Faculty publications - Faculty of Information

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/1807/18289

Faculty at the iSchool are participating in groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research that investigates information in its many manifestations.

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Asserting Catalogers’ Place in the “Value of Libraries” Conversation
(Taylor & Francis, 2015-03-16) Borie, Juliya; MacDonald, Kate; Sze, Elisa
Catalogers have a unique challenge to overcome in demonstrating the value of their services: the better they are at performing their work—making collections accessible and enabling user discovery—the more invisible their efforts are to users and administrators. Catalogers must participate more actively in the broader discussion and demonstration of library value undertaken by their colleagues, but to do so requires a framework and a common vocabulary shared by non-catalogers.
Assessing Digital Sustainability: The Digital Sustainability Model
(Benchmark DP, 2016) Becker, Christoph; Maemura, Emily; Moles, Nathan; Whyte, Jess; Mann, Jess
Digital sustainability is the capacity of digital resources to endure. It means that the digital resources are preserved, that the life cycle of the organization is predictable, and that the life cycle of the assets is known to be safe beyond the life cycle of the organization. We consider the ideal state of digital sustainability one in which a proactive organization continuously optimizes its digital preservation capabilities towards its identified responsibilities and goals to effectively balance cost, benefit and risk, and is thus able to sustain digital resources for a community that endorses the value provided by digital sustainability. This report presents a framework – a model, method and tool – to support organizations in evaluating their digital sustainability in order to identify and prioritize ways to improve it. The Digital Sustainability Model (DSM) aims to support organizations in evaluating their abilities, strengths and weaknesses by supporting a structured self-assessment process that can be completed quickly, yet provides robust insight and useful input for actions to improve over time. The model has been designed to be extensible and evolve over time. The framework and all components are freely available with licenses that encourage adoption and derivative works with attribution. We explain the design process and the model, and shortly report on two case studies that evaluated its application to assess two organizations with advanced capabilities. We highlight how this empirical evaluation, combined with an independent third-party review, has led to changes in the framework that make it more robust. We conclude with an outline of future opportunities and planned initiatives.
At the Edge of the Internet: Teaching Coding and Sustainability to Himalayan Girls
(2020-04) Garrett, Frances; Price, Matt; Strazds, Laila; Walker, Dawn
This report introduces a two-week workshop on web coding and environmental sustainability at a school for girls in northeastern India. Our discussion of this teaching project reviews issues that shaped the project’s development, outlines resources required for implementation, and summarizes the workshop’s curriculum. Highspeed internet will soon arrive in the region of this recently-recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site. We believe that the training of girls in particular could help redistribute power and resources in regions where women are often poorer, less educated, and excluded from decision-making in institutional and public contexts. Relatively few code teaching projects have grappled with the difficulty of working in offline environments at the “edge of the internet,” and yet moving skills and knowledge into these regions before the internet arrives in full force might help mitigate some of the web’s worst impacts on equity and justice.
Benchmarks for Digital Preservation tools
(School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2015-11) Duretec, Kresimir; Kulmukhametov, Artur; Rauber, Andreas; Becker, Christoph
Creation and improvement of tools for digital preservation is a difficult task without an established way to assess any progress in their quality. This happens due to low presence of solid evidence and a lack of accessible approaches to create such evidence. Software benchmarking, as an empirical method, is used in various fields to provide objective evidence about the quality of software tools. However, the digital preservation field is still missing a proper adoption of that method. This paper establishes a theory of benchmarking of tools in digital preservation as a solid method for gathering and sharing the evidence needed to achieve widespread improvements in tool quality. To this end, we discuss and synthesize literature and experience on the theory and practice of benchmarking as a method and define a conceptual framework for benchmarks in digital preservation. Four benchmarks that address different digital preservation scenarios are presented. We compare existing reports on tool evaluation and how they address the main components of benchmarking, and we discuss the question of whether the field possesses the right combination of social factors that make benchmarking a promising method at this point in time. The conclusions point to significant opportunities for collaborative benchmarks and systematic evidence sharing, but also several major challenges ahead.
