Research Seminar Series Archive

Recommender Systems are springing up everywhere, collecting the judgments and clickstreams of Web users, and processing them to recommend everything from diapers to dioramas. The research presented here revisits to the earliest roots of recommender systems, HyperCat and the SXR, and asks how such systems can support the activity of researchers with a long-term, shared interest in some difficult topic.

This talk centers on the speaker’s own personal experience helping an academic library and a public library conduct research. In particular, the speaker will share insights on his current role as a faculty member in residence at the McMaster University Library. Specifically, the speaker will reflect on the progress he has made, the challenges he has encountered, and the factors that have led to success in fostering a research climate within the library.

This presentation will review a series of research projects extending from the early 1990s until the present conducted by the speaker and focused upon the information behavior of elementary school children when using a variety of information technologies. It will trace the emergence of children from being mere participants to active collaborators in the research process. Center stage will be the design of interfaces, including interactive, virtual and visualization techniques, that are intended to facilitate the identification, retrieval and use of information by children.