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The Effects of Socioeconomic Deprivation on Public Library Book Circulation: A Community-level Study

This study analyzes the effects of community-level socioeconomic deprivations (SED) on public libraries’ book circulation in the Seoul metropolitan area. The study design draws upon the theory of local information landscapes, which explains the relationship between community characteristics and information behavior. Using four-year (2015-2018) open government and public library circulation data, we constructed a socioeconomic deprivation index by adjusting a multi-dimensional deprivation index and generated other variables.

Crowdsourcing Behavior in Reporting Civic Issues: The Case of Boston's 311 Systems

Many cities in the United States use civic technologies like 311 systems as part of their public service systems for monitoring non-emergency civic issues. These systems have enhanced the city's monitoring capability by diversifying communication channels. However, the data created through these systems is often biased because of differences in people's use of technology (i.e., digital divide) and individuals' behavioral patterns in providing types of information to the systems.

Cultural Activity Diversity and Community Characteristics: An Exploratory Study

Cultural diversity has been conceptualized and studied in diverse ways. On the one hand, cultural diversity can be conceptualized based on people’s ethnic and national backgrounds. On the other hand, cultural dimensions are defined based on individuals' behaviors and traits. Sociologists further categorize the latter depending on the degree of typicality in cultural artifacts/activities and individuals’ omnivorousness over cultural tastes.

Identifying Urban Neighborhood Names through User-contributed Online Property Listings

Neighborhoods are vaguely defined, localized regions that share similar characteristics. They are most often defined, delineated, and named by the citizens that inhabit them rather than municipal government or commercial agencies. The names of these neighborhoods play an important role as a basis for community and sociodemographic identity, geographic communication, and historical context.

How are Information Deserts Created? A Theory of Local Information Landscapes

To understand issues about information accessibility within communities, research studies have examined human, social, and technical factors and contexts by taking a socio-technical view. While this view provides a profound understanding of how people seek, use, and access information, this approach tends to overlook the impact of the larger structures of information landscapes that shape people’s access to information.

Toward an Ecology Theory of Creativity in IT Products: A Study of Mobile Device Industry

In a creative process, divergent thinking needs to be stimulated to generate novel ideas; yet these ideas must be synthesized to produce something valuable. Hence to foster creativity in developing IT products, creators need to manage the tension between novelty and value. Since the forces affecting the novelty-value tension often exist outside a creator's group or organization, we apply organizational ecology theory to propose an industry-level, ecological model for understanding the novelty of IT products.

Unlocking the Archives of Displacement and Trauma: Revealing Hidden Patterns of Exploring New Modes of Public Access through Innovative Partnerships and Infrastructure

This paper describes innovative partnerships: university - federal agency (between the University of Maryland and the Office of Innovation at the National Archives and Records Administration - NARA) and university - industry (between the College of Information Studies or “iSchool” at the University of Maryland and Archive Analytics Solutions Ltd.) where we are developing automated scalable workflows that involve digitization, OCR, information extraction, and linking into interactive maps and graph databases, and where digital preservation and archiving are performed using an innovative NoSQ

Motherhood and Social Networking Sites: How do sociocultural contexts and technological factors affect Korean mothers’ KakaoStory use?

In this paper, we investigate the role of sociocultural contexts and technological characteristics in user behaviors on social networking sites (SNSs). This study focuses on Korean mothers’ social roles and their use of KakaoStory—one of the most popular SNSs in Korea. Through interviews with fifteen Korean mother users, this research studies changing social roles of Korean mothers with childbirth, and its influence on KakaoStory use. Also, we investigate how KakaoStory’s unique characteristics affect mothers’ usage.

Information Behavior of International Students Settling in an Unfamiliar Geo-spatial Environment

This paper presents the findings from a project about how international students seek and acquire information during their settlement in an unknown geo-spatial environment. Through semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and cognitive mapping with twenty international students, this study examines their information needs, information sources, and settlement experiences in the host country.

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