Inventory of research methods for librarianship and informatics
"This article defines and describes the rich variety of research designs found in librarianship and informatics practice. Familiarity with the range of methods and the ability to make distinctions between those specific methods can enable authors to label their research reports correctly. The author has compiled an inventory of methods from a variety of disciplines, but with attention to the relevant applications of a methodology to the field of librarianship. Each entry in the inventory includes a definition and description for the particular research method. Some entries include references to resource material and examples."
(Jonathan D. Eldredge, 2004, Journal of the Medical Library Association)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Nina Wenhart's blog on the prehysteries of new media
"this blog is nina wenhart's collection of resources on the various histories of new media art. it consists mainly of non or very little edited material i found flaneuring on the net, sometimes with my own annotations and comments, sometimes it's also textparts i retyped from books that are out of print.
it is also meant to be an additional resource of information and recommended reading for my students of the prehystories of new media class that i teach at the school of the art institute of chicago in fall 2008.
the focus is on the time period from the beginning of the 20th century up to today."
(Nina Wenhart, 26/06/2008)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Next-gen PhDs fail to find Web 2.0's 'on-switch'
"It is counter-intuitive in the extreme, but young researchers are failing to make use of so-called 'emergent technology', such as Web 2.0 tools, to support their work.
A three-year study by the British Library, Researchers of Tomorrow, is tracking the research behaviour of doctoral students born between 1982 and 1994 - dubbed 'Generation Y'. ...
Interim results, released to Times Higher Education, show that only a small proportion of those surveyed are using technology such as virtual-research environments, social bookmarking, data and text mining, wikis, blogs and RSS-feed alerts in their work. This contrasts with the fact that many respondents professed to finding technological tools valuable."
(Times Higher Education, 5 November 2009)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Parsons The New School for Design: The Center for Transformative Media
"CTM is a new research center dedicated to the invention, critique, and understanding of transformative media practices, including gaming, social networking, creative mobility, data mining, and participatory learning.
Our work combines expertise in the design of social media, games, learning environments and communities with a deep understanding of the way dynamic media networks are used - and increasingly transformed - by audiences in their quest to learn, work, play, and participate. Projects draw from expertise in both design and the social sciences with a particular focus on ecologies of change. An emphasis on networked publics as spaces of learning forms a core perspective of The Center for Transformative Media.
Faced with an increasingly complex, participatory, and information-rich network culture individuals must learn how to engage in meaningful ways, with others, in order to gain access to information, services and entertainment. The space of the network, which spans local and global, real and virtual space, has become a primary site for engaging with the world, people, events, and ideas.
The power of the collective has become a primary strategy for managing information, solving complex problems, and building expertise. Recasting media spaces as networked learning environments will be the key to innovation within the next decade."
(Center for Transformative Media)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Software is increasingly making a difference to the constitution and production of everyday life
"The reason that a focus on Web 2.0 is significant and needed is because the popular web applications it represents are driven by users providing endless and virtually unlimited information about their everyday lives. To put it in Lash's terms, they are clearly on the inside of the everyday, they are up close, they afford direct and routine connections between people and software. We have not yet begun to think through how this personal information might be harvested and used. A starting point would be to find out how this information about everyday mundane lives is being mined, how this feeds into ‘relational databases', and with what consequences: the very types of question that are being asked by the writers discussed here. Alongside this it is also important that we consider how the information provided by users, and other ‘similar' users, might affect the things they come across. If we return to Last.fm, which ‘learns' users' tastes and preferences and provides them with their own taste-specific online radio station, it is possible to appreciate how the music that people come across and listen to has become a consequence of algorithms. This is undoubtedly an expression of power, not of someone having power over someone else, but of the software making choices and connections in complex and unpredictable ways in order to shape the everyday experiences of the user. How we find the books that shape our writing could be a question we might ask ourselves if we wish to consider the power that algorithms exercise over us and over the formation of knowledge within our various disciplines. (I know of at least two occasions when Amazon has located a book of interest for me that has then gone on to form an important part of a published work.) This is not just about Amazon, it would also include searches on Google Scholar, the use of the bookmarking site Del.icio.us, the RSS feeds we might use, or the likely coming applications that will predict, locate and recommend research articles we might be interested in. Readers based in the UK will also by now be considering the power of algorithms to decide the allocation of research funding as the role of metrics in the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF) are finalized."
(David Beer, 996-997)
Beer, D. (2009). "Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious." New Media & Society 11(6).
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
