28 October 2009

...and don't forget the Doctoral Workshop

Anyone supervising doctoral candidates in the broad area covered by ISIC should publicise the Doctoral Workshop at ISIC 2010 - it is a unique opportunity for candidates to meet and be advised by some of the leading researchers in the field and to meet fellow sufferers on the doctoral path :-)

----------------------------------

We would like to invite your participation in the Doctoral Workshop held in conjunction with ISIC: the information behaviour conference. During the Workshop, doctoral students will be invited to share their current dissertation work-in-progress with their peers and with an international panel of academic staff.

The Workshop has the following objectives:

1. To provide a setting for mutual feedback on participants' current research, and guidance on future research directions;
2. To develop a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research;
3. To contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events.

ISIC Permanent Committee Involvement

Members of ISIC Permanent Committee and other university researchers will participate as tutors in the Workshop. Details will be announced nearer the date of the Conference.

Criteria for Selection
Participants for the Doctoral Workshop will be selected on the basis of their anticipated contribution to the workshop goals. Emphasis will be placed on forming a diverse group of high quality students.

Between twenty and twenty four applicants will be selected for participation. Student participants typically have settled on thesis directions, usually with a research proposal accepted by their thesis committee or departmental research committee. Further details on workshop activities will be available on the web site at a later date.

How to Apply
To apply as a student participant in the Doctoral Workshop, prepare a submission package consisting of the following:

1. Thesis Summary: Prepare a two-page thesis summary, which outlines the problem being addressed, the proposed work plan and a description of your progress to date. Include in your summary research problems you have met and would like to discuss.
2. Letter of Recommendation from your thesis advisor or principal supervisor. This must include an assessment of the current status of your thesis research, and an expected date for thesis submission.
3. Additional Information on your background and relevant experience. This should include information typically found in a curriculum vitae, plus additional information which may indicate your potential contribution to the Workshop Format.

All submissions must be submitted electronically, as Word documents (preferably), or Adobe Acrobat .pdf files, (if they contain diagrams or other formatting information).

ISIC 2010

Time to remind folks that the Call for Papers for ISIC 2010 needs a response from you by February 1, 2010 - and that's getting close, just three months now to get the paper written! The Conference will take place from 27th September (the Doctoral Workshop) to 2nd October. Check out the Website for further information

Call for Papers

The field of human information behaviour is multi-disciplinary in scope: researchers from information science, information management, psychology, social psychology, sociology, information systems, computer science, and other disciplines all contribute to this field of investigation.

ISIC: the Information Behaviour Conference intends to reflect this interdisciplinary character through attracting papers from researchers in all of these areas. The unifying characteristic, which we see as essential in developing a programme is the relationship between the needs or requirements of the information user, the means for the satisfaction of those needs and the uses to which those means are put in practice organizations or disciplines. Thus, papers that deal solely with technological aspects of system design, for example, will not be appropriate for the conference.

Themes of the conference include the following:

1. Theories and models of information seeking and searching: particular theoretical frameworks that are currently of interest include (but are not restricted to) social network theory, actor network theory, cultural-historical activity theory, genre theory, etc.
2. Research approaches and methodologies, both interpretative and positivist, employing either qualitative or quantitative methods.
3. Information seeking, searching and use in specific contexts, e.g., health care, education, business, industry, the public services and government, the emergency services, etc.
4. Organizational structures and processes and information seeking, searching and use.
5. Information seeking and searching in virtual social networks, including gaming and virtual worlds as arenas for information exchange.
6. Information behaviour in everyday life; in communities both real and virtual, including its role in indigenous communities.
7. Integrating studies on information seeking and interactive retrieval.
8. Information use: the nature of information and how information is used to help solve problems, aid decision making or satisfy an initial need.
9. The mediation of information behaviour: how human or software agents can respond to information needs.
10. The design of information delivery systems to meet information needs generally, or in organizational or disciplinary contexts, including Web 2.0 developments such as blogs, wikis, e-learning platforms and open access information resources.
11. Information seeking and information requirements - integrating information science and information systems.
12. The communication of information to users: relationship between communication theory and information behaviour, including, for example, the relationship of information architectures to information seeking behaviour and the design of information products on sound communication principles; including audio and visual communication media.

Papers that deal with the information behaviour of practitioner groups, such as scientists, engineers, local government works, politicians, and other less-studied (in this context) groups, will be particularly welcome. Also, analytical, rather than descriptive investigations, will be sought, with strong connections to previous work and to theoretical or conceptual frameworks.

For the 2010 Conference we shall be particularly interested in papers in any of these areas that address the connection between information research and information practice.

Paper preparation and submission deadline February 1, 2010 Please, submit a prepared paper in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .rtf files) to: isic2010@um.es

We also invite doctoral students to submit an application for participation in the Doctoral Workshop held in conjunction with the Conference on 28th September. We especially welcome submissions from researchers and doctoral students based in Spain, Portugal and Latin America.

04 October 2009

The death of traditional media

I watched this very interesting talk from Leo Laporte of TWIT (This Week in Tech) and I hope the link below works so that readers of this blog may take a look. Laporte is talking about the death of newspapers and also of the way network programming of TV works in the USA.



This talk, along with reading for review What Would Google Do?, by Jeff Jarvis, has firmed up ideas I have been having for some time about the direction in which scholarly publishing is likely to go.

I won't elaborate on that right now, but I hope to be able to get my ideas together in some more coherent form some time soon.