Conference Proceedings 

Adams, Suellen S. & Kate Peirce. (2006). Is There a Transgender Canon?: Information Seeking and Use in the Transgender Community
Because transgender issues are not often openly discussed, little is known about the transgender community and its information needs. Yet, people who are dealing with transgender issues may have pressing needs. In ongoing focus group research we are exploring the ways in which members of the community have sought to meet their own information needs.
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Arsenault, Clément & Élaine Ménard. (2006). Title Searches with Initial Articles: A Search Behaviour Analysis
This study examines user behaviour during know-item retrieval using title index in library catalogues. Our observations concentrate on the problems caused by the presence of an initial article or of a word homograph to an article. Measures of success and effectiveness are taken to determine if retrieval is affected in such cases.
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Bartlett, Joan C. & Tomasz Neugebauer. (2006). Supporting Information Tasks with User-Centred System Design: The development of an interface supporting bioinformatics analysis
We present an interface to support the integration of bioinformatics analysis with scientific practice. The interface guides scientists through the co-ordinated use of a wide range of analyses and resources in order to solve a complex information task.
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Beheshti, Jamshid, Andrew Large, Kevin Kee, & Charles Cole. (2006). Designing Virtual Environments in an Educational Context
Virtual environments in which users can navigate freely through spatial representations, pick up and examine objects, and “converse” with virtual characters, can play a role in transferring information and knowledge for both training and education. This paper discusses design issues encountered when creating such an environment for grade-five primary school students.
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Boutin, Eric, Gabriel Gallezot, & Luc Quoniam. (2006). Detection of Innovation on the Web with Non-Boolean Techniques: Method, Tools and Application
The problem of the identification of weak signals is central in competitive Intelligence. The Web seems to be a very appropriate information source to detect such signals. The difficulty is the collection and the treatment of a mass and little structured data. This communication presents a hybrid non-Boolean approach that reveals innovating knowledge. The approach used information from the Internet and information collected through a thesaurus.
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Bui, Yen & Jung-ran Park. (2006). An Assessment of Metadata Quality: A Case Study of the National Science Digital Library Metadata Repository
The goal of this study is to assess the quality of current metadata records in the NSDL repository. For this, we harvested over one million Dublin Core metadata records submitted through November 2005 to the repository using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol (OAIP). This study reports on the preliminary results of the tabulations and assessment of metadata quality.
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Burdett, Samantha, Flis Henwood, Roma Harris, & Audrey Marshall. (2006). Mediating the ‘Digital Health Divide’: A Role for Public Libraries?
Preliminary findings are reported on a study of health information seeking in public libraries. The study’s objectives are to identify how public libraries fit into people’s information landscapes, identify challenges in supporting users in health information seeking, and contribute to the debate about the role public libraries can play in promoting healthy communities.
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de Jong, Cees-Jan. (2006). Undergraduate Students’ Perspectives on the Reference Transaction: A Pilot Study
A qualitative user study examining the reference transaction role in four undergraduate students’ information seeking process. Data was obtained through interviews, which were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Findings show that participants sought no process intervention from reference librarians, had negative perceptions of the reference transaction, and valued independence during the research process.
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Gazo, Dominique. (2006). The Missions of Autonomous Public Libraries in Quebec as Perceived by Elected Officials
Our doctoral research project relates to perceptions which elected officials in Quebec have about the missions of the autonomous public libraries which they are directly responsible. The emphasis is laid on the components of these missions, their significance, their legitimacy and the ideology which underlies perceptions of the elected officials.
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Hayter, Susan. (2006). Exploring Information Worlds in a Disadvantaged Community: A UK Perspective
This study explored the everyday information behaviour (IB) of 21 people living on a disadvantaged housing project in the UK. The findings suggest that affective aspects of IB are key, that trust is vital and that the term ‘information’ can be a semantic barrier. The study further proposes ways to enable information access.

Howard, Vivian. (2006). Teens and Pleasure Reading: A critical assessment from Nova Scotia
This paper reports on the first phase of a two-part research study into the role of pleasure reading in the lives of Nova Scotia teenagers. Phase one, a quantitative survey, provides essential background context for the second phase, which uses qualitative methodology to illuminate and enrich the findings from the preliminary survey research.
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Howarth, Lynne C. & Thea Miller. (2006). Assessing Metadata Categories and Visual Displays for Retrieving Digital Cultural Resources
Focus groups tested the appropriateness of a seventeen-element categorization model for uniquely identifying and retrieving digital objects from cultural repositories. Findings suggest that, while only a subset of categories ranked as important to selecting images, the type of material and a context for searching also influence the utility of a category.
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Julien, Heidi. (2006). The Long Road Ahead: Information Literacy Instruction in Canada’s Public Libraries
This paper reports a study of information literacy practices in Canadian public libraries. The project explored the actual and potential role of public libraries in developing the public’s information literacy skills, and included a national survey of instruction and visits to public libraries where staff and library customers were interviewed.

