Ph.D. Program in Information Studies - Student Features

2007 Research Paper Competition Winner:

The Doctoral Committee is pleased to announce the winner of the 2007 Ph.D. Student Research Paper Competition. The Award (and $150 stipend) goes this year to Gali Yemini-Halevi for her paper, "Towards a Psychosynthesis Approach to Information Visualization: Using Mandela Symbolism for a User-Centered Design."

This paper will be presented at the April 26, 2007 Doctoral Colloquium.

Recent Student Publications

Leatrice Ferraioli: "An Exploratory Study of Metadata Creation in a Health Care Agency. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, V40, No. 3/4 (October 2005), 75-102."

Selenay Aytac: "Multiligual Information Retrieval on the Internet: A Case Study of Turkish Users. The International Information & Library Review, 37 (2005), 275-284."

John DiMarco: Web Portfolio Design and Applications. Idea Group Publishing, Inc. December 2005.

Recent Student Conference Presentations

Annual Meeting of the Association of Library and Information Science Educators (ALISE), January 16-19, 2006, San Antonio:

Paula Maurino: "A Discussion of Student-to-Student Interaction Focuses on Student Satisfaction With Online Classroom Discussions and the Environment’s Effectiveness in Promoting the Social/Cultural Learning Emphasized in Activity Theory and the Social Computing Paradigm"

John Sullivan: "Designing a Major Municiple Police Department's Command and Control Structure: How Distributed Cognition Can Enhance Interagency Coordination in Crises Management"

Fourteenth Annual SUNY Conference on Instructional Technology, to be held May 23-26, 2005, at Binghamton University

Doctoral students Paula San Millan Maurino, Michael De Cicco, and Karen Gelles will be presenting papers at the Fourteenth Annual SUNY Conference on Instructional Technology, to be held May 23-26, 2005, at Binghamton University. As part of a panel, each will present the results of research they carried out in the Fall of 2004 for DIS 810 and DIS 822.

Panel Presentation Title:

"Academic Website Trends: The Results of Three Studies"

Abstract:
Colleges and universities use their websites for many different purposes. The characteristics of these websites differ between different types of institutions, and have changed over time. The results of three separate research studies investigating the characteristics of college and university websites will be presented. Paula San Millan Maurino will present the results of a longitudinal study of college and university homepages to determine whether there have been any shifts in the target audiences of home pages, and whether there are any general trends in the changes across institutions. Michael DeCicco presents the results of a study of the websites of private for-profit and private non-profit institutions that uncovers inherent differences in the amount of information each group shares with the general public via their websites. Karen Gelles presents the results of a content analysis of academic library homepages that identifies the key terminology being used on those pages, resulting in a taxonomy of library website terminology. Each of the three studies uses content analysis as a methodology for examining the trends in college and university websites. The fact that there are definitive trends that cross institutional boundaries supports the conclusion that the academic website has progressed to the point where it can be considered a unique digital genre.

Paula San Millan Maurino has also had a second paper accepted for presentation, titled "Genre vs Cybergenre: How Real are the Differences?"

Participants at the ASIST 2002 Annual Meeting
Information, Connections and Community
November 18-21, 2002, Wyndham Philadelphia at Franklin Plaza, Philadelphia, PA

Angela Heath
Poster Session – Monday, Nov. 18, 12:00-1:00.
"Using Social Network Analysis to Study Group Interaction Patterns in an Online Knowledge Community."

Maureen L. Mackenzie
Contributed paper (Information Use) – Tuesday, Nov. 19, 8:30-10:00
“Information Gathering: The Information Behaviors of Line Managers within a Business Environment.”

Barbara Lynch, April Hatcher, and Joette Stefl-Mabry, Co-Moderators
Contributed Paper/Workshop Session – Sunday, Nov. 17, 3:30-6:00. Touch, Talk, Think – Technology: Experience and Explore Educational Web Portals with Experts (SIG/HCI). Information scientists explore how people use information, corporate analysts examine how to design technologies to deliver information and educational professionals seek ways to integrate electronic resources that will enhance learning. In this session, representatives of all three groups will come together to explore and share technologies, methodologies and epistemologies.

