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My Research Interests

My interests center on the design of appropriate media for different users in a variety of information environments. The last five years I have spent at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin have seen my research agenda evolve from a focus on image retrieval, multimedia design, instructional technology, and user studies to a focus on human-information interaction, digital museums and libraries as well as socio-technical aspects of information technologies. My interests have also evolved from a concern with technical implementation to one more centered on the socio-technical aspects of information studies.

My research spans several areas: multimedia design, instructional technology, user studies, human-information interaction, and information system evaluation. Recently, I have published several papers on digital museums and museum practitioners, digital libraries for K-12 math education, and digital video libraries for college students. These projects were conducted based on multi-disciplinary collaborations.

In addition to my research, I also teach several courses in these areas at the School: Understanding and Serving Users (a core course for master's students), Digital Media Design I & II, Human Information Interaction, and Developing and Organizing Media Collections. In these courses, I have worked closely with students on several projects and have published papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings.

Research Areas:

I am interested in designing, creating, and evaluating multimedia information to serve different users. With the development of computing technologies, a variety of forms of information is available online; however, most providers have an inadequate understanding of their users’ behaviors regarding the use of provided information. Therefore, it is critical to understand the following topics:

Importance of Research Areas:

Answers to those questions help scholars to:

Research Development:

Initially, I was interested in analyzing users’ search behaviors with images, which was the topic of my dissertation. With the support from the School and the University, I have been able to expand my research interests into new but related areas:

Research Areas and Publications:

From Image Management to Digital Libraries and Museums

Regarding my major research interest, image management, I have extended my dissertation project concerning image use in the art history field to digital museums and libraries. I published two papers from the dissertation: “An Analysis of Image Queries in the Field of Art History,” Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology, (2001); and “An Analysis of Image Retrieval Tasks in the Field of Art History,” Information Processing and Management, (2001). The two papers investigated end-users' image queries by comparing the features of the queries to those identified in previous studies proposed by Enser and McGregor (1992), Jorgensen (1995) and Fidel (1997) in order to discover the utility of these existing features for the art history field and any expansions or new features. It also examined relationships between user search tasks and image query modes.

Contributions of the Publications (Image Management) : My contributions include in-depth understanding of art history students’ image-searching processes, from describing questions and elaborating details, to initiating a search, and evaluating search results. They also include instructional design and curricular development for the field of art history. Implications for image indexing tools and image retrieval system design were proposed. The findings indicated that more details should be added to Enser and McGregor's four categories (Unique, Non-unique, Unique with refiners, and Non-unique with refiners) and to re-group Jorgensen's 12 classes of image attributes. There was a significant difference between the mean number of search keywords or phrases participants planned to use and the mean number of search keywords or phrases they actually used. The study found a significant relationship between the level of success for the search results and the percentage of search keywords or phrases drawn from the topic title or topic description participants planned to use.

In 2002, I received a summer research assignment from the UT Faculty Development Program and the Temple Teaching Fellowship of the School to study six museums in the U.S. With the support, I extended my research area from image management to practitioners’ image-using behaviors and image collections at museums. The purpose of this project was to study how museum practitioners used current image-indexing practices and services to retrieve the image collections at the museums. Several issues, including image needs, information seeking strategies, information queries, search functions, display formats, and human-computer interaction, were examined in this study. I presented the preliminary findings at the 2003 ACH/ALLC (Association for Computers and the Humanities and Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing) Joint International Conference. One paper from the project, “Chinese Collections in Museums on the Web: Current Status, Problems, and Future,” was published in 2004 in the Journal of Internet Cataloging.

The topic of image management is also related to the topics of multimedia design and information presentation that interested me enough me to explore the field of digital libraries for education. I worked with Dr. Philip Doty on two papers, “A Conceptual Framework for Digital Libraries for K-12 Mathematics Education, Part I & 2,” which will appear in the July 2005 issue of the Library Quarterly.

Contributions of the Publications (Digital Libraries and Museums) : I performed field work and provided theoretical discussion on emerging demands for educating users, conflict among individuals, organizations, and the society as a whole regarding the availability and use of information. The paper, “Chinese Collections in Museums on the Web: Current Status, Problems, and Future,” addresses the important issue that the museums need a systematic approach to serve their external users. Such an approach has not been planned at most museums, since the museums focus on their internal users. Museum visitors, scholars, and educators look for information differently. The museums are facing the following challenges: understanding external users’ differences and deriving information from the registrar databases to serve these different users. The museums need to evaluate their available personnel and resources for such services. Should educational/community outreach programs come first or detailed scholarly materials? They need to know how to market their digital resources and define their priorities. This paper was from a field work conducted at six museums with significant Chinese collections in the U.S. So far no one has conducted such work at several museums simultaneously. The results of the project provided in-depth findings regarding the practice of analog image management at the six museums and problems of a management transition from analog to digital images. The problems range from organizational missions and priorities to museums practitioners’ acceptance of technologies as part of their job responsibilities. The issues investigated in this project were not only applicable to cultural institutions but also valuable to different organizations regarding the use of information technologies to fulfill organizational responsibilities.

