OCLC Abstracts

Lynne Bowker, Ph.D., of the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa, will consult with Spanish-speaking newcomers to Ottawa who are users of the Ottawa Public Library (OPL) in the project, “Can machine translation facilitate outreach to newcomers? A pilot study investigating the needs of Spanish-speaking users of the Ottawa Public Library.” The results will help determine if machine translation can be used as a partial solution for finding a cost-effective means of translation that would allow OPL to offer a wider range of translated texts to the under-served newcomer community.

Kyung-Sun Kim, Ph.D. of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Sei-Ching Joanna Sin, Ph.D., of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, will use a combination of surveys and focus group methods to collect data from over 600 undergraduate students in the United States and Singapore in the project, “Social Media as Information Sources: Use and Evaluation of Information from Social Media.”

The focus of this study is to investigate what types of social media are used as information sources and how they are used and evaluated. Based on this research, suggestions will be made to improve information literacy education and social media interfaces, which will support the effective use and evaluation of social media as information sources.

Sanghee Oh, Ph.D., of the School of Library and Information Studies at Florida State University, will investigate the health information needs and sources people most likely seek and share in social Q&A by analyzing the content of health questions and answers. Findings from the project, “Understanding Health Information Behaviors in Social Q&A: Text Mining of Health Questions and Answers in Yahoo! Answers,” will help health information professionals better understand the health information behaviors of their patients or customers and improve their services or systems.