Monday, October 27, 2003

Alive Again Well, after having been sick for the past few days, I'm alive again. I seem to have caught some kind of 24-hour bug, having spent Saturday fighting a 101.4 fever. My LIS 550 class is wrapping up: we turned in our group paper last night (a policy document implementing CIPA for a large metropolitan public library) and will spend the last two weeks in small, online discussion groups discussing Manuel Castells' The Internet Galaxy: Reflections of the Internet, Business, and Society. I still have to turn in one last (short) assignment on Sunday but things are definitely wrapping up there :) LIS 510 however, is turning into quite the steamroller. I love the topic (Information Behavior), the professor (Dr. Karen Fisher) is great, the text is a good read (Looking for Information by Donald Case), and the assignments are very meaningful. Unfortunately, my project group for this course is one of the first to present online to the rest of the class which is due about the same time as an individual paper. Anyhow, we're all in a bit of panic because of the amount of work that has to be done in such a short time, but I'm sure we'll muddle through somehow. Once we get past this part, we'll just get to sit back (sorta) and enjoy everyone else's presentations :-) And then there's one final paper due near the end of the quarter (mid-Decemeber). Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting to the other side of this next push :-)   10:00:33 AM      comment []    trackback []

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

iSchool Professor Awarded Outstanding Information Science Teacher of the Year by ASIST This just in from Mike Eisenberg, the dean of iSchool at the University of Washington (the program I'm enrolled in): To the entire iSchool community - I am honored to announce that our own Raya Fidel is winner of the 2003 American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIST) Award for Outstanding Information Science Teacher! Established in 1980, the award is co-sponsored by ASIST and the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The $1,000 award is presented to "an individual who has demonstrated sustained excellence in teaching information science." This is a highly competitive award, and the judges carefully look at the nominee's record including letters of support from colleagues, students, and alumni of the nominees. Although Raya's many professional activities and prodigious research contributions served as supporting evidence, this award specifically recognizes Raya as an exceptional teacher of information science. Raya is in outstanding company in receiving this award. Former winners include F. W. Lancaster (1980), Pauline Atherton Cochrane (1981, to whose festschrift Raya contributed the article, "The User-Centered Approach: How We Got There"), Tefko Saracevic (1985), Linda C. Smith (1987), and current ASIST president (and iSchool outstanding alumni) Nicholas Belkin (1990). Congratulations to you, Raya, from everyone at the iSchool. Mike   11:04:48 AM      comment []    trackback []

Monday, October 06, 2003

Of Surveys and Strangers So for LIS510 today ("Information Behavior"), I headed out and attempted to get 10 people to answer a 5-minute survey. I chose to stand in front of Fred Meyer and nab people on their way out. It actually went pretty well -- some better than others, of course. People are funny creatures and I got some interesting and some bizarre responses. One of my favorites was where one woman turned me down (which was fine, about one in three folks did), came back while I was with another woman and then came up to me, apologized and asked to be interviewed! I told her not to worry about but she insisted :) Each student is required to get 5-10 respondents, submit their notes (basically, an electronic version of the instruments), tabulate the results, write an individual analysis/report, and then write-up a group report (with three other studnents). The topic is pretty interesting -- the professor has come up with a very cool area of investigation and her paper on the topic is currently under peer review and should finalized this week or next -- I'll share more about it then :-) I'm determined to get my results out to my teammates tonight before going to bed and getting my paper done tomorrow. So that means I need to be doing that, er, now. 10:59:27 PM      comment []    trackback []

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Donald Case wins ASIST's 2003 Best Information Science Book Award Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior This is the book I'm reading for LIS 510 / Information Behavior (University of Washington) "About the Book: Looking for Information presents examples of information seeking and reviews studies of the information-seeking behavior of both general and specific social and occupational groups: scientists, engineers, social scientists, humanists, policy experts, the aged, the poor, and "the public" in general.  It also discusses general research on information seeking, including basic research on human communication behavior as found in the literature of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and other disciplines." [Read More @ ASIS&T Mailing List Archive] 2:39:50 PM      comment []    trackback []