Carnal Indexing
(Ergon Verlag, 2017) Keilty, Patrick
While online pornography’s unusual indexes may look disorderly, in fact, they evidence the process by which viewers and algorithms interact to arrange digital materials stored in databases of amateur pornography. These arrangements take shape according to patterns of browsing that serve as algorithmic data for the continuous process of organizing sexual representations. Porn sites and search engines offer a false impression of electronic metadata’s accessibility and expanse. Indexing requires discernible metadata in order to make database retrieval effective. Images are available to viewers through the negotiation of an elaborate schema in which categories of sexual desire are produced through the sequencing of fixed subject positions always defined in relation to each other. This essay will consider both sides of that organizational process. First, I will examine how the carnal aspects of browsing pornography online create a conjoined relation between subject and object in our embodied engagements with intermediating technology. Second, I will explain how this carnal activity informs this arrangement, through algorithms, of online pornographic images. Doing so reveals that pornographic video hosting services are not merely repositories for content. Instead, their visual and technical design highlights and privileges the conjoined and dynamic relations between body, machine, and representation.
The Challenge of Test Data Quality in Data Processing
(ACM JDIQ, 2016) Becker, Christoph; Duretec, Kresimir; Rauber, Andreas
The need for robust test data sets with test oracles presents challenging questions in data and information quality research. The profound lack of high-quality test data sets to enable the dynamic testing of data processing components highlights open research challenges in data quality related to (1) sample data quality, (2) test data synthesis and (3) quality models.
Characterising Sustainability Requirements: A New Species, Red Herring, or Just an Odd Fish?
(ACM Association for Computing Machinery, 2017-05) Venters, Colin C.; Seyff, Norbert; Becker, Christoph; Betz, Stefanie; Chitchyan, Ruzanna; Duboc, Leticia; McIntyre, Dan; Penzenstadler, Birgit
Requirements articulating the needs of stakeholders are critical to successful system development and key to influencing their long-term effects. As the concept of sustainability has entered the discourse of a number of software-related computing fields, so has the term ‘sustainability requirement’. However, it is unclear whether sustainability requirements are and should be different from how we already understand software requirements. This paper presents the results of a corpus-assisted discourse analysis study that explored the concept of sustainability requirements in order to understand how the term is being used in software and requirements engineering and related fields. The results of this study reveal that the term ‘sustainability requirement’ is generally used ambiguously and reveals significant segmentation across different fields. Our detailed analysis of selected influential papers highlights the segmented use of the term and suggests key focus questions that need to be addressed to establish a shared operative understanding of the term.
Children's Books as Academic Knowledge Mobilization: Project Report
(2024-05-14) Diaz Agudelo, Marcia; Bui, Alan; Lee, Leigh-Ann; Grimes, Sara M.
There is an emerging trend of picture books written by academic authors who want to share their scholarship and ideas with children. This opens exciting new opportunities for democratizing academic knowledge and advancing scientific and technological literacy across age groups. The Children’s Books as Academic Knowledge Mobilization Project compared and analyzed 90 children’s picture books published between 2017 and 2022 written by academics for the purpose of mobilizing research findings, theories, and ideas. First, our literature review identified six “considerations” representing key trends and insights found in the existing academic literature examining children’s picture books, literacy, and learning about research, which provided the structure of our content analysis. We then describe the findings of our content analysis, while identifying best practices and common mistakes to avoid. We recommend that academics think about the six considerations discussed in this report as (or before) they begin writing their own children’s book. After describing our content analysis findings, we provide an additional seven tips for producing an effective and high-quality children’s picture book, covering issues and decisions that arise over the book-production lifecycle. Throughout the report, we emphasize the benefits that picture books can have for children’s scientific literacy and cultural participation.
Commoning for Fun and Profit: Experimental Publishing on the Decentralized Web
(Association for Computing Machinery, 2022-11) Walker, Dawn; Ishikawa Sutton, Mai; Vira, Udit; Lau, Benedict
The World Wide Web is dominated by big tech and seemingly endless scandals after a decade of growing distrust about the role technology and the Internet play in our society. As a result, there are calls for the creation of alternatives to the existing platforms and infrastructures. One such alternative is a decentralized web (DWeb) where users have control of their data and decisions. This paper presents a collectively-produced organizational autoethnography of the development of an emerging tool for publishing on the decentralized web and the magazine using it to contribute to the digital commons. Three key themes emerged: 1) how a commons-based understanding of boundaries supports participation in a broader ecosystem; 2) the ways commoning as a frame deepens engagement as opposed to a passive model of a digital commons platform; finally 3) the need to re-assess how a cohort lab model that structured the work feeds back into larger goals. From these findings, we reflect on how this project fits into a maturing DWeb ecosystem and what possibilities for social transformation are present in transitional forms of commons. We discuss the pressing need for CSCW and adjacent research communities to participate in the design of, and debates over, the new computing paradigms developing out of this wave of decentralized technologies.
