Irene Lopatovska

Pratt Institute · Information Science

This case study describes the development of a management and leadership (M/L) iSchool course. To design a course that balanced traditional topics with current professional needs, we identified M/L topics currently covered in iSchools’ curricula, then assessed the importance of these topics for information professions through a survey of academic a...

COVID‐19 measures of isolation exacerbated the negative feeling, particularly in younger and older populations. We tested a voice conversational agent designed to support teens by offering interactions based on five types of behavioral interventions (compassion, self‐compassion, positive psychology, mindfulness, and humor), and examined teen reacti...

In order to help adolescents cope with loneliness during the social distancing and isolation imposed by the COVID‐19 pandemic, we designed a conversational agent programmed to distract users from negative thoughts and advise them on strategies to improve their wellbeing. In order to assess the effects of the agent intervention on adolescent partici...

Purpose The study aims to explore the current experiences of Ukrainian adolescents affected by the Russia-Ukraine war. The study focused on the changes in adolescents’ lives caused by the war, adolescents’ emotional reactions to the disruptions caused by the war, coping strategies employed by adolescents in dealing with disruptions and the role of...

Purpose This study aims to determine college/university students’ mobile phone practices to understand key user preferences and set a baseline understanding for the development of prospective library informational mobile services. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on the results of an online-survey method. The authors recruited stude...

Purpose This study aimed to understand adolescents’ experiences, negative feelings and coping mechanisms associated with the major disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to develop a baseline for understanding adolescents and their environment to assist future developments of technological and other solutions to m...

The study explored whether cultural gender stereotypes are carried into the domain of conversational agents (CAs), and examined user reactions to feminine, masculine, and gender-ambiguous voices in the context of stressful and non-stressful interactions. The user’s image of an ideal CA was also investigated. A fully virtual experiment guided partic...

The paper examines the concept of participation in co‐design practices with children and youth. Rooted in Participatory Design and Participatory Action Research frameworks, the paper draws from multi‐disciplinary literature to survey existing definitions of the relationships, roles, and types of human interactions in participatory co‐design. The pa...

The Future Conversations workshop at CHIIR'21 looked to the future of search, recommendation, and information interaction to ask: where are the opportunities for conversational interactions? What do we need to do to get there? Furthermore, who stands to benefit? The workshop was hands-on and interactive. Rather than a series of technical talks, we...

This paper reports on an experimental study that examined user perceptions of Amazon Alexa’s personality, as well as influences of stressful or non-stressful interactions on personality perceptions. The study relied on the Five-Factor Model and the Stereotype Content Model personality frameworks. An online data collection instrument was designed to...

The paper reports on the study that developed a classification of humorous interactions with intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) and applied the classification to compare four IPAs, Apple Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Microsoft Cortana, on their humor performance. The study relied on volunteer participants recruited through traditiona...

A challenge in academic and practitioner research is recruiting study participants that match target demographics, possess a desired skillset, and will participate for little to no compensation. An alternative to traditional participant recruitment struggles is crowdsourcing participants through online labor markets, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk...

Intelligent personal assistants (IPA) use humor to engage and entertain users as well as mitigate performance limitations. In order to understand the types of users’ humorous interactions with IPA, we developed a classification of humorous utterances that included categories of questions about IPA personality, requests for jokes, rhetorical stateme...

The study examined humorous interactions with intelligent personal assistants (IPAs, including Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri) with the aim of classifying user utterances, IPA responses and user reactions of system responses. Data from online diaries and paper questionnaires were collected and analyzed using content a...

Стаття присвячена огляду технології цифрових інтелектуальних персональних асистентів (ІПA, також відомих як розмовні агенти, розумні спікери, цифрові / інтелектуальні персональні помічники або голосові агенти). Розглянуто oсновні технічні функції таких програм, як Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri, а також випадки їхньог...

Adoption of intelligent personal assistants (IPA) is on the rise. Published studies on IPAs often focus on the analysis and critique of existing IPA features without understanding specific user needs that the technology aims to address. We present an exploratory study that gathered user recommendations for the design of their ideal IPA. The study r...

Cambridge Core - General - Libraries Without Walls 5 - edited by Peter Brophy

Amazon Alexa is a voice-controlled application that is rapidly gaining popularity. We examined user interactions with this technology, and focused on the types of tasks requested of Alexa, the variables that affect user behaviors with Alexa, and Alexa’s alternatives. The data about Alexa usage were collected from 19 participants via the online ques...

