Information Studies

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A New Committee Launches: Making a Case for Archival Repatriation
(2024-01) Punzalan, Ricardo; Arsenault, Jaime; Begay, Vina; Chaterera-Zambuko, Forget; Marsh, Diana; Savory, Jacob; Schlottmann, Kevin; Stoner, Melissa; Schmitt, Jack
Access to and community possession of archival materials containing Native and Indigenous knowledge, language, and lifeways is crucial to the cultural survivance, revital- ization, and continuation of communities. Nevertheless, archival organizations have yet to fully address how the profession might approach the growing demand for archival repatriation. In response, the Society of American Archivists formed the Archival Repatriation Committee with the charge to “[E]nsure that [SAA]’s services, activities, policies, communications, and products support the goal of supporting archivists in repatriating and receiving archival materials.”
Access Policies for Native American Archival Materials in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
(Society of American Archivists, 2020-10) Marsh, Diana E.; Leopold, Robert; Crowe, Katherine; Madison, Katherine S.
This case study contributes to the history of collections access protocols by examining one repository’s policies and practices over a fifty-year period— those of the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. It describes a series of archival programs and projects that occurred before, during, and after the development of the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials in order to view changes in the archives’ access policies within a broader cultural and institutional milieu, presenting a more complex narrative than previously available. The case study assesses the influence of the Protocols as well as some challenges to the adoption of several recommendations. Finally, we make several proposals for archival repositories with comparable collections and constituencies.
ACCESSIBILITY IN CONTEXT: UNDERSTANDING THE TRULY MOBILE EXPERIENCE OF USERS WITH MOTOR IMPAIRMENTS
(2014) Naftali, Maia; Findlater, Leah; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Touchscreen smartphones are becoming broadly adopted by the US population. Ensuring that these devices are accessible for people with disabilities is critical for equal access. For people with motor impairments, the vast majority of studies on touchscreen mobile accessibility have taken place in the laboratory. These studies show that while touchscreen input offers advantages, such as requiring less strength than physical buttons, it also presents accessibility challenges, such as the difficulty of tapping on small targets or making multitouch gestures. However, because of the focus on controlled lab settings, past work does not provide an understanding of contextual factors that impact smartphone use in everyday life, and the activities these devices enable for people with motor impairments. To investigate these issues, this thesis research includes two studies, first, an in-person study with four participants with motor impairments that included diary entries and an observational session, and, secondarily, an online survey with nine respondents. Using case study analysis for the in-person participants, we found that mobile devices have the potential to help motor-impaired users reduce the physical effort required for everyday tasks (e.g., turning on a TV, checking transit accessibility in advance), that challenges in touchscreen input still exist, and that the impact of situational impairments to this population can be impeding. The online survey results confirm these findings, for example, highlighting the difficulty of text input, particularly when users are out and mobile rather than at home. Based on these findings, future research should focus on the enhancement of current touchscreen input, exploring the potential of wearable devices for mobile accessibility, and designing more applications and services to improve access to physical world.
Accessible Data Representation with Natural Sound
(Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), 2023-04-23) Hoque, Md Naimul; Ehtesham-Ul-Haque, Md; Elmqvist, Niklas; Billah, Syed Masum
Sonification translates data into non-speech audio. Such auditory representations can make data visualization accessible to people who are blind or have low vision (BLV). This paper presents a sonification method for translating common data visualization into a blend of natural sounds. We hypothesize that people’s familiarity with sounds drawn from nature, such as birds singing in a forest, and their ability to listen to these sounds in parallel, will enable BLV users to perceive multiple data points being sonified at the same time. Informed by an extensive literature review and a preliminary study with 5 BLV participants, we designed an accessible data representation tool, Susurrus, that combines our sonification method with other accessibility features, such as keyboard interaction and text-to-speech feedback. Finally, we conducted a user study with 12 BLV participants and report the potential and application of natural sounds for sonification compared to existing sonification tools.
Accreditation for Information Science: Has the Time Finally Come?
(1985-02) Hahn, Trudi Bellardo; Davis, Charles H.
In September 1984, representatives from 17 American and Canadian library and information science associations met in Chicago, Illinois, to "examine the scope, structure, and costs of accreditation" of library and information science programs.
