Journal of Information Science current issue

The role of knowledge management in achieving effective crisis management: a case study

Wang, W.-T., Belardo, S. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:35:10 PST

While most would agree that effective knowledge management can improve the management of crises, it is surprising how little research has been done in this area. In order to begin to address this deficiency, this study presents a framework designed to determine whether, and to what extent, knowledge management can positively impact crisis management (CM). The framework is the result of combining classic strategic CM frameworks with Zack’s knowledge strategy framework. A case study of two energy companies in Taiwan is conducted to investigate the relationships between knowledge strategies and critical CM factors. The research results indicate two main findings. First, an organization needs to employ different knowledge strategies at different phases of a business crisis to fulfil its different knowledge needs and achieve the desired CM outcomes. Second, there are significant relationships among knowledge strategies, crisis phases, and crisis characteristics, as summarized in nine theoretical propositions.

Online use and information seeking behaviour: institutional and subject comparisons of UK researchers

Nicholas, D., Clark, D., Rowlands, I., Jamali, H. R. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:35:10 PST

The paper reports on the results of the project ‘Evaluating the usage and impact of e-journals in the UK’. Using deep log analysis techniques, we evaluated the use of the Oxford Journals database in regard to life sciences, economics and history by 10 major UK research institutions. The aim of the study was to investigate researchers’ digital behaviour, and to ascertain whether it varied by subjects and disciplines, or in relation to the institutions. The findings revealed significant subject and institutional differences. Life scientists were the biggest users. Economists made the greatest use of abstracts. Historians proved to be the most active searchers. Research intensive universities were characterized by high volume use and short session times, light sessions, and sessions which utilized few of the search functions available. Open access journals featured strongly in the ranked lists of life sciences and history; and Google was an extremely popular means of accessing journal content, especially so in the case of historians.

Mining sequential patterns in the B2B environment

Hu, Y.-H., Chen, Y.-L., Tang, K. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:35:10 PST

Sequential pattern mining is a powerful data mining technique for finding time-related behaviour in sequence databases. In this paper, we focus on mining sequential patterns in the business-to-business (B2B) environment. Because customers’ sequences in the B2B environment are very long, and almost all items are frequently purchased by all customers, using traditional methods may result in a large number of uninteresting and meaningless patterns and a long computational time. To solve these problems, we introduce three conditions (constraints) — compactness, repetition, and recency — and consider them jointly with frequency in selecting sequential patterns. An efficient algorithm is developed to discover frequent sequential patterns which satisfy the conditions. Empirical results show that the proposed method is computationally efficient and effective in extracting useful sequential patterns in the B2B environment.

Ecological framework of information interactions and information infrastructures

Huvila, I. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:35:10 PST

There has been notably little convergence between information organization and information use studies. A framework for explicating the contextual interplay of information interactions and infrastructures of information, and more specifically the interface of information work and knowledge organization systems, is proposed. The theoretical foundations of the framework are based on systems theory and ecological approach. It is suggested that the interplay of information use and information infrastructures may be conceptualized as a systemic interaction, which is driven by the simultaneous influence of human activity related warrants and infrastructural affordances and constraints. The model provides an instrument that explicates the interplay of human information use and information infrastructures.

Effectiveness of web search results for genre and sentiment classification

Na, J.-C., Thet, T. T. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:35:10 PST

The motivation of this study is to enhance general topical search with a sentiment-based one where the search results (snippets) returned by the web search engine are clustered by sentiment categories. Firstly we developed an automatic method to identify product review documents using the snippets (summary information that includes the URL, title, and summary text), which is genre classification. Then the identified snippets were automatically classified into positive (recommended) and negative (non-recommended) documents, which is sentiment classification. Thereafter the user may directly decide to access the positive or negative review documents. In this study we used only the snippets rather than their original full-text documents, and applied a common machine learning technique, SVM (support vector machine), and heuristic approaches to investigate how effectively the snippets can be used for genre and sentiment classification. The results show that the web search engine should improve the quality of the snippets especially for opinionated documents (i.e. review documents).

Dublin Core metadata semantics: an analysis of the perspectives of information professionals

Park, J.-r., Childress, E. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:35:10 PST

This study examines Dublin Core (DC) metadata semantics drawn from the perspectives and experiences of cataloguing and metadata professionals. The study ascertains the extent of difficulty in applying the DC metadata elements encountered by these professionals and examines factors engendering such difficulties during the metadata application process. Comments drawn from the survey participants (n = 141) show that conceptual ambiguities (41%) and semantic overlaps (45%) of the surveyed DC metadata elements are the most frequently cited factors causing difficulty and confusion, in turn leading to variant interpretations of DC metadata elements. This has the potential to bring forth inconsistent and inaccurate applications and implementation of the DC standard across institutions which can directly affect semantic interoperability across digital repositories. The high degree of difficulty (55.3%) engendered by the Relation field indicates that further examination of this element is needed.

Online communities of practice typology revisited

Hara, N., Shachaf, P., Stoerger, S. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:35:10 PST

This paper outlines a typology for online communities of practice. The typology is based on findings from observations of three online communities of practice, a content analysis of messages, and a review of the existing literature. The three examples of communities of practice are of electronic discussion lists that cover topics of interest to university webmasters, librarians, and educators. This work expands on a typology that consolidated prior research and focused on online communities of practice within organizational settings by extending it to be inclusive of open online communities of practice that are not constrained by any organizational context. Characterizing communities of practice in this manner enables various aspects of them to be analysed, which can illuminate ways to support the implementation of effective online communities of practice for specific purposes.

Crowdsourcing, attention and productivity

Huberman, B. A., Romero, D. M., Wu, F. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:35:10 PST

We show through an analysis of a massive data set from YouTube that the productivity exhibited in crowdsourcing exhibits a strong positive dependence on attention, measured by the number of downloads. Conversely, a lack of attention leads to a decrease in the number of videos uploaded and the consequent drop in productivity, which in many cases asymptotes to no uploads whatsoever. Moreover, short-term contributors compare their performance to the average contributor’s performance while long-term contributors compare it to their own media.