The conversational nature of intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) has the potential to trigger personification tendencies in users, which in turn can translate into consumer loyalty and satisfaction. We conducted a study of Amazon Alexa usage and explored the manifestations and possible correlates of users' personification of Alexa. The data were...

Purpose In an effort to advance visual literacy (VL) education, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a VL instruction program for 2.5-4-year-old children in a public library setting. Design/methodology/approach The study was designed as a series of VL workshops for young public library visitors. Each workshop collected information abou...

Intelligent personal assistants (IPAs), such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana and others, offer an example of an emerging technology with an uncertain adoption path. Evidence on how users adopt this technology is scarce, often anecdotal, and usually focuses on private uses and contexts. We conducted a study to examin...

A large number of ASIS&T members are involved in their academic programs' development, accreditation and assessment of academic degrees' offerings in relation to the professional market needs. The paper presents information about secondary sources of evidence regarding the library and information science professional market and argues that job adve...

There is minimal, mainly anecdotal, evidence of discourse about the professional development of information science (IS) academics. In an effort to initiate discussion on professional development and encourage information sharing among IS faculty and administrators, we organized a panel at the 2016 Annual Meeting of ASIS&T (Lopatovska et al., 2016)...

Visual research methods involve the incorporation of visual material such as photographs, artwork and video into the research process. This approach to research is particularly well suited for use with children and youth as it complements verbal and written data collection methods, which some children and youth may find challenging. This video pres...

Art images are characterized by affective properties that are rarely captured by current classification practices. We conducted a study to test three methods for developing affect descriptors for art images. The first method relied on affect tags derived from analysis of an image's subject matter and colors. The second method involved affect tags d...

Purpose A study examined reading strategies in relation to information-seeking stages, tasks and reading media in an academic setting. Understanding reading practices and needs in the context of information-seeking can refine our understanding of user choices and preferences for information sources (e.g. textbooks, articles, multimedia content) and...

The purpose of this study was to explore the similarities and differences in student behavior in or uses of four academic libraries in the greater New York City area. Using on-site observations and semistructured interviews, the authors collected data about resources and tools used by students as well as their academic and nonacademic activities an...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand young children’s knowledge of visual literacy elements as well as their ability to comprehend newly introduced visual literacy concepts. The study also examined existing support for visual literacy programs from parents and educators. Design/methodology/approach The study explored the knowledge of...

Many publications, institutional policies, and resources focus on the professional development of doctoral students and junior faculty while professional development needs and resources available to mid-career faculty receive limited attention. The proposed panel aims to facilitate a discussion on issues faced by mid-career faculty in the informati...

Visual literacy is a critical skill that enables individuals to navigate the world of visual media. While research shows multiple benefits of introducing visual literacy early in life, there is a scarcity of visual literacy programs for young children. In an effort to advance development of visual literacy programs for children, we explored techniq...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand patterns in information behavior of academic librarians, individuals who influence information technology adoption in academic libraries and parent institutions. Librarians’ perception of their student patrons’ information behavior was also investigated. Design/methodology/approach – An explorat...

In an effort to extend previous work on developing general recommendations for design of art museum websites, we evaluated four museum websites (the Tate, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Rijksmuseum) and examined the relationships between website features, virtual visitors’ impressions and estimates of repeat vis...

This article reports the results of a study that examined relationships between primary emotions, secondary emotions, and mood in the online information search context. During the experiment, participants were asked to search Google to obtain information on the two given search tasks. Participants' primary emotions were inferred from analysis of th...

Purpose – This paper aims to report the results of a study that examined the ways in which graduate-level library and information science students make use of e-books and e-readers at an institution that does not offer e-books through its library. The paper can be used as a case study in the adoption of emerging technology. Design/methodology/appr...

Introduction. The paper proposes a model of information behaviour in crisis. No previous model has attempted to integrate information resources, information behaviour and needs of the storm-affected communities within the temporal stages of a natural disaster. Method. The study was designed as autoethnography. The data were collected through a diar...

In recent years, studies of Library and Information Science (LIS) disciplinarity developed original methods for examining the disciplinary composition of the field (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012; Wu et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2013). However, most of these studies focused on one fragment of the field, specifically, iSchool programs. In order to gain a f...

