Research Seminar Series Archive

Recent widespread public protests in the United States against police violence, racism and other issues demonstrate the importance of community organizing, grassroots activism dedicated to building voice and political power.

The potential benefits and risks of children’s use of digital media have long been an active topic of discussion in both the popular media and in the research literature. The risk narrative has been especially prevalent in popular media discourse, often couching young people’s digital information practices in terms of “technopanics”—adult perceptions of young people’s use of digital media as fundamentally negative.

Open science strives to make the research enterprise more transparent, accessible and accountable. The information professions have played a key role in promoting aspects of open science, such as open access. Other aspects of open science associated with the communication and acknowledgment of scholarship have not been as widely implemented or studied to date. This presentation addresses research in two emerging areas of open science scholarly communication: data citation and open peer review (OPR).

This talk examines the dynamics around engagement and ways of knowing of specific communities (often marginalized or under-studied), whether it be migrants or refugees, indigenous communities in remote and isolated regions, or young Muslims negotiating their identities in a post 9/11 world. In conducting research with these communities, my consideration is one that adheres to a methodology of refusing the silencing of certain voices in society. Taken together, these strands of research expand on the meanings and values of inclusion, ask whether a diversity mindset can foster sustainable change, and probe and unsettle the rigidity of the scholarly and pedagogical systems in which we operate.

Today’s young people, more than any previous generation, have a personal stake in their ability to function with data. Future job prospects might hinge on their ability to participate in the new data economy. But equally, young people are themselves the subjects of data science, being the most thoroughly measured, tracked and analyzed generation. To be active citizens and good stewards of their own data, they need to be data literate.

This project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, looks at the capacity of rural school libraries to support mental health and build partnerships with school counselors and teachers, with the intention of creating a list of best practices and discussion points for a national action agenda for mental health literacy.

This presentation features Inuvialuit Voices, a research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The key objective of this project is to investigate and develop a seamless, interactive, and real-time digital storytelling system for the Inuvialuit Digital Library, which provides access to cultural heritage and language resources by and for the six Inuvialuit communities in the Northwest Territories in Canada’s western arctic.