Kipp, Margaret E. I. (2006). Complementary or Discrete Contexts in Online Indexing: A Comparison of User, Creator and Intermediary Keywords
This paper examines the context of online indexing from the viewpoint of three different groups: users, authors, and intermediaries. User, author and intermediary keywords were collected from journal articles tagged on citeulike and analysed. Descriptive statistics and thesaural term comparison shows that there are important differences in the context of keywords from the three groups.

Koshman, Sherry, Amanda Spink, Bernard J. Jansen, Chris Blakely, & Jonathan Weber. (2006). Metasearch Result Visualization: An Exploratory Study
The Missing Pieces tool visualizes the overlap of search engine results including those generated by the metasearch engine, Dogpile. The major research question is: how well can users interact with and interpret the circular metasearch results display? This study has interesting implications for the use of visualization for presenting information in a web metasearch environment.
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Lambert, Frank. (2006). The mycommunityinfo.ca Approach to Online Networked Community Information Provision
Mycommunityinfo.ca offers online community information (CI) by rejecting the traditional CI directory model of excessive metadata. This dynamic and sustainable approach to providing online CI through single window access to local community and three levels of government information sources also offers an unprecedented glimpse into CI needs in Southwestern Ontario.
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Li, Ping & Jamshid Beheshti. (2006). Factors Affecting Users’ Mental Models of a Web Search Engine: A Case Study
Focusing on doctoral students as a specific user group, for a case study, this research investigates factors that might affect users’ mental models of a Web search engine measured in the dimension of completeness, and subsequently on their search performance. Data collection techniques include interview, observation and four standard tests.

McKechnie, Lynne (E.F.), Christopher M. Dixon, Jana Fear, & Angela Pollak. (2006). Rules of (Mis)Conduct: User Behaviour in Public Libraries
Unobtrusive observation in nine sites in two public libraries in Southern Ontario explored user compliance with posted rules of conduct. With the exception of children who were frequently loud and rambunctious, most users followed the rules. This finding is consistent with Goffman’s idea that behaviour in public places is governed by normative assumptions of public order.
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McKenzie, Pamela J. & Tami Oliphant. (2006). The Presentation of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Information in Canadian Midwifery Care
This paper uses discourse analysis to consider midwives’ and pregnant women’s discussions of conventional and complementary and alternative medicine interventions for inducing labour. Participants distinguished between “natural” and “medical” methods and used information sources based on both biomedical evidence and women’s experience to justify and challenge authority claims
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Ménard, Élaine, Lyne Da Sylva, & James M Turner. (2006). PeriCulture2: Using Ancillary Text for Automatic Indexing of Multimedia Objects
This paper presents the results of the project PériCulture2. The main goal of this project is to study indexing methods for Web-based non-textual cultural content. The results give an idea of the quality of the automatic indexing obtained using the ancillary text associated with multimedia objects, specifically video and sound.
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Morrissey, Renée & Lisa M. Given. (2006). International Students and the Academic Library: A Case Study
This paper presents a pilot study that examined the experiences of Chinese graduate students in using the University of Alberta Libraries. The findings outline the challenges faced by students with respect to working in a second language and navigating library technologies, with a focus on the students’ information literacy skills.

