Information Behavior

Extending prior HCI and CSCW research on invisible challenges that domestic care workers face, we examine how childcare workers, particularly nannies, experience and manage workplace risks. Drawing on interviews with 21 full-time nannies, we identified three interrelated risks—physical, emotional, and financial—arising from structural and relational constraints in employers’ homes. Through the lens of risk work, we show how these multi-dimensional constraints create tensions that hinder nannies' direct risk mitigation strategies.

Purpose: This study investigated the relationship among information awareness, access, and socioeconomic deprivation in the context of local health information. Drawing on theories of information poverty and the digital divide, this study examined how socio-economic deprivation influences individuals’ ability to become aware of and access local health information.

Access to disability services information depends on many factors, from an individual’s digital literacy, social connections and physical mobility to the interface design of websites. However, it is also true that the availability of disability services information (e.g., how to apply for a Medicaid Waiver) and how such information is managed and provided to end users in Virginia are also critical factors that shape people’s information access. This assessment focuses on understanding the latter, namely, the “information ecology” of disability services in Virginia.

Museums invite visitors to actively engage in exhibitions. However, it is not easy to understand how visitors experience exhibitions, because people’s motivations and goals to visit museums vary significantly and, therefore, there are no standards to understand their experiences. This research proposes that social media postings can provide implications for visitor engagement. Images posted on Instagram at an exhibition, One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn, are examined as a case study to explore the use of social media for visitor engagement.

Independent business owners often prefer informal information sources to formal ones such as library collections. Part of these preferences is rational because contextual and application-oriented information is usually available from informal sources, which are theoretically the best matches for this kind of information. This suggests that, in addition to outreach strategies, efforts to integrate informal sources of business-relevant information can improve public libraries' ability to support independent business owners' information needs.