Adapting an HBCU-inspired framework for Black student success in U.S. LIS education
(IOS Press, 2021-07-02) Ndumu, Ana; Walker, Shaundra
This perspective essay explores Gasman & Arroyo’s (2014) HBCU-inspired framework for Black student success as a prism for re-envisioning LIS education. In response to calls for anti hegemonic LIS education, the authors discuss a potential tool for Black student success and suggest its benefits to LIS education. The framework can introduce non-white, anti-racist educational practices to the work of educating the U.S. library workforce; it is relevant in light of ongoing racial and political strife in U.S. society.
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.
Alcestis Underworld Outline
(2012) Beutner, Katharine
PDF outline for Katharine Beutner's contribution to the MediaCommons/New Everyday Rough Cuts: Media and Design in Process Collection, edited and curated by Kari Kraus and Amalia Levi
Aleš Hrdlička: A New Finding Aid and an Exhibit Appearance for a Controversial Figure in the History of Anthropology
(Smithsonian Collections Blog, 2020-04-03) Christensen, Katherine; Marsh, Diana
Aleš Hrdlička was an anthropologist who left a complicated legacy. His work in physical anthropology was groundbreaking, but his history is fraught with accusations of misogyny and a belief that his work contributed to major racist ideologies of the 20th century. His papers are open for research at the National Anthropological Archives and the finding aid for those papers, the original creation of which was funded by the Repatriation Office, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), is now available digitally on SOVA through recent funding from the FY2019 Collections Information (CIS) pool. Some of Hrdlička’s work is on display in the new exhibition, Documenting Diversity: How Anthropologists Record Human Life
Alternate Reality Games as Platforms for Practicing 21st-Century Literacies
(International Journal of Learning and Media, 2013) Bonsignore, Elizabeth; Hansen, Derek; Kraus, Kari; Ruppel, Marc
Alumni Perspectives on their Membership in an Intergenerational Participatory Design Team
(2018) McNally, Brenna; Druin, Allison; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Participatory Design (PD) gives technology users an active role in the design of the technologies they are meant to use. PD methods have been adapted for research with children to facilitate the creation of technologies that better meet children’s desires and expectations. While the benefits HCI practitioners receive from working with children in PD can include developing more child-centric interfaces and finding surprising new innovations, research is less clear on the participants’ perceptions of their experience—such as how they perceive matters that affect them or what personal gains intergenerational PD team participants may receive from their participation. Investigating the retrospective perspectives of adult and child members of intergenerational PD teams may enable researchers to improve or develop practices that are better aligned with participant expectations. Recent work has begun to look into the gains adults perceive from their participation on traditional PD projects, and has begun to observe gains to children during their participation on PD teams. However, the retrospective perspectives of adult and child alumni who were members of intergenerational PD teams have yet to be investigated. To understand how alumni of intergenerational PD teams perceive matters that affected their membership, I conducted anonymous, online surveys and follow-up interviews with three distinct participant groups from an intergenerational PD team: child design partner alumni, parents of child alumni, and adult design partner alumni. Outcomes include new understandings of 1) the perspectives of child design partner alumni with regard to the ethics of their previous participation, 2) the gains child design partners experience and attribute to their PD team participation from the perspectives of both child alumni and their parents, and 3) the gains that adult design partners experience and attribute to their PD team participation and their perspectives on membership. Throughout these findings participants describe how participation in intergenerational PD impacted their desire and perceived ability to pursue new goals and activities throughout their lives through the development of new skills, competencies, and mindsets. From these findings, I then synthesize ten recommendations toward the goal of making intergenerational PD better support the people who are involved in it.
An Analysis of Federal Policy on Public Access to Scientific Research Data
(Data Science Journal, 2017) Kriesberg, Adam; Huller, Kerry; Punzalan, Ricardo; Parr, Cynthia
The 2013 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memo on federally-funded research directed agencies with research and development budgets above $100 million to develop and release plans to increase and broaden access to research results, both published literature and data. The agency responses have generated discussion and interest but are yet to be analyzed and compared. In this paper, we examine how 19 federal agencies responded to the memo, written by John Holdren, on issues of scientific data and the extent of their compliance to the directives outlined in the memo. We present a varied picture of the readiness of federal science agencies to comply with the memo through a comparative analysis and close reading of the contents of these responses. While some agencies, particularly those with a long history of supporting and conducting science, scored well, other responses indicate that some agencies have only taken a few steps towards implementing policies that comply with the memo. These results are of interest to the data curation community as they reveal how different agencies across the federal government approach their responsibilities for research data management, and how new policies and requirements might continue to affect scientists and research communities.