This paper reports on the results of a pilot study conducted as part of a larger project aimed at understanding the evolving role of e-books in academia. The study used a survey, a scenario-based usability test, and interviews to collect data on e-book reading habits, specific user expectations, and issues related to the usability of an academic li...

People who live in large metropolitan areas spend a vast amount of time on public transportation, including the subway. Yet there are very few studies that examine commuters’ information behavior. We conducted a study of information behavior of commuters in two large metropolitan areas: New York City, USA and Paris, France. We found similarities an...

While standards for textual retrieval systems are well established, similar standards for the design of visual retrieval systems, specifically for digital art collections, are lacking. The following study extends previous lines of research in developing guidelines for the design and evaluation of museum websites and, specifically, retrieval interfa...

The article reports the results of a study that explored users' preference for search engines in relation to other information sources. The study used qualitative and quantitative methods to examine participants' information seeking with and without access to search engines. The study identified search engine features that users find valuable, such...

The panel will discuss the intellectual differences between iSchool and Information Science programs that are not part of the iSchool Caucus, referred here as L-Schools. The panelists, who represent both communities, will discuss the foundational, philosophical, and formal differences between the two types of programs, and focus on the intellectual...

Introduction. We report a study of information media consumption trends of New York City subway users. Method. Observations were conducted on fifteen New York City subway lines by seven students. A few riders were interviewed about their use of information technology during their commutes and a survey was completed by library and information scienc...

Emotions are an integral component of all human activities, including human–computer interactions. This article reviews literature on the theories of emotions, methods for studying emotions, and their role in human information behaviour. It also examines current research on emotions in library and information science, information retrieval and huma...

There is an emergent interest in the use of emotion data to improve information retrieval processes. Our study examined whether the knowledge of searchers' emotions can be used to predict their actions (and vise versa). We investigated associations between information retrieval behaviors (e.g., examination of search results) and patterns of emotion...

Interest in emotions within the information use context is on the rise. Yet, the reports of the emotion studies rarely mention some of the methodological challenges involved in research. New researchers who are entering the field are often unaware of the challenges and potential solutions related to emotions' examinations. This paper attempts to ed...

This panel addresses how to evaluate information interactions in evolving information landscapes. Using a common scenario, panelists each provide their own take on the user experience and its measurement, building a multifaceted view of information landscapes and their measurement.

We investigated the role of subjective factors in the information search process. Forty-eight participants each conducted six Web searches in a controlled setting. We examined relationships between subjective factors (happiness levels, satisfaction with and confidence in the search results, feeling lost during search, familiarity with and interest...

We report the results of the experiment that examined effects of mood on search performance. Participants were asked to use Google search engine to find answers to two questions. Searchers' mood was measured using the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS). Search performance was measured by number of websites visited, time spent reading...

We analyzed mood changes before, during and after online information search and examined effects of search tasks' type on the mood. Searchers' mood was measured using the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS). Search tasks were characterized by the topic, sequence in a search process, difficulty level, and searcher's interest in a task....

At the time of constantly emerging technologies, information professionals need frameworks for modeling users' preferences as well as understanding adoption and usability issues. One such framework, the decision making Expected Utility theory, is reviewed for its ability to offer the logic of mathematical modeling with graphical aids for analyzing...

The article discusses two instant measures of affective value of information objects: Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) and Experienced Utility (EU). The potential utility of these measures for information retrieval research is positioned within a broader discussion of distinctions between instant utility and remembered utility and their relationship to imm...

Two measures of affective reactions on information objects were tested in an experiment. Participants were given a question and a set of nine websites to find the answer. Participants were asked to evaluate the websites they reviewed by assigning Willingness to Pay (WTP) and Experienced Utility (EU) values to each website. WTP measure was solicited...

The paper presents an overview of the Texas Library Directory Database development effort. The TLDD was designed and implemented by the Texas Center for Digital Knowledge at the University of North Texas team as part of a project for the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to support the Library of Texas Resource Discovery Service. The TLDD...

This study shows how structure and process of scholarly communication is being transformed with the advent of digital libraries from 1996 to 2006, the Internet and electronic editions, and how that is being shaped by the citational practices of selected humanities fields. This research is built on the view that citational practices of disciplinary...