Computing Professionals for Social Responsibility: The Past, Present and Future Values of Participatory Design
(Association of Computing Machinery, 2020-06) Becker, Christoph; Light, Ann; Frauenberger, Chris; Walker, Dawn; Palacin, Victoria; Ishtiaque Ahmed, Syed; Smith, Rachel Charlotte; Reynolds-Cuellar, Pedro; Nemer, David
Values play a central role in technology design. But beyond acknowledging the politics of technology, questions remain around where those values are coming from, which values we need, and how they play out and shape the socio-technical systems we create. New challenges such as the climate crisis and societal polarization call for technologists to become part of the public and political arena. This results in a new sense of responsibility, but the closing of CPSR, the Com- puting Professionals for Social Responsibility, has left a gap. Today, across tech workers, academics and computing pro- fessionals, there is a renewed sense of urgency for engaging the public and politics to change course in how computing shapes society. What should a CPSR for the 21st century look like? This interactive workshop aims to re-invigorate the debate around values and social responsibility in Participatory Design with special attention to the Latin American context.
Critical Technology: A Case Study in Academic Podcasting
(Knowledge Media Design Institute, 2024-07-11) Knight, Lauren; Grimes, Sara M.
Academic podcasting has been lauded for its possibilities in broadening audiences, centering accessibility, and mobilizing knowledge through publicly oriented scholarship. This report explores these benefits by examining the development and success of the Critical Technology podcast (seasons 1-3), created through the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto. Offering a detailed literature review of academic podcasting, we address the possibilities of this medium as described across scholarship. Further, we provide a detailed account of the development of the Critical Technology podcast across each stage of production: planning, pre-production, recording, editing, designing, scoring, transcribing, and distributing. In sum, this report offers a reflective and thorough discussion on the development of the Critical Technology podcast, to make salient the possibilities of academic podcasting as an invaluable scholarly contribution. Written by Lauren Knight and Sara M. Grimes.
Crowd-Focused Semi-Automated Requirements Engineering for Evolution Towards Sustainability
(IEE Press, 2018-08) Seyff, Norbert; Betz, Stefanie; Groher, Iris; Stade, Melanie; Chitchyan, Ruzanna; Duboc, Letícia; Penzenstadler, Birgit; Venters, Colin; Becker, Christoph
Continuous requirements elicitation is an essential aspect of software product evolution to keep systems aligned with changing user needs. However, current requirements engineering approaches do not explicitly address sustainability in the evolu-tion of systems. Reasons include a lack of awareness and a lack of shared understanding of the concept of sustainability in the RE community. Identifying and analysing the effects of requirements regarding sustainability is challenging, as these effects can have an impact on multiple stakeholders and manifest themselves in one or more sustainability dimensions at different points in time. We argue that crowd-focused semi-automated requirements en-gineering allows the engagement of a large number of stakehold-ers (including users and domain experts) in a continuous cycle of negotiation regarding the potential effects of requirements on sustainability. Based on a motivating scenario, we introduce the idea of a platform for crowd-focused requirements engineering that supports the evolution towards sustainability. For the three key aspects of this platform, we present our ongoing work and discuss early results. We outline how the platform can be utilised to improve the broader awareness and understanding of sustain-ability, not only for the involved crowd but also for researchers and society in general.