AN ANALYSIS OF VARIABILITY IN NEWSPAPER REPORTING OF NATIONALLY COVERED TOPICS
(2019) Marciano, Fernando Santos; Butler, Brian; Master in Information Management; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study looks into variability in newspaper reporting of important national topics. Using a sample of seven hundred articles from ten newspapers, a quantitative analysis using analysis of variance (ANOVA) found that variability in the values of reported numerical facts was statistically significant. Further, a qualitative analysis was performed to identifying potential reasons for the variability. Variability is unique to each topic being covered; however, some follow predictable patterns, such as updates on developing stories.
Anywhere but the Reich: The Jews of Nazi Vienna's Applications for Emigration Aid, 1938-1940
(2021) Wachtel, Jennifer LeeAnne; Rozenblit, Marsha; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss in 1938, an immediate outpouring of antisemitic violence and legislation horrified the Jews of Vienna. Between 1938 and 1940, Viennese Jews applied to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish Community of Vienna or IKG) for financial aid to emigrate. Through a close examination of emigration questionnaires Viennese Jews submitted to the IKG, I demonstrate the harrowing effect of the Anschluss and Kristallnacht (November 1938 pogrom) on Jews from all social classes. By centering how individual families engaged with the emigration process, I argue that Viennese Jews immediately recognized the need to flee and exercised enormous creativity to escape. Desperate Viennese Jews were willing to emigrate anywhere and obtain any job outside the Reich. Viennese Jews also demonstrated resilience in the face of Nazi terror by applying for financial aid to flee the Reich even as potential havens shut their doors to Jewish refugees.
Archival Workers as Climate Advocates
(2024) Wickner, Amy; Shilton, Katie; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Real-life examples of climate response under material constraints capture the risks facing archives, records, and archival workers amid environmental change, and the factors that complicate climate action. In this dissertation, I sought to understand how climate, environment, and ecology shape archival workers' experiences, practices, and perspectives on the future, including their norms and expectations for making change. I used three interconnected methods: a critical review of six decades of scholarly and professional literature; a literary analysis of archival practices in seven climate fiction texts; and interviews with 13 archivists concerned about climate change. The core argument of this dissertation is that forms of slow violence – Nixon's term for harm that “occurs gradually and out of sight” – produce unresolvable double binds, which catalyze archival workers into a community of climate advocates. This research finds that archival workers are trying to pursue principled work in conditions that prevent them from doing so – not only the material limitations of work sites, but also political obstacles to taking climate action. They develop politically expedient strategies and tactics in response to local circumstances, while using public statements and campaigns to extend their advocacy across the field. As climate advocates, they oscillate between positions as insiders and outsiders in the field, never settling in one stance from which to effect change. While they share a commitment that archives matter to climate response, complexity and contradiction hold them together as a community of advocates. Two key points of disagreement lie at the buzzing center of this community: first, whether archives are primarily resources or obstacles to climate action; and second, to what extent archival climate responses should align with or resist power relations that organize the state of the field (and the planet). There's ample knowledge in the archives field of the significance of climate change, the environmental impacts to and of archival work, the need for archivists to respond to the crisis, and methods for responding. However, such answers make little difference in everyday change-making, if they don't also face head-on the material conditions of archival work and the political relations that determine and reproduce those conditions.
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.
