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Site Visit and Quarterly Reports send comments or questions to: l-neuma1@uiuc.edu |
User EvaluationSocial Science Research- Social Science TeamQuarterly Report (work from April through June, 1997) Overall Activities During the past quarter, the Social Science Team has been involved primarily in system development and conducting research related to digital infrastructure and scientific and engineering work. Team members were heavily involved in the final phase of design and implementation for our web client. They also continued producing more detailed analyses of registration and transaction log data. Work continued on studies of the work and information practices of an engineering workgroup, the use of document structure, and office classification practices. The Social Science Team also continued its efforts to foster the emerging research community in the social informatics of DLs through presentations, publications, and preliminary work on a monograph devoted to human-centered design and analysis of DLs. The Social Science Team worked closely with both designers and intended users on the development of our new web client. Usability tests with science and engineering librarians provided suggestions for improving the web interface and functionality. The Social Science Team met on a biweekly basis with web client designers, bringing their expertise on user needs and preferences to bear on the design of system features and promotional material. They also created online help files, a tutorial, and a website on engineering material to link to the testbed. Team members also developed a marketing strategy, an online survey, and a usability test plan for gaining feedback from users during the trial roll-out of the web client. Social Science Team members worked with the Testbed Team to design the transaction logging and user authentication process modifications needed for support of the web testbed client. They also worked with the transaction log data and the reports of other DL systems to identify how data from our clients could be integrated to produce desired reports on the extent and nature of testbed use. One team member continued interviews and observations with a research group in mechanical and industrial engineering related to their work practices. This study will contribute to understanding group and individual work practices and information use. Another team member continued work on a study of how researchers use the individual components of journal articles by conducting a small series of interviews with members of the research group mentioned above. In the third significant study currently under way, another team member continued exploring the organization of office spaces through launching a web site that invites people to describe their work settings. The methodology of this study represents a significant attempt to develop new online approaches for gathering qualitative data on work practices. Social Science Team members continued their efforts to foster a research community focused on human-centered studies of information systems. Team members participated in, for example: an NSF-sponsored workshop devoted to the development of a new funding initiative in knowledge networking; a workshop on knowledge work sponsored by Case Western; the ACM DL 1997 conference; and a workshop on the ecology of infrastructure. Team members revised papers on their DL studies for publication and continued work on the planned monograph on human-centered design and evaluation of DLs by contacting potential authors and publishers and helping to develop a book prospectus produced by Nancy Van House of the Berkeley DLI project. Finally, team members welcomed a new research assistant, Eric Larson, and spent a significant amount of time planning study activities for the final year of DLI. They developed a plan for collecting, integrating, and reporting data on the extent and nature of testbed use and on the nature of work and communication in the digital era. Publications Sandusky, Robert. Book Review of "Information Systems Development and Data Modeling: Conceptual and Philosophical Foundations," by Rudy Hirschheim, H. K. Klein, and K. Lyytinen, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995. The Information Society: An International Journal, Volume 13, Number 2, April-June 1997. Susan Leigh Star and James Griesemer, "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations,' and Coherence: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-1939," Science Studies Reader, Mario Biagioli, ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, in press (reprint of 1989 article). Susan Leigh Star and Anselm Strauss. The Dialogues between Visible and Invisible Work: Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice", Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: An International Journal, in press. Susan Leigh Star. (White paper - national policy document): Report of our NSF Workshop on Human-Centered Systems: Information, Interactivity, Intelligence. Stefan Timmermans, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, "The Architecture of Difference: Visibility, Control and Comparability in Building a Nursing Interventions Classification," Differences in Medicine, ed. Marc Berg and Annemarie Mol, Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press, in press. Presentations Bishop, Ann P. "Digital Libraries and the Disaggregation of Knowledge: Use of Article Components," Digital Libraries Initiative national meeting, Pittsburgh, PA, May 5-6, 1997. Sandusky, Robert. "Retrieving the User: Surveillance in Digital Libraries", American Society for Information Science Mid-Year Conference, Scottsdale, AZ, June 1-4, 1997. Star, S. Leigh. Guest Lecturer, Invitational Workshop on "The Ecology of Infrastructure," Multimedia Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Jyvaskala, Finland, May, 1997. Star, S. Leigh. Organizer and presenter, International workshop on "Knowledge Work," Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, June, 1997. Twidale, Michael, D. Nichols, J. O'Brien, and R. Sandusky. "Collaboration in the Digital Library", Workshop at ACM Digital Libraries '97, Philadelphia, PA, July 23-26, 1997. |