School of Information and Library Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

INLS 881/882, Research Issues and Questions I & II
Fall 2009 & Spring 2010

Schedule

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Syllabus / Assignments / Sakai class site

Session 1: August 25, Introductions; Scope of ILS; Being a doctoral student
What are your current interests? What does it mean to pursue those interests as a doctoral student? What subjects and approaches characterize information and library science?

Session 2: September 1, Scope of ILS, continued; Reading and writing in ILS; Literature reviews
What subjects and approaches characterize information and library science? What are the important research questions in informaiton and library science today?
What is a literature review? Why are they important for researchers? How do I find and analyze the literature that's most pertinent to my research questions? How do I write up what I've learned, and get it published?

Session 3: September 8, Two critical aspects of scholarly work: theory and methods
What is theory, and why do researchers use/need theory? What methods are used in ILS research, and why?

Session 4: September 15, Creation of knowledge; The scholarly publication process
The information life cycle begins when someone records their current knowledge. These information objects are of great interest to information professionals, and their later use is affected by how they are created and recorded. They are also the means by which scholars' work can have an impact, and so may be viewed as an indicator of scholarly productivity.

Session 5: September 22, Preservation: personal and cultural

Session 6: September 29, Representing/describing knowledge objects so they can be retrieved
Information/knowledge objects may exist, but they are not useful unless the person needing them can discover them. One important role of the information professional is to represent and organize information/knowledge objects in ways that support effective information retrieval.

Session 7: October 6, Organizing knowledge objects so they can be retrieved; Personal information management
In addition to describing individual knowledge objects, information professionals develop schemes (including semantic frameworks, ontologies, etc.) to organize collections (both personal and organizational) of objects.

Session 8: October 13, Interest group presentations/discussions
Each interest group will be invited to present a summary of what they've learned. Assigned readings will be selected by the interest groups.

Session 9: October 20, Information retrieval systems
Information retrieval systems provide access to recorded information/knowledge objects. The design and evaluation of such systems is a core area of research in ILS.

Session 10: October 27, Interactive information retrieval

Session 11: November 3, Information needs and their expression
It could be argued that the raison d'etre of the ILS profession is to bring together information that has been created with the people who need it for their own purposes. This will be the first of a series of sessions examining the processes by which this professional goal can be reached. We'll begin from the perspective of the person needing information.

November 10: ASIST annual meeting; class cancelled

Session 12: November 17, Information seeking behaviors: models and frameworks
When someone experiences an information need, what happens next? What theoretical models and frameworks can we use to anticipate people's information seeking behaviors?

Session 13: November 24, Information seeking processes: empirical studies and methods
The processes by which people find the information they need are of interest to both practitioners and researchers in ILS. How can we study people's responses to their information needs?

Session 14: December 1, Mini-review presentations

Session 15: December 8, Reflections on what we've learned so far

Thursday, December 17, 5:00pm: Individual (written) mini-review due

Session 16: January 12, Social software and the information behaviors it supports

Session 17: January 19, Information services
How can we use what we know about people's information behaviors to design effective information services?

Session 18: January 26, Information organizations and their management; Information professions and the workforce
Information activities happen within organizational settings, and many of the activities are carried out by professionals working in those organizations. In this session, we'll consider some of the organizational and staffing issues associated with the information professions.

Session 19: February 2, Doctoral student tour, part 1; Schedule an individual appointment with the instructor, to discuss term project

Session 20: February 9, Doctoral student tour, part 2

Session 21: February 16, Developing your own research idea; Writing a research proposal
Writing a research proposal is a critical skill that doctoral students must develop; in addition, you need to be able to manage a research project,if approved/funded. Some of these basic skills will be discussed in this session.

Session 22: February 23, Writing: literature reviews and other forms

Session 23: March 2, Managing a research project

March 9: No class (spring break)

Session 24: March 16, Status reports on final projects

Session 25: March 23, Collaboration in research; Interdisciplinary research issues
Most social science research today is conducted in collaborative teams. What's the most effective way to identify potential collaborators? What skills are needed to collaborate successfully?
Bates (1999) positioned ILS as a meta-discipline, and it's certainly true that ILS researchers often collaborate with scholars from other disciplines. Why is interdisciplinary research important and what are its key characteristics?

Session 26: March 30, Research ethics; Research with human subjects
Particular issues arise when your research involves human subjects/participants. this session will cover research ethics generally and, more specifically, the ethical issues associated with working with human subjects.

Session 27: April 6, Reviewing the work of others
Scholarly communication, particularly the peer reviewing process, depends upon the quality of the reviews that scholars provide for each other. Even more important than their advice to editors about whether an article should be accepted is the reviewer's advice to the author about how to improve the work.

April 13: No class; SIG CHI; prepare for presentations

Session 28: April 20, Final presentations
Each class member's final product will be discussed.

Session 29: April 27, Year-end review: What have you learned?
What have you learned? Re-read the description of your interests that you posted to the class list last August. Have they changed? In what way? What research opportunities and hot topics interest you? How do you want to contribute to them in the next year? During the rest of your doctoral studies? Afterwards? What do you need to learn to accomplish these goals?

May 5, noon: Final product due

Syllabus / Assignments / Sakai class site

Creative Commons LicenseThe INLS 881-882 website, UNC-CH, 2009-2010, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Address all comments and questions to Barbara M. Wildemuth at wildem@ils.unc.edu. This page was last modified on November 25, 2009, by Barbara M. Wildemuth.