ASIST Members Speak: The Board Listens
(American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2003-08) Hahn, Trudi Bellardo
An Autoethnographic Account of Innovation at the US Department of Veterans Affairs
(2020) Casertano, Andrew E; Marciano, Richard; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The history of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health information technology (HIT) has been characterized by both enormous successes and catastrophic failures. While the VA was once hailed as the way to the future of twenty-first-century health care, many programs have been mismanaged, delayed, or flawed, resulting in the waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Since 2015 the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has designated HIT at the VA as being susceptible to waste, fraud, and mismanagement. The timely central research question I ask in this study is, can healthcare IT at the VA be healed? To address this question, I investigate a HIT case study at the VA Center of Innovation (VACI), originally designed to be the flagship initiative of the open government transformation at the VA. The Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) was designed to promote the open innovation ecosystem public-private-academic partnership. Based on my fifteen years of experience at the VA, I use an autoethnographic methodology to make a significant value-added contribution to understanding and modeling the VA’s approach to innovation. I use several theoretical information system framework models including People, Process, and Technology (PPT), Technology, Organization and Environment (TOE), and Technology Adaptive Model (TAM) and propose a new adaptive theory to understand the inability of VA HIT to innovate. From the perspective of people and culture, I study retaliation against whistleblowers, organization behavioral integrity, and lack of transparency in communications. I examine the VA processes, including the different software development methodologies used, the development and operations process (DevOps) of an open-source application developed at VACI, the Radiology Protocol Tool Recorder (RAPTOR), a Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) radiology workflow module. I find that the VA has chosen to migrate away from inhouse application software and buy commercial software. The impact of these People, Process, and Technology findings are representative of larger systemic failings and are appropriate examples to illustrate systemic issues associated with IT innovation at the VA. This autoethnographic account builds on first-hand project experience and literature-based insights.
A BAROMETER OF SCIENTIFIC CULTURE: THE DEBATED ROLE OF AMERICAN SCIENCE AT THE 1850’S SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
(2023) Buser, Allison; Woods, Colleen; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
During the initial decade of the Smithsonian Institution’s existence, its first secretary, Joseph Henry, sought to establish an institution for the advancement of science that defied popular understandings of scientific work in the United States. From the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, American science was infused with republican ideology and was widely expected to prioritize practical results that would directly benefit society at large. At the Smithsonian, Henry sought to establish a boundary between professional, theoretical science, conducted and distributed more selectively among experts, and wider public influence and demand for utilitarian scientific work. Examination of discourse in popular publications reveals that Henry’s plan created an ongoing public debate in the 1850s regarding the Smithsonian’s legitimate scientific mission. This included criticism of the Smithsonian publications program’s inaccessibility and lack of utility to the public as well as many alternative proposals for how the institution might be of better scientific use to Americans. Such expectations that Smithsonian research and resources would serve the general American population were also expressed throughout the correspondence of the Smithsonian Meteorology Project—the Institution’s first major scientific research initiative. Although Henry sought to create a boundary between theInstitution’s work and the public, the utilitarian demands of many of the project’s volunteer observers ensured that the practical goals of the public remained intertwined with Henry’s own goals to promote theoretical science in the development of the Smithsonian. The influential work of this extended scientific community was often made possible through the contributions of additional members of households. Close reading of the meteorological project correspondence reveals an extensive, although often officially unacknowledged, contribution from women and other individuals whose labor was often more fixed to the household. While the public volunteers of the project shaped the trajectory of the Smithsonian, the devalued labor of peripheral contributors to the Institution’s large-scale data work set important precedent for professional scientific frameworks at the end of the century. Overall, the relationship between the early Smithsonian and the public in the 1850s demonstrates that the process of establishing borders defining a professional/amateur dichotomy in American science was uneven. The Institution contended with republican expectations of the scientific public and its projects continued to rely upon contributors without formal or elite credentials who in turn demanded accessible and practical research and shaped scientific institutions. Despite Joseph Henry's contribution to the professionalization and specialization of science, the boundaries of science and who could participate in scientific research remained fluid through the mid-nineteenth century.
"Because We Were Too English:" John Kaye and the 1857 Indian Rebellion
(2017) Fairchild, Christina Lee; Price, Richard N; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Throughout the nineteenth century, no other rebellion received the same level of attention in Britain as the 1857 Indian Rebellion. This was one of the most written about events in the nineteenth century. The foremost writer on the rebellion is Sir John William Kaye. This thesis examines John Kaye’s writings on India before and after the rebellion. Kaye viewed the British-Indian relationship through a paternalistic lens. Kaye viewed the role of the British to uplift the condition of Indians through personal examples. He was therefore critical of the East India Company’s policies and actions which were detrimental to this agenda, while he still defended it as an institution of progress. After the 1857 Mutiny, Kaye re-examined his standpoint on British interference in India. He did not forsake his paternalistic viewpoint, which allowed Kaye to examine how British actions had caused a divide between the British officers and the sepoys.