Built environment education, research and practice: integrating diverse interests to make an impact

The role of the academic in the built environment seems generally to be not well understood or articulated. While this problem is not unique to our field, there are plenty of examples in a wide range of academic disciplines where the academic role has been fully articulated. But built environment academics have tended not to look beyond their own literature and their own vocational context in trying to give meaning to their academic work. The purpose of this keynote presentation is to explore the context of academic work generally and the connections between education, research and practice in the built environment, specifically. By drawing on ideas from the sociology of the professions, the role of universities, and the fundamentals of social science research, a case is made that helps to explain the kind of problems that routinely obstruct academic progress in our field. This discussion reveals that while there are likely to be great weaknesses in much of what is published and taught in the built environment, it is not too great a stretch to provide a more robust understanding and a good basis for developing our field in a way that would enable us collectively to make a major contribution to theory-building, theory-testing and to make a good stab at tackling some of the problems facing society at large. There is no reason to disregard the fundamental academic disciplines that underpin our knowledge of the built environment. If we contextualise our work in these more fundamental disciplines, there is every reason to think that we can have a much greater impact that we have experienced to date.

A gestalt generated from grounded theory concerning intuition in IS research

Intuition is an important and under-researched concept in information systems. Prior exploratory research has shown that that there is potential to characterize the use of intuition in academic information systems research. This paper extends this research to all of the available issues of two leading IS journals with the aim of reaching an approximation of theoretical saturation. Specifically, the entire text of MISQ and ISR was reviewed for the years 1990 through 2009 using searchable PDF versions of these publications. All references to intuition were coded on a basis consistent with Grounded Theory, interpreted as a gestalt and represented as a mind-map. In the period 1990-2009, 681 incidents of the use of "intuition", and related terms were found in the articles reviewed, representing a greater range of codes than prior research. In addition, codes were assigned to all issues of MIS Quarterly from commencement of publication to the end of the 2012 publication year to support the conjecture that coding saturation has been approximated. The most prominent use of the term of "intuition" was coded as "Intuition as Authority" in which intuition was used to validate a statement, research objective or a finding; representing approximately 34 per cent of codes assigned. In research articles where mathematical analysis was presented, researchers not infrequently commented on the degree to which a mathematical formulation was "intuitive"; this was the second most common coding representing approximately 16 per cent of the codes. The possibly most impactful use of the term "intuition" was "Intuition as Outcome", representing approximately 7 per cent of all coding, which characterized research results as adding to the intuitive understanding of a research topic or phenomena.This research aims to contribute to a greater theoretical understanding of the use of intuition in academic IS research publications. It provides potential benefits to practitioners by providing insight into the use of intuition in IS management, for example, emphasizing the emerging importance of "intuitive technology". Research directions include the creation of reflective and/or formative constructs for intuition in information systems research and the expansion of this novel research method to additional IS academic publications and topics.

Future, Fortune, and the graphic design of information

This is a study