Nelson, Michael J. (2006). An Alternate Method for Ranking Journals Using Citations
An alternate method for ranking journals based on the algorithm used in the Google search engine for pagerank is applied to the information science and library science set of journals from Journal Citation Reports. A method of calculating individual paper influence based on this algorithm is proposed.
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Nesset, Valerie. (2006). How Many Hurdles Do I Have to Jump? Conducting Research in an Elementary School Classroom
This paper examines some of the issues that may arise when conducting research in an elementary school classroom. Using examples from a recent study on the information-seeking behaviour of grade-three students, the paper identifies and discusses potential problems and barriers to the research and suggests some ways to overcome them.
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Pecoskie, Jennifer L. (2006). Making Sense of the Self: Developing an Understanding of the Role of Objects within the Reading Experience
In understanding pleasure reading in everyday life we often focus on the text as a primary tool of reading and other tools, such as books, which are instrumental objects, are overlooked. This report of qualitative research focuses on the book as a tool within reading experiences and how it furthers understandings of the self for the reader.
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Peekhaus, Wilhelm. (2006). Personal Health Information in Canada: Clearing the Conceptual Underbrush and Accounting for Public Opinion
This paper explores the relationship between individuals and their medical information in Canada. It employs Neill’s theoretical model of privacy to situate Canadian legislation, and also analyzes public opinion data about attitudes toward medical and genetic privacy, indicating areas where legislation and public opinion are out of synch.
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Qayyum, M. Asim. (2006). Improving Digital Library Interfaces by Investigating the Electronic Activities of Users
The purpose of this study was to examine the navigational patterns and text markings of electronic text readers when they interacted with electronic documents during an active reading process. The readings took place in two settings, private and document sharing, and the results provided us with user-navigational patterns taxonomy.

Rothbauer, Paulette M. & Rachelle Gooden. (2006). Representations of Young People in Information Science: The Case of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science (and Technology), 1985-2005
Using 35 articles published in JASIST between 1985 and 2005, we present the first level of our analysis of the themes we found in respect to the representation of young people as subjects of information science research. It is our general finding that the developmental approach to childhood remains dominant.
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Schlemmer, Balázs. (2006). Science in the European Union – “Before and After” A Scientometric Approach to Measure the Structural Transformation of Science in Central and Eastern Europe after the Political-Economical Changes
This scientometric study compares the scientific structures of the former EU15 and the ‘newcomer’ EU countries. Bibliometric indicators are used to plot the EU countries' scientific patterns based on subject fields and European co-publication maps over time. The study also investigates some peculiarities of certain EU countries' scientific journal usage.

Shiri, Ali. (2006). Knowledge Organization Systems in Canadian Digital Library Collections
The paper reports on a study of the ways in which Canadian digital library collections make use of knowledge organization systems to support users’ information search behaviour. The study identified 33 digital collections which have employed some type of knowledge organization system in their search interfaces.
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Singh, Rajesh. (2006). Market Orientation and Service Performance in Libraries: An Unexplored Relationship
This study investigates the inter-relationship between market orientation and service performance of 33 libraries in the south of Finland. Three kinds of market orientation were found: the strong, the medium and the weak. The findings show that the higher market orientation is positively connected with the libraries’ superior service performance.
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Smiraglia, Richard P. (2006). Music Information Retrieval: An Example of Bates’ Substrate?
Music Information Retrieval (MIR), and ISMIR annual conferences offer a rich panoply of intellectual and cultural diversity. We map the evolution of MIR using conference papers from 2000 through 2005. Results indicate tight thematic coherence in the domain around the problems of information retrieval and classification, and the locus of most research within computer science departments.
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Tennis, Joseph T. (2006). Comparative Functional Analysis of Boundary Infrastructures, Library Classification, and Social Tagging
This paper outlines three information organization frameworks: library classification, social tagging, and boundary infrastructures. It then outlines functionality of these frameworks. The paper takes a neo-pragmatic approach. The paper finds that these frameworks are complementary, and by understanding the differences and similarities that obtain between them, researchers and developers can begin to craft a vocabulary of evaluation.
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Vaughan, Liwen, Margaret E.I. Kipp, & Yijun Gao. (2006). Why are Websites Co-linked? The Case of Canadian Universities
A random sample Web pages that linked to a pair of Canadian universities was retrieved. The content of the page as well as the context of the link were manually examined to record the following variables: language, country, type of Website, and the reason for co-linking.
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Veinot, Tiffany, Roma Harris, Leslie Bella, Irving Rootman, & Judith Krajnak. (2006). HIV/AIDS Information Exchange in Rural Communities: Preliminary Findings from a Three Province Study
People with HIV/AIDS (PHAs) face particular challenges if they live in rural Canada, including the invisibility, stigma and limited local services. This study examines the information-seeking of PHAs and their friends/family in this rural context using three theoretical frameworks that span information seeking, incidental information acquisition and information sharing.

Yi, Kwan & Jamshid Beheshti. (2006). Boosting for Text Classification with Subject Headings
The aim of this study is to investigate how Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) as background knowledge source can improve text classification results. The hypothesis is experimented with two different sets of medical documents using HMM-based TC classifier. Experimental results show the improvement of the performance with MeSH in accuracy.
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