uptake of e-research in a social science
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Marisa Ponti & Diane H. SonnenwaldGöteborg University & University College of Borås
Sweden
Investigating the Potential Uptake ofE-Research within a
Social Science Discipline:Socio-technical Issues within Library &
Information Science
Introduction• Library & Information science (LIS) - Focuses on the use of technology in info environments - Historically a ’less privileged’ discipline but valuable:
£1.00 spent in support of public libraries = £4.40 in terms of gross regional product, time & money saved (British Library, 2004)
• Challenges facing LIS
- Not ”big science”
- Not historically an academic discipline
- Limited research funding
- Practice-research gap
Can e-Research help to fill the gap?
Research Question & Methods• Question - How do socio-technical aspects of work organization
interplay with the heterogeneous interests of actors in a collaborative project between LIS researchers and practitioners?
• Research Methods - Informed by Actor-Network Theory/ Callon’s model of translation of interests (1986) - Case study approach - Data for first case study:
8 semi-structured interviews Texts, e.g., listserve (250 messages), 20 project documents
Case: Semantic OPACs
Initial Findings• Low level of institutionalization - Lack of external funding: no budget, no expenditures - Importance of professional expertise - Element of both risk and freedom
• Collocated and remote collaboration - Unplanned complications Face-to-face meetings & collaborative knowledge creation - Listserv Ongoing situation awareness & project memory
• Lack of institutional intellectual property rules - Flexibility for actors - Possibility to reward individual effort
Conclusion & Future Work
• Creative use of available resources & navigation of work environments
• Practitioner volunteers vs. high performance computing
• SemOP ”2” project underway
• Two additional case studies in progress
Acknowledgments
Our thanks to the study participants:http://www-dimat.unipv.it/biblio/sem/
This research is funded by the Center for Collaborative Innovation and
the Bengt Helmqvist Fund
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