Participants at the ASIST 2001 Annual Meeting Information in a Networked World: Harnessing the Flow
November 2-8, 2001, J.W. Marriott Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Donna D'Ambrosio: Toward an Ontology for Information Systems Requirements in Systems Analysis ("Taxonomies" contributed papers)

Yvonne Gray (Moderator): Patient Medical Records and Privacy via the Internet

Joette Stefl-Mabry and Barbara L. Lynch (Convenors and Moderators): Human Computer Interaction: Possibilities, Potential, and Problems

Mikel Breitenstein (Moderator): Viewing the Intellectual Horizons of Information Science (Dr. Smiraglia sits on this panel)

Len Ponzi (Presenter): Affective Issues in Knowledge Management: Social Capital, Narrative, and Learning

AND

Participants at the SYLLABUS FALL 2001 Conference
November 29 - December 2, 2001, Boston, MA

The Odyssey of Change: Surviving a Change in Administrative Information Systems, co-presented by Nicolette Ceo & Dr. Joan Merlo

Formative Assessment Tools in an Asynchronous Course: Reaching Out to the Students, presented by James F. Stenerson

DISSERTATION TITLES OF RECENT PH.D. GRADUATES

Joette Stefl Mabry: (Ph.D. awarded May 2001)
A Social Judgment Analysis of Information Satisfaction and Information Source Preferences Among Professionals: A Hypothesis-Generating Exploratory Study

Mikel Breitenstein: (Ph.D. awarded May 2003)
Toward an Understanding of Visual Literacy: Examination of Conference Papers of the International Visual Literacy

Maureen Mackenzie: (Ph.D. awarded May 2003)
The Accumulation of Information by Line Managers Within a Business Environment and the Resulting Cognitive Savings Account

Leonard J. Ponzi: (Ph.D. awarded May 2003)
Knowledge Management: A Bibliometric Analysis

Edmund J.Y. Pajarillo: (Ph.D. awarded May 2005)
Contextual Perspectives of Information for Home Care Nurses: Towards a Framework of Nursing Information Behavior

Donna M. D'Ambrosio: (Ph.D. awarded May 2006)
Development of an Expansible Taxonomy of Software Requirements Nomenclature: Viewing the Elicitation Process as Communicative Discourse

James Stenerson: (Ph.D. awarded May 2006)
The Heuristic Value of Lewis Mumford's Metaphor "Megamachine" in a Digital-network Society

Joseph Kasten: (Ph.D. awarded December 2006)
Knowledge Strategy Drivers: An Exploratory Study.

Angela Heath: (Ph.D. awarded May 2007)
An Exploration of the Motivations, Behaviors and Effects of Frequent Contributors in Online Communities of Interest.

Joni Lelchuk: (Ph.D. awarded May 2007)
An Investigation into the Auditory Enhancement of Text on a Cancer Health Website - The Impact on the User's Comprehension, Recall and Retention of Information, and the Believability of the Information.

Paula Maurino: (Ph.D. awarded May 2007)
Online Threaded Discussions: Purposes, Goals and Objectives.

James P. Smith: (Ph.D. awarded May 2007)
Academic Library Web Portals: Does the Use of Images Influence Users' Perception of the Use Experience?

DISSERTATIONS IN PROGRESS

Julie B. Kessler: Health Information Management and Medical Informatics, Separate or Overlapping? A Bibliometric Analysis of Recent Trends in the Development of Electronic Medical Records.

Christine Marchese: Impact of Organizational Environment on Knowledge Representation and Use.

Sheryl Schoenacher: The Information Gathering Behavior of Main Street Merchants and the Effect of Social Capital on Information Access

Thomas Virgona: A Study of Human Factors in the Changes to Information Technology Disaster Recovery Efforts for Wall Street Financial Services Firms.

DOCTORAL STUDENTS' ANNUAL RESEARCH COMPETITION

2001 WINNER: Donna M. D'Ambrosio. Toward an Ontology for Information Systems Requirements in Systems Analysis

2002 WINNER: Joni Lelchuk. Taxonomy of Visual Humor

2002 HONORABLE MENTION: Leatrice Ferraioli. Genres, Personal Metadata and Private Knowledge

2003 WINNER: Leatrice Ferraioli. An Exploratory Study of Metadata Creation in a Health Agency

2003 HONORABLE MENTION: Angela Heath. Tracking the Progress of Research on Electronic Collaboration in Two Related Discourse Communities

2004 WINNER: Sheryl Schoenacher. Orality and Literacy in a Suburban Town Community: An Ethnographic Study of the Incorporated Village of Farmingdale

2004 HONORABLE MENTION: Paula Maurino. The Context of Student/Teacher Interaction in Distance Learning

2005 WINNER: David Jank. Toward a Bibliographic Examination of the Published Literature in Systems Analysis and Design: A Descriptive Analysis and Conceptual Taxonomy.

2005 HONORABLE MENTION: Wendy Ford. Case Study Analysis of Discourse Structure in Open-Ended Interviews: Ex-Slave Narratives from the Library of Congress. Joe Kasten. Decision-making in Logistics: An Ontology of Required Knowledge.

2006 WINNER: David Jank. An 18th Century Internet: Knowledge Organization and Information Representation in the Colonial Williamsburg Historic Restoration.

2006 HONORABLE MENTION: Gali Y. Halevi, Blogs as an Academic Communication Tool, and Ellen Tufano, Models for Instructional System Design and Their Application to University Faculty Development Programs.