Sunday, September 28, 2003

LIS 510 Information Behavior So I've survived my brief residency for LIS 510 (most students were there for two or three classes) fairly intact :-) I find the format of the class pretty interesting -- it's almost self-perpetuating in that the students (in nine groups of 4) will be providing 1-hour online presentations over the course of five weeks to be veiwed by all of the other students each week. This way, the professor doesn't have to come up with any ;-) We're also doing the typical grad student thing and gathering data (through face to face surveys and interviews) for the professor's research :-) Actually, the professor's enthusiasm is quite contagious and since I'm fairly interested in how people search out and use information, I expect I will enjoy the class overall and I'm looking forward to having new team mates to work with online. Our group is going to focus on the information behavior of students ages 17-22 that have a computer with an Internet connection. Should be interesting to say the least! There is, of course, tons of reading -- I'm just barely through the first five chapters of "Looking for Information" and now have to get through about two per week on top of all the project work. Oh, and before I forget, the professor mentioned the ISIC conference -- now that'd be a fun one to go to! She also mentioned that she has additional graduate work available for a lot of the research and presenting she's doing. I'm actually going to keep that in mind for the first of the year! 4:20:04 PM      comment []    trackback []

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

(Grad School) Surprisingly bad article overall So we were assigned "Accountability in a Computerized Society" (pdf) by Helen Nissenbaum to read as part of this week's module on "accountability and liability." While Nissenbaum makes some very valid points about how the current process of software development (or any large corporation) obscures (partially or totally) the lines of accountability, she really misses the mark in other areas. Early on she proposes that "A general culture of accountability should encourage answerability ... even for the malfunctions that cause individual losses of time, convenience, and contentement." You mean every time in not content with some product or other I should be able to hold somebody else answerable!? Her one (and only pertinent) example of a serious software flaw that caused bodily harm in three cases and death in three other: the case of the Therac-25, a computer-controlled radiation treatment device. Beyond this one incident, she provides no other examples of software causing serious harm. Instead, she veers off course, brings up Apple's disclaimer from a 1990 Macintosh Reference Manual ("In no event will Apple be liable for direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages resulting from any defect in the software or its documentation..." blah blah blah). Of course, the first thing that pops into my head is, "Who in their right mind would use Apple, Windows, or any other 'consumer software' for something as life-critical as a radiation treatment device?" No one. Certainly no one that is mentioned in her article. She further proposes that "serious consideration be given to a policy of strict liability for computer system failure, in particular for those sold as consumer products in mass market." Unfortunately, nowhere in this article does she ever prove or even present a case for the need of such a policy. Now, don't get me wrong -- I think corporate America has figured out how to get away with way too much. I couldn't agree more. And I certainly think that there ought to be more stringent control over software that is developed and released in the areas that could cause serious harm to individuals (medical, air traffic control systems and the like) but good luck in ever showing real harm from Windows where due diligence was performed by 9:41:40 PM      comment []    trackback []

Sunday, September 07, 2003

Initial Thoughts As of today (9/7)  I have completed two key parts of being a new grad student: I completed the residency (8/12 - 8/16) and this past Sunday I submitted my (short) final essay for LIS 500 (The Information Lifecycle). So I thought this would be a good time to blog about some of the highlights so far. The Residency Five days spent at the beautiful UW campus. Lots of information crammed into a short period of time, not the least of which was the brief 90 minutes of instruction from the Head Librarian at the Suzallo Library (which is a beatiful building). Not enough time to bond with other members of my cohort (I'm slow to make new friends as it is). And yet, you leave with an excellent sense of what the program is about: it's heavy on the theory yet manages to come back around well thought-out practical applications.   LIS 500 A   11:51:44 AM      comment []    trackback []

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