CIRI Blog
Center for Information Research and Innovation (CIRI) Blog
iSchool faculty, students and other community members are contributors to the CIRI Blog, sharing their thoughts, ideas, and experiences regarding a wide range of topics. This blog is updated monthly and managed by CIRI Coordinator Dr. Lili Luo. For more on iSchool’s faculty and student research, please visit the CIRI web page.
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A Look into the SJSU Gateway PhD Program
Published: Nov 8th, 2024 by Dr. Sue Alman
[Dr. Sue Alman is the coordinator for the SJSU Gateway PhD program at the iSchool. CIRI had the pleasure of interviewing her about the Gateway Program and the role it plays in our iSchool research community.]
1. Could you provide an overview of the Gateway PhD program and how it’s run?
The Gateway PhD program is an international doctoral degree program in Library and Information Management that is offered through a joint partnership with the SJSU iSchool and Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in Manchester, England.
Empowering Future Library Leaders with an EDI Focus
Published: October 7, 2024, by Dr. José Aguiñaga
In a groundbreaking initiative, Dr. José Aguiñaga and Dr. Rebecca Stallworth introduced the iLead program with their PLQ conceptual article, “iLead with an EDI Lens.” Funded by an IMLS planning grant in 2023-24, the program seeks to develop an asynchronous online curriculum where library employees can earn micro-credentials in leadership with an EDI lens. This program is a collaborative effort between San José State University and Simmons University to prepare tomorrow’s library leaders with a strong emphasis
Research Methods Courses Focusing on History Research and Youth Services
Published: September 13th, 2024 by Dr. Anthony Bernier
I’m generally proud of our iSchool’s approach to research methods.
Several years ago, prior to an ALA accreditation review, I investigated what other schools were doing relative to their research methods course offerings. I discovered that while most schools offered a course in research methods, only very few required such a course. Among those programs requiring a methods course, only one or two approaches were offered. Broadly speaking, while the iSchool does an excellent job in preparing students to value the importance of collecting and analyzing evidence through our methods course requirement, there is room for improvement.
Learning to Design, Create, and Evaluate a Database in an Introductory MLIS Course
Published: August 6th, 2024 by Dr. Virginia Tucker
The INFO 202 Information Retrieval System Design course is one of the three core courses required of all students in the MLIS degree program (1) at the iSchool. Each core course has a coordinator, and I have served in this role for the INFO 202 course since 2014. With the immense size of the iSchool’s programs, around 1,000 students take the course each year, and it is taught by eleven different faculty members.
Reflections on Participating in the CPGE Online Student Conference
A Student Researcher's Journey
Published: May 13th, 2024 by Irene Miller
[Irene was an active participant in CPGE Online Student Conference, the annual college-wide conference that aims to showcase student work and provide a space for students to network. She presented at both the 2023 and 2024 conference and her work drew much attention from the CPGE student community. CIRI had the pleasure of interviewing her about her reflections on the conference experience.]
Can you please tell us a bit about yourself?
My name is Irene and I live in Washington State. After completing a seemingly arbitrary collection of courses including several foreign languages, biological sciences, and
Fostering the Cultivation of Practices in Multimodal and Culturally Responsive Literature Review Research Methods
Published: April 17th, 2024 by Dr. Kristen Radsliff Rebmann
When I talk to students about their program of study, scholarship in LIS, and their identity as researchers, they often tell me that they have no interest in doing research and that they just want to be librarians. Furthermore, I’ve been asked why the iSchool has developed a required course in research methods: INFO 285. In response to these queries, I try to emphasize that research absolutely is in our wheelhouse as information professionals (a librarian superpower) and that students should take the opportunity in
Enhancing the Effectiveness of Library Outreach Programs: A Sabbatical Research Project
Published: March 25, 2024 by Dr. Michelle Chen
[Dr. Michelle Chen completed her sabbatical in 2023. CIRI had the pleasure of interviewing her about her sabbatical research project and her advice for faculty applying for sabbatical.]
1. Can you talk about what your sabbatical project was about?
During my sabbatical, I focused on developing a predictive model to streamline and enhance the effectiveness of library outreach programs. This project involved collaboration with a local county library, an industry partner, and an international scholar
A Study about LGBTQ+ Students’ Library Privacy in the COVID-19 Pandemic
Published: February 16, 2024 by Dr. Michele A. L. Villagran and Dr. Darra Hofman
Given both the historical and ongoing surveillance and policing of marginalized communities, contact tracing, and other pandemic control measures pose additional dangers to marginalized communities that are not faced by members of dominant communities. While privacy rights have been a point of controversy and uncertainty for all in the face of digital surveillance and the exigencies of the pandemic, LGBTQ+ students may well struggle to assert even those rights to which they are unquestionably entitled. Utilizing a multi-method, multidisc
Information Literacy, Disciplinarity, and New Knowledge
Published: January 16, 2024 by Dr. Virginia Tucker
A community of researcher-educators began meeting regularly several years ago for conversations around the disciplinarity of information literacy. The co-facilitators are Dr. Clarence Maybee, Professor and W. Wayne Booker Endowed Chair in Information Literacy, Purdue University, and Dr. Karen Kaufmann, Assistant Professor, School of Information, University of South Florida. The community has come to be called ILIAD, for Information Literacy is a Discipline, as it examines aspects of a discipline as discussed in the literature, such as having a code of ethics, modes of inquiry, scholarly
Scholarship of Engagement: Ukrainian Librarians
Published: May 15, 2023 by Dr. Ulia Gosart
While I was hired to develop classes and research in Indigenous librarianship, world events occasioned my work into a new direction. The war in Ukraine, the country where I grew up and have many friends, prompted me to apply my skills to support Ukrainian librarians. After a year of work I am excited to report that our collaboration made some difference in the life of Ukrainian people.
