Ixchel M. Faniel, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist

Ixchel M. Faniel's research interests include improving how people discover, access and use/reuse content. She is currently examining how academics manage, share and reuse research data and librarians' experiences designing and delivering supportive research data management programs. She also is investigating how science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students from grade school to grad school identify and judge the credibility of digital resources. Ixchel's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Prior to joining OCLC Ixchel worked at the University of Michigan, School of Information, IBM and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). She graduated from Tufts University with a BS in Computer Science and earned an MBA and Ph.D. in Business Administration at the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.
Curriculum vitae (.pdf)
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Publications

Identifying Opportunities for Collective Curation during Archaeological Excavations
6 August 2020
Ixchel Faniel, Anne Austin, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, Eric Kansa, Jennifer Jacobs, Phoebe France
Archaeological excavations are comprised of interdisciplinary teams that create, manage, and share data as they unearth and analyse material culture. These team-based settings are ripe for collective curation during these data lifecycle stages. However, findings from four excavation sites show that the data interdisciplinary teams create are not well integrated. Knowing this, we recommended opportunities for collective curation to improve use and reuse of the data within and outside of the team.

Science and News: A Study of Students’ Judgments of Online Scientific News Information
13 January 2020
Tara Tobin Cataldo, Kailey Langer, Amy G. Buhler, Samuel R. Putnam, Rachael Elrod, Ixchel M. Faniel, PhD, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, PhD, Christopher Cyr, PhD, Brittany Brannon, Joyce Kasman Valenza, PhD, Erin M. Hood, Randy A. Graff, PhD
This paper explores how students judge scientific news resources, as they might find through a Google search. The data were collected as part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded project.

Context from the Data Reuser’s Point of View
26 September 2019
Ixchel M. Faniel, Rebecca D. Frank, Elizabeth Yakel
Context is critical for data reuse, and digital curation should include both context and content preservation. Both data producers and curators benefit from expanding context categories to better determine what information is vital to capture and manage during data collection to support data reuse.