The design and use of assessment frameworks in digital curation
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2019) Becker, Christoph; Maemura, Emily; Moles, Nathan
To understand and improve their current abilities and maturity, organizations use diagnostic instruments such as maturity models and other assessment frameworks. Increasing numbers of these are being developed in digital curation. Their central role in strategic decision making raises the need to evaluate their fitness for this purpose and develop guidelines for their design and evaluation. A comprehensive review of assessment frameworks, however, found little evidence that existing assessment frameworks have been evaluated systematically, and no methods for their evaluation. This article proposes a new methodology for evaluating the design and use of assessment frameworks. It builds on prior research on maturity models and combines analytic and empirical evaluation methods to explain how the design of assessment frameworks influences their application in practice, and how the design process can effectively take this into account. We present the evaluation methodology and its application to two frameworks. The evaluation results lead to guidelines for the design process of assessment frameworks in digital curation. The methodology provides insights to the designers of the evaluated frameworks that they can consider in future revisions; methodical guidance for researchers in the field; and practical insights and words of caution to organizations keen on diagnosing their abilities
Desire by design: pornography as technology industry
(2018) Keilty, Patrick
Distributed Biotechnology
(2016) Delfanti, Alessandro
Duration and Desire
(2018) Keilty, Patrick
This essay examines the heterogeneous process of browsing pornography online. It begins with a discussion of the way in which our experiences of leisure and duration occur concomitantly and simultaneously. In these instances, the temporally linear experience of duration becomes disrupted by moments of immersion into a pleasurable activity. A discussion of immersion necessarily addresses the discourse of "disembodiment" among some digital scholars. Through formal analysis guided by existential phenomenology, this conceptual essay offers a new critical vocabulary, specifically, "diffused embodiment," as a more befitting alternative for describing our temporal and spatial experience of immersion. In the process, this essay examines the ways in which the habits of engaging with the material apparatus of computer technologies and the productively limited narrative framework of online pornography help constitute a heterogeneous and nonlinear temporal experience in the process of browsing online pornography.
Embodied engagements with online pornography
(2015) Keilty, Patrick
Even though sexual arousal is a central feature in browsing online pornography, embodiment has largely gone unexamined in much of the research on pornography in information studies and human–computer interaction. Through existential phenomenology, which emphasizes a synthesis of cognitive reflection and embodied experience, this article examines how our embodied engagements with the technological apparatus of the computer help reconstitute the way we feel time, objects of desire, and pleasure in the process of browsing online pornography.
Embodiment and Desire in Browsing Online Pornography
(2012) Keilty, Patrick
The purpose of this essay is to explore why Spink, Ozmutlu, & Lorence (2004) found that browsing online pornography requires more time and effort than general searches online. Recent information-seeking behavior research concerning online pornography neglects to examine sexuality or desire as factors influencing this particular information activity. As such, I rely on Lacan’s theory of desire, Freud’s theory of cathexis, and existential phenomenology, a philosophical method that emphasizes an interpretation of perception and bodily activity, in order to examine the way our embodied relations with the technological apparatus of the computer effect the time and effort of browsing online pornography. In the process, I offer an explanation of subjective analysis as a new mode of description for understanding certain aspects of information activity
Encoding as Editing as Reading
(Cambridge University Press, 2015) Galey, Alan
This chapter consider the idea of "thinking through making" in relation to some of its specific implementations in Shakespearean textual scholarship, namely editing and digital text encoding. In contrast to earlier generations of humanities computing, the luxuries of twenty-first-century computing afford us greater opportunities to slow down and explore the moments of critical understanding that may emerge through encoding processes, just as they have emerged in more traditional scholarly activities such as transcription and editing. This chapter considers digital text encoding as a crucial moment when we can understand our materials anew through the act of making digital representations of them. Based on the author's pedagogical practice, and specifically the use of Shakespeare texts to teach principles of text encoding and markup, this chapter discusses various exercises and examples that connect classroom experiences with digital humanities projects.
The Enkindling Reciter: E-Books in the Bibliographical Imagination
(Book History (Johns Hopkins University Press journal), 2012) Galey, Alan
E-books are human artifacts and bear the traces of their making no less for being digital, though they bear those traces in ways bibliographers have yet to explain thoroughly. The bibliographic consideration of e-books is a dual challenge in that it must reckon not only with unfamiliar forms of textuality but also with a pervasive cultural discourse about e-books that tends to mystify the textual condition itself. This article explores the dual nature of that challenge and outlines some principles toward the bibliographical study of e-books, taking the Canadian novel The Sentimentalists (Gaspereau Press, 2009) as a test case.

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