The new issue of Information Research is now on the site - I hope all the links are working but if anyone comes across any that aren't please let me know.
The editorial in this issue has a short report on the reader survey we carried out recently, so I'll direct your attention to that.
Apart from the editorial, we have a total of seven papers, covering a wide array of subjects, from the extraction of variant chemical names to students' use of Web literacy skills and strategies. Something for everyone, in other words.
25 September 2008
19 September 2008
ISIC Conference - Post conference day trip
About 20 participants summoned up the courage to take a bus trip on a very fine, but bitterly cold day. The wind was coming straight off the Siberian steppes. However, with varying cloud cover, the wind died down and we had a good trip to Trakai, a beautiful little town on several lakes, with an astonishingly located castle. We sampled a local delicacy, the kybyn on the bus on the way to Gruto Parkas, an open air museum of communist-era statuary - fascinating. Then, after lunch, back to Vilnius and goodbye to everyone heading off to New Zealand, Japan, Slovakia, the USA, France, South Africa and other destinations.
See you again in Murcia!
See you again in Murcia!
ISIC Conference Day 3
Another chill day, but the rain made it seem a little milder :-) Lithuania has thrown everything at us except sunshine and snow - who knows what tomorrow will bring?
We had another day of diverse topics, with simultaneous sessions in the first part of the morning. One presentation was introduced with Maori chants, which is a first for ISIC, while another was delivered by DVD in the unavoidable absence of the author - another first. Others dealt with matters as diverse as the difficulty of using search engines, the use of Wikipedia, exploring a user perspective on relevance, evaluating search engines from a user-perspective and even exploring ISIC as a professional community.
The day ended with a Panel Session on teaching information behaviour, with, en passant, some excellent demonstrations of teaching techniques.
Tomorrow there is a tour to Trakai and Gruta Park - we are definitely hoping for better weather.
We had another day of diverse topics, with simultaneous sessions in the first part of the morning. One presentation was introduced with Maori chants, which is a first for ISIC, while another was delivered by DVD in the unavoidable absence of the author - another first. Others dealt with matters as diverse as the difficulty of using search engines, the use of Wikipedia, exploring a user perspective on relevance, evaluating search engines from a user-perspective and even exploring ISIC as a professional community.
The day ended with a Panel Session on teaching information behaviour, with, en passant, some excellent demonstrations of teaching techniques.
Tomorrow there is a tour to Trakai and Gruta Park - we are definitely hoping for better weather.
17 September 2008
ISIC Conference Day 2
Day 2 is the busiest day of the conference, since there are no preliminaries and everything kicks off at 9.00 a.m., on a perishingly cold morning - for some reason, Winter has hit Lithuania early and the temperature is at least 10 degrees below normal for the time of year. However, on the principle that more bodies create more heat, this does mean the people are attending the conference instead of bunking off for a look round the town :-)
Fifteen papers were delivered today, starting with Pertti Vakkari's keynote address, which looked at the development of ISIC between 1996, when he founded the conference, and today. Not all of his conclusions were optimistic and he raised some crucial issues for the development of the research area.
Following the keynote, we had papers on a wide variety of subjects, from the role of information in development in South Africa, to the behaviour of Australian online investors and South African consulting engineers, to the users of public business information services in Japan and changes in computer scientists' behaviour over twenty years.
At 17.20 most of the participants went off on a tour of the city - I imagine that they were pretty chilly by the time they finished, but at least they may have seen the hot-air balloons floating over. What they were doing up on a day like this, heaven only knows!
Fifteen papers were delivered today, starting with Pertti Vakkari's keynote address, which looked at the development of ISIC between 1996, when he founded the conference, and today. Not all of his conclusions were optimistic and he raised some crucial issues for the development of the research area.
Following the keynote, we had papers on a wide variety of subjects, from the role of information in development in South Africa, to the behaviour of Australian online investors and South African consulting engineers, to the users of public business information services in Japan and changes in computer scientists' behaviour over twenty years.
At 17.20 most of the participants went off on a tour of the city - I imagine that they were pretty chilly by the time they finished, but at least they may have seen the hot-air balloons floating over. What they were doing up on a day like this, heaven only knows!
ISIC Conference Day 1
The ISIC conference proper opened today, with an welcome from the Vice Rector of Vilnius University and the Deputy Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament. With the formalities completed the main business got under way with an excellent keynote from Professor Bonnie Nardi on virtual game environments as information places - the extent of the discussion suggested that this was a topic to which the conference will return.
The day's sessions included a considerable number of papers of interest from established researchers such as Carol Kuhlthau, Ross Todd and Jannica Heinstrom from Rutgers University on testing the relevance of Kuhlthau's model of the information search process, to newcomers reporting on the conclusion of their PhD research on topics as various as the role of information in the palliative care of cancer patients to a study of how the writers of policy papers for government decide when they have 'enough' information for the purpose of the paper.
The day ended with the conference dinner in a typical Lithuanian restaurant - at which a number of well established researchers were observed enjoying the polka, to the accompaniment of a Lithuanian folk trio. An excellent time was had by all and our friends from Murcia, Spain, the venue of the conference in 2010, promised us a salsa school before the conference dinner there.
The day's sessions included a considerable number of papers of interest from established researchers such as Carol Kuhlthau, Ross Todd and Jannica Heinstrom from Rutgers University on testing the relevance of Kuhlthau's model of the information search process, to newcomers reporting on the conclusion of their PhD research on topics as various as the role of information in the palliative care of cancer patients to a study of how the writers of policy papers for government decide when they have 'enough' information for the purpose of the paper.
The day ended with the conference dinner in a typical Lithuanian restaurant - at which a number of well established researchers were observed enjoying the polka, to the accompaniment of a Lithuanian folk trio. An excellent time was had by all and our friends from Murcia, Spain, the venue of the conference in 2010, promised us a salsa school before the conference dinner there.
ISIC Conference
Yesterday the ISIC conference opened in Vilnius, Lithuania, with the Doctoral Workshop. We had 15 students from various parts of the world (a strong representation from Canada, interestingly) and a variety of topics. The workshop was organized by Theresa Anderson of the University of Technology, Sydney - who was a Workshop participant in 1998, an interesting example of continuity.
Following a plenary sessions, students presented their projects in small groups and enjoyed the comments from the senior researchers and other students. For those students who are working virtually alone, the opportunity to learn from others that their problems are common is reassuring.
I hope that we shall have a report on the Workshop with the students' papers in a future issue of Information Research.
Following a plenary sessions, students presented their projects in small groups and enjoyed the comments from the senior researchers and other students. For those students who are working virtually alone, the opportunity to learn from others that their problems are common is reassuring.
I hope that we shall have a report on the Workshop with the students' papers in a future issue of Information Research.
07 September 2008
Flickr goodies
The photo site, Flickr, is always throwing up new ways of looking at the pictures one puts there. This is one that I only came across today and thought was worth sharing on the Weblog:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)