The two papers published in the Library Quarterly present a framework for the construction of digital libraries for K-12 math education. In this framework, we discussed topics from library and information science to education and pubic policy, which presented an interdisciplinary viewpoint of the construction of digital libraries. The major goal of the framework is to consider how to bring the larger computationally intensive collections called digital libraries closer to the existing structures and practices of learners and teachers, while recognizing the new functionalities and learning opportunities that digital libraries offer. This first paper concentrates on (1) information organization, (2) information literacy, and (3) integrated learning with multimedia materials. Part I emphasizes the importance of communication, community building, and learning activities that use different media for the design of digital functionalities and online collections of mathematics learning materials. Part II reviews (4) adoption of new standards for mathematics education, (5) integration of pertinent changes in educational policy, and (6) assurance of pedagogic and political accountability. Accountability has become the core of the educational reform initiated by federal policies and measured by state-mandated educational standards. These political circumstances, as well as communication and collaboration, must be constitutively involved in the iterative design, implementation, and evaluation of digital libraries.

The two papers conclude with specific recommendations for digital libraries meant to support K-12 mathematics education. In Part I, we recommend that successful digital libraries for K-12 math education must provide different indexing mechanisms, some aligned with educational standards; access to synonyms, some also linked to educational standards; a range of resources with regard to difficulty and learning capability, also calibrated with educational standards; multiple retrieval mechanisms and interfaces; text as well as multimedia sources; ability to create and manipulate objects online; information visualization functions; ability to reflect on learning and create narratives; and support of exploratory learning and open inquiry.

In Part II, we proposed that successful digital libraries for K-12 math education must have support of learning goals and activities: explicit links to “content” standards developed by local mathematics teachers and teachers’ professional associations; reinforcement of existing “indigenous” mathematical literacies and bridging them to professional standards and practices: flexibility/customization and standardization; integration of educational policies and standards, curriculum implementation, and digital libraries; emphasis on educational achievement through multiple methods of evaluation; support of increased equity; and responsiveness to systematic review of copyright statutes, regulations, and case law.

From User Studies to the Socio-technical Aspect of Information Technologies

Within the research area of image management, I was also interested in relationships between users and image management systems. I learned valuable lessons from the 2002 museum project while studying participants in the six museums. Through my observations and interviews with the participants, I gained a deeper appreciation for the notion that socio-technical aspects have a tremendous impact on the implementation of information technologies in organizations. Meanwhile, teaching the Human-Information Interaction course also gave me a good opportunity to guide students to study literature on organizational changes and information technologies.

I have been working with several students on this general area and have published papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings. Gilok Choi (my doctoral advisee) and I co-authored a paper entitled “Construction of a Digital Video Library: A Socio-Technical Pilot Study on College Students' Attitudes” to be published in the September/2005 issue of the Journal of Academic Librarianship. Students from the course on Human Information Interaction were also very productive. I guided them to present papers at several annual meetings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) and its Information Architecture Summit. My collaboration with students has enriched both the students’ academic records and my own teaching experiences.

Dr. Mary Lynn Rice-Lively and I are producing a manuscript entitled Scenarios and Information Design: A Practical Guide which will be published by Chandos Publishing Limited, Oxford, England. The target audience of the book is college students and practitioners. The purpose of the book is to provide practical applications for theoretical concepts, illustrate concepts with case studies, reinforce content with end-of-chapter exercises, emphasize user-oriented information design techniques, and develop strategies for scenario-based planning.

Contributions of the Publications ( Socio-technical Aspect of Information Technologies) : I have addressed the socio-technical issues in several publications mentioned earlier. The findings of the papers indicated gaps among individuals, organizations, and the society as a whole regarding the use of technologies for information services. For example, I discovered that museum practitioners had different ideas about the development of digital museum collections and their usage. Disagreements ranged from the descriptions of museum collections and the format of the descriptions to whom should or could contribute the descriptions. Such conflicts have great impact on the construction of digital museums.

In the paper, “ Construction of a Digital Video Library: A Socio-Technical Pilot Study on College Students’ Attitudes,” Gilok Choi (doctoral advisee) and I investigated social-technical aspects of digital video libraries based on college students’ learning experiences and perspectives. We were interested in how well college students (a social group) accepted online educational AV materials (new technologies) and what their expectations were. We examined: 1) current uses of AV materials provided by library services, 2) students’ expectations regarding online AV materials, and 3) the relationship between students’ knowledge of computer technology and their perceptions of online AV materials. Forty-one students in biology classes were studied through a survey and individual interviews. Findings regarding the students’ knowledge of computer technology , experiences with AV materials , and expectations of online AV materials were presented.

These above publications have demonstrated my research achievements. The contributions of the publications have validated the values of the previous studies (Enser and McGregor, 1992; and Jorgensen, 1995) on image management; discovered more details regarding image-searching behaviors in the field of art history; presented a holistic framework for the construction of digital libraries for K-12 mathematics education; identified museum practitioners’ image-using behaviors and impact of such behaviors on the development of digital museums; and examined social acceptance of college students regarding the implementation of a digital video library.