Computational Preservation vs. Social Preservation: What do Algorithms Require?
Published: April 13, 2023 by Dr. James A. Hodges
The digital technologies that we use every day are controlled by increasingly complex algorithmic systems. These run the gamut from the very banal (say, Netflix recommendations), to the very consequential (say, sentencing recommendations in the criminal justice system). As these systems become more widespread and impactful, there are more and more reasons that we may want to preserve them and refer to them later. Perhaps you’re a software developer and you want to look back at how your
Advances in Linked Data and KOS Research
Published: March 14, 2023 by Dr. Lei Zhang
Linked data is about publishing, sharing, and connecting data from different sources on the web. The application of linked data covers domains such as geography, government, life sciences, linguistics, media, etc. Linked data in cultural heritage institutions include cases of bibliographic data, authority data, controlled vocabularies, and metadata element sets, from national libraries, research libraries, public libraries to archives and museums. The development of conceptual model IFLA LRM and the
Digital Ethics and Digital Epistemology
Published: February 14, 2023 by Dr. Norman Mooradian
My current research has two central tracks, digital ethics, and digital epistemology. The label digital ethics includes traditional information ethics[1], but also encompasses ethical issues arising from emerging technologies, for example, the ethics of artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Digital epistemology includes areas such as knowledge management and representation, as well as the application of theories of knowledge to computing and information science generally.
#NorthVanStories – Living History: A Collaborative Rapid-response Collecting Project
Published: January 10, 2023 by Dr. Jessica Bushey
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020, many archives, libraries, and museums launched rapid-response collecting projects to preserve material culture and documentary by-products of individuals and communities living through this difficult time.[1] The projects varied in scope – from collecting physical records to engaging their communities in creating born-digital media – depending upon the institution’s existing technology infrastructure and staf
A Research Agenda Focusing on Academic Libraries, Organizational Culture and EDI
Published: November 9, 2022 by Dr. José Aguiñaga
As I developed my RSCA agenda during my 1st semester at the iSchool, I have focused on academic libraries, organizational culture, and EDI since March 2020. These findings may shed new insights into what is happening with academic libraries since the pandemic has caused societal and medical paradigm shifts across higher education. Another finding that I have discovered after breaking down my focus per each keyword
Research Methods Course Focusing on Historical Research
Published: October 18, 2022 by Dr. Donald Westbrook
I thoroughly enjoy teaching the Historical Research section for INFO 285: Applied Research Methods at SJSU. Students come into this class from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and no prior academic training in history is required. As I like to say near the beginning of the course, the study of history involves much more than memorizing “facts and figures.” Historical research is interdisciplinary, multifaceted, and global in reach.
Information Visualization in Academic Libraries
Published: September 22, 2022 by Dr. Michelle Chen
In recent years, as data have become more voluminous, versatile, accessible and digitized, new technologies have emerged with the goal of providing advanced analytical capabilities to support knowledge discovery and decision making. Information visualization, the technique of creating “2- or 3-dimensional representations of data that enable discoveries of insights and knowledge” (Soukup and Davidson, 2002), is one of the primary technologies being adopted as an analytical tool to enhance and shape data interpretation. More specifically, information visualization’s unique pattern and
Library Research Scholars Program: Encouraging Undergraduate Research at SJSU
Published: August 26, 2022 by Andrew Chae
For many people, doing research can often seem like a daunting task. This is particularly true for undergraduate students who are in the early stages of learning the myriad skills necessary to carry out a research project. In addition to being unsure of how to conduct research, students at this stage of their academic journeys may not be given any opportunities to do research on topics that truly interest them. This can lead many students to view research solely as an obstacle that they must overcome.
Research Methods Course Focusing on Program Evaluation
Published: May 17, 2022 by Jennifer Sweeney
I’m excited to share a reflection on my section of INFO 285, Applied Research Methods: Evaluating Programs and Services with you all here. I developed and started teaching this course at SJSU in 2018. Teaching this course has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of my work life so far.
Being a Research Assistant: A Personal Reflection
Published: April 19, 2022 by Ed Matlack
I graduated from the iSchool in the Fall of 2021 with a Master’s in Informatics, specializing in both CyberSecurity and Health Informatics. Before entering into the program, I had spent thirty years in the software industry as both an engineer an engineering director. I am currently doing independent research in the fields of communications and decision science at both the ICANN lab at SJSU and the DDML at Carnegie Mellon.