the case study presented in this report, an online starting point called Hello Internet! was created and tested over the course of three stages at the District of Columbia Public Library.Item Children's Public Library Use and Kindergarten Literacy Readiness in the State of Maryland(2014) Slaby, Marie H.; Jaeger, Paul T.; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the last fifteen years dramatic changes have occurred in early childhood education, particularly in early literacy. Responding to the research, public libraries have transformed their services to young children and caregivers. In 2004, the Public Library Association launched Every Child Ready to Read. Maryland librarians were on the forefront of this effort, which developed in tandem with their It's Never Too Early campaign. At the same time, libraries have been trying to develop outcome measures to assess their impact on users. The current study uses data from a kindergarten readiness assessment in literacy and finds a positive correlation with children's library use as shown by circulation and attendance at children's programs in Maryland. This paper examines the implications of such research on policies and practices and makes recommendations for future study.Item VIRTUAL YOUTH SPACES IN PUBLIC LIBRARIES: DEVELOPING AN EVALUATIVE FRAMEWORK(2013) Valdivia, Claire Suzanne; Subramaniam, Mega; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores the successes and challenges of the virtual space component of the 21st Century Learning Labs in Libraries and Museums funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the MacArthur Foundation. This study synthesizes the literature on informal learning for youth that motivated these learning labs and analyzes existing evaluative approaches to public library initiatives. The author adopts a grounded theory approach and conducts semi-structured interviews with learning lab staff from four sites that received the 21st Century Learning Labs in Libraries and Museums Grant. Key concepts from the literature guide the analysis of the interviews to produce a foundational evaluative framework that can be used by public library staff to design and evaluate goals for their virtual learning lab. This framework considers both the overall mission of virtual learning labs and contextual factors that influence the library.Item Information Seeking in Context: Teachers' Content Selection during Lesson Planning Using the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive of Holocaust Survivor Testimony(2011) Lawley, Kathryn Newton; Soergel, Dagobert; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explored the information seeking task of content selection. An integrative conceptual framework used existing models to examine the context and process of information seeking, evaluation, and selection. The conceptual framework incorporated three main elements of the information seeking process: * The information need context, * The information search process, * Relevance criteria. Among teachers' many duties are the creation, implementation, and revision of lesson plans. A subtask of lesson planning is content selection, which occurs when teachers seek outside content, such as readings or audio recordings, to incorporate into lesson plans. Content selection is seen here as a work-task-embedded information seeking process. A qualitative study was implemented within the setting of a week-long professional development workshop, during which eight teachers used a custom software product that combined a lesson-planning module with an information retrieval (IR) system. The IR system provided access to a subset of the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive. Data types included interviews, fly-on-the-wall transcripts, transaction logs, relevance judgments, and lesson plans. Analysis combined inductive and deductive techniques, including start codes, constant comparison, emergent themes, and matrix analysis. Findings depict associations among each component of the framework. 1. The information need context consists of five layers (Environment, Role, Person, Task, Information Source), each of which influences information search and relevance. 2. The ISP includes two cognitive-behavioral facets: Conceptualizing and Actualizing. 3. Relevance criteria are the situationally-driven embodiment of contextual elements that apply to information seeking. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for information studies and education. For information studies, this study contributes to understanding of the ISP as contextual, cognitive, and interactive. Information need, while unobservable in its native form, can be depicted in enough detail to supply meaningful requirements for the design of information systems and processes. Content selection is a form of exploratory search, and this study's implications suggest that the "traditional" reference interview should be used as an interaction model during exploratory search. For education, this study extends the discourse about consequences of standards-based education for teacher practice and contributes to models of teacher planning as an iterative, cognitive process.