Tara D. Zimmerman

Texas Woman's University · School of Library and Information Studies

Background COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has emerged as a major public health challenge. Although medical and scientific misinformation has been known to fuel vaccine hesitancy in the past, misinformation surrounding COVID-19 seems to be rampant, and increasing evidence suggests that it is contributing to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy today. The relation...

Teaching new and emerging literacies is of utmost importance in LIS programs because LIS students will become the information professionals who will educate and lead patrons, students, clients, peers, and co-workers in detecting and avoiding misinformation. This poster aims to study the availability and substance of information literacy, digital li...

Governmental and organizational policy increasingly claims to be data‐driven, data‐informed, or knowledge‐driven. We explore the data practices of local governments and nonprofits a seeking to end homelessness in the City of Austin. Drawing on 31 interviews with stakeholders, alongside the reflections and experiences of our interdisciplinary, cross...

Understanding the factors that influence trust in public health information is critical for designing successful public health campaigns during pandemics such as COVID‐19. We present findings from a cross‐sectional survey of 454 US adults—243 older (65+) and 211 younger (18–64) adults—who responded to questionnaires on human values, trust in COVID‐...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of social noise. Under the influence of social noise, a social media user may adjust information behavior based on external cues, attempting to present themselves in a more desirable way to increase their social capital. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative study informed by an eth...

Social media communication involves the discussion and sharing of information in an environment subject to the influence of online relationships and perceived expectations of those in the social network. The ability to filter the resulting noise depends largely on our understanding of Social Noise and its underlying constructs. We introduce the con...

Purpose This study aims to recognize the challenge of identifying deceptive information and provides a framework for thinking about how we as humans negotiate the current media environment filled with misinformation and disinformation. Design/methodology/approach This study reviews the influence of Wilson’s (2016) General Theory of Information Beh...

As community‐oriented programs move from intervention to infrastructure, questions of just and equitable access to that infrastructure both arise and become more consequential to those served. However, extant tools are general in scope, often undertested, and inconsistently linked with positive outcomes for served communities and service providers....

To improve online learning pedagogy within the field of paralegal education, this study investigated how paralegal students and paralegal instructors perceived the effectiveness of synchronous and asynchronous online paralegal courses. This study intended to inform paralegal instructors and course developers how to better design, deliver, and evalu...

Today, more than ever, there is an abundance of information and points of access that can complicate the information seeking process, even in religious communities and cultures. People are overwhelmed with information and tend to seek information from those they trust; consequently, individuals are oftentimes blindly trusting these sources. It is i...

Determining truth and accuracy of information is a key challenge in today's fast‐paced, global information economy dominated by social media. The field of Information Science, while publishing extensively on information seeking and use, has not done sufficient research into how individuals detect falsehood or deception in information they encounter...

An aging workforce brings unique challenges and opportunities, requiring an understanding of how different age groups approach the workplace and employ thoughtful strategies to bridge generation gaps. It is crucial to identify wisdom held by experienced workers and develop strategies for passing knowledge on to less experienced employees. Training...

The term "smart library" was coined by Aittola, Ryhanen, and Ojala in 2003, and librarians have been striving to implement smart libraries in different ways ever since. However, in the 15 years that have passed, no definitive explanation of a smart library has emerged, and it seems unclear what technologies or services truly make a library "smart."...