Joan C. Durrance

Information grounds and the use of need-based services by immigrants in Queens, New York: a context-based, outcome evaluation approach

We elaborate on Pettigrews (1998, 1999) theory of information grounds while using an outcome evaluation approach enriched by its focus on context to explore the use of need-based services by immigrants in New York City. Immigrants have substantial information and practical needs for help with adjusting to life in a new country. Because of differences in language, culture, and other factors such as access, new immigrants are a difficult population to study. As a result, little research has examined their predilections from an information behavior perspective. We report findings from a qualitative study of how literacy and coping skills programs are used by and benefit the immigrant customers of the Queens Borough Public Library (QBPL). From our interviews and observation of 45 program users, staff, and other stakeholders, we derived a grand context (in Pettigrews terms) woven from three subcontexts: the immigrants of Queens, New York; the QBPL, its service model, and activities for immigrants; and professional contributions of QBPL staff. Our findings are discussed along two dimensions: (a) building blocks toward information literacy, and (b) personal gains achieved by immigrants for themselves and their families. We conclude that successful introduction to the QBPL-as per its mission, programming, and staff-can lead immigrants to a synergistic information ground that can help in meeting broad psychological, social, and practical needs.

Overcoming the information gap

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to address problems associated with the accessibility of academic library databases.Design/methodology/approach – This study evaluates 32 databases and measures their accessibility to users of adaptive technology.Findings – Based on the results of this study, 72 percent of the evaluated databases were rated as marginally accessible or inaccessible, reflecting a low level of compliance to federal web accessibility legislation and international web accessibility standards. To measure database accessibility to adaptive technology users, this study operationalized accessibility into ten component parts as the Tatomir Accessibility Checklist (TAC) and tested each database on each component.Originality/value – Findings of this study can be used both by those who purchase and manage databases in libraries to identify the most accessible databases and by designers of the databases to improve specific features.

Public use of digital community information sstems: findings from a recent study with implications for system design

The Internet has considerably empowered libraries and changed common p erception of what they entail. Public libraries, in particular, are using technological advancements to expand their range of services and enhance their civic roles. Providing community information (CI) in innovative, digital forms via community networks is one way in which public libraries are facilitating everyday information needs. These networks have been lauded for their potential to strengthen physical communities through increasing information flow about local services and events, and through facilitating civic interaction. However, little is known about how the public uses such digital services and what barriers they encounter. This paper presents findings about how digital CI systems benefit physical communities based on extensive case studies in three states. At each site, rich data were collected using online surveys, field observation, in-depth interviews and focus groups with Internet users, human service providers and library staff. Both the online survey and the follow-up interviews with respondents were based on sense-making theory. In our paper we discuss our findings regarding: (1) how the public is using digital CI systems for daily problem solving, and (2) the types of barriers they encounter. Suggestions for improving digital CI systems are provided.

Information Communities: Characteristics Gleaned from Studies of Three Online Networks

Digital network infrastructures such as community networks have heralded powerful new ways for enhancing peoples quality of life. We argue that the Internet has further facilitated the creation of information communities: constituencies united by a common interest in building and increasing access to sets of dynamic, linked, and varying information resources. Using data from a two-year study of three community networks, we describe five defining characteristics of effective information communities: (1) emphasis on collaboration among diverse information providers, (2) capacity to form around peoples needs to access and use information, (3) capacity to exploit the information sharing qualities of emerging technologies, (4) ability to transcend barriers to information-sharing, and (5) capacity to foster social connectedness.

Kellogg funded education and Career Information Centers in public libraries

A series of generous grants by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to public libraries in several states (first in New York, and later in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nebraska, and Washington) has in the last several years resulted in the creation of a number of education, job, and career information centers. These centers have enriched services in libraries by bringing librarians in direct contact with other professionals, most notably career counselors and adult educators, and by making available to library users interactive career counseling software and career guidance services. There is a great range of professional practice subsumed in these Kellogg funded education information centers (EICs). These centers, usually start with a very strong materials collection, interactive software packages, and information services needed to support the needs of job seekers and career changers. Most EICs, known by such names as Job and Career Information Center, Work Place, Work World, and Education Information Center, provide extensive client centered activities which include advisement and counseling regarding the job seeking/career change process. At some sites there are career counselors working at the library; at others librarians refer clients to the services of career counselors. These services have provided badly needed, free assistance to citizens in well over a hundred communities in the funded states. Their success has been due to several factors: their design--which focuses on the needs of the individuals, a well designed training package, a community based approach which involves working closely with ap-

Information Use in Chronic Illness Care: The Role of the Electronic Health Record in Bridging Patient Experience and Healthcare Contexts

Chronic health conditions typically manifest as pervasive and ongoing in daily life, in contrast to their curative and episodic mode of treatment in most healthcare settings. A growing sense of provider-patient disconnect and calls for healthcare reform have emerged new chronic care models that advocate for a team approach to care that is heavily supported through the use of an electronic health record (EHR). This interdisciplinary research examines the use of the EHR in chronic illness care within a best-practice environment to understand how provider practices frame patient experience. Drawing on data from 144 hours of observation and 49 interviews with healthcare providers at three VA primary care clinics, we examined information use in provider work and patient care. Findings indicate the EHR as a de facto representation of the patient and a ubiquitous force in shaping provider work and patient care. The organizational context and provider work practices as reified in the EHR privileged and elevated objective indicators of the patient’s level of “control” while obscuring subjective information and patient narrative that could be useful in problem-solving disease management. The pervasive use of objective information in patient care and communication framed patient experience in the healthcare context in ways that seemed abstracted from their lived experience with illness, contributing to providerpatient disconnects. Providers were stymied by not having enough information to support effective self-management or a more complete picture of patients’ everyday life experiences, but there was no clear pathway for capturing, retrieving, and using such information in patient care. We suggest that EHR design for chronic illness care should make patients’ experiential information more readily available and enable patient input and patient-provider coconstruction of information. More work is needed to further understand how everyday life experience is presented and received in patient encounters.

The role of community-based, problem-centered information intermediaries in local problem solving

Lobbying for school reform, cleaning up graffiti, installing traffic calming measures, and enacting noise ordinances are daily problem-based activities performed by organized citizen groups. These civic organizations – nonprofit associations, community groups, and neighborhood block watch programs – have operated within communities as a way for people to affect their community’s quality of life. Routinely in the course of problem-solving, these organizations—both formal and informal—seek out, interpret, distill, and re-frame information. But understanding information access and use in a community where a range of community-based, organized groups play the role of information seeker as well as information provider and facilitator presents a challenge to the researcher. In these settings, information researchers must not only address the context of the community, but also the multiple roles that the community-based groups play in the local information reality. In this paper we argue that organized local groups are critical to the information landscape of communities precisely because they play important intermediation roles. Based on our field work conducted with community organizations in Hartford, Connecticut, we identified several broad strategies employed by problem-centered information intermediaries. First, they make information relevant for their constituents by distilling, tailoring, vetting, translating and compiling. Second, they use both formal and informal mechanisms to collect, share and refer information. Third, they prepare information for specific uses and disseminate information broadly to the community and locally to their target group. This constructed information role emerges out of the context and needs of the community. Moreover, these problem-centered information intermediaries are seen as trusted and credible knowledge sources among their constituencies. And though these civic intermediaries share characteristics with the broad information intermediary role of information professionals, they are different in their focus, purpose and even attitudinal perspective toward information.

Towards effective evaluation of digital community information systems

Digital Community Information Systems (CIS) are increasing in both size and scale. These systems help people obtain community information (CI) for the myriad situations that arise in everyday life. As these systems migrate to the online environment, increasing complexities and scale provide the impetus for improvements in system design. System re-design, however, relies on the effective evaluation of digital CIS. Despite the plethora of evaluation frameworks from the systems, organizational, and information retrieval fields, minimal research has directly addressed the issue of digital CIS evaluation. Following a selective review of digital CIS and evaluation approaches, a layered evaluation framework is proposed to guide the evaluation of digital CIS.

Lost, found, and feeling better: Exploring proxy health information behavior

Karen E. Fisher, Corresponding Author The Information School, University of Washington, Box 352840, Seattle, WA 98195-2840, Voice: (206) 543-6238 Fax: (206) 616-3152 fisher@u.washington.edu Jennie A. Abrahamson Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, School of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University abrahamj@ohsu.edu Anne G. Turner Student, The Information School, University of Washington Box 352840, Seattle, WA 98195-2840 anne.turner@comcast.net Phil M. Edwards The Information School, University of Washington Box 352840, Seattle, WA 98195-2840 pme@u.washington.edu Joan C. Durrance School of Information, University of Michigan 550 E University-3084 West Hall Connector Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 Voice: (734) 763-1569 Fax: (734) 764-2475 durrance@umich.edu In studying how people use the Internet for situations involving consumer health information (CHI), we also examined the phenomenon of proxy searching, i.e., when people seek information on behalf of others without necessarily being asked to do so or engaging in follow-up. Proxy searching has also been referred to as the imposed query, or a query which is precipitated by questions generated by others, such as teachers, employers, friends, or family members (Gross & Saxton, 2001). The prevalence of proxy health information seeking has been observed to be as high as 54% of all health information seekers on the Internet (Fox & Rainie, 2000). Many health care researchers refer to these information seekers as “hidden patients” and have noted the importance of addressing their information needs, particularly because these needs can become lost among those of the patients they are related to (Meissner, et al., 1990; Ell, 1996; Kristjanson & Aoun, 2005). The needs of these hidden patients are often negotiated by others who are largely not information professionals, so their behaviors regarding how they further seek, use and don’t use information in formal situations are also invisible. To date, little information science research has focused upon proxy information behavior specific to the health care context.

Evaluation of digital community information systems

Community information systems provide a critical link between local resources and residents. While online versions of these systems have potential benefits, a systematic evaluation framework is needed to analyze and document realized impacts. Based on data from a nation-wide study of digital community information systems, an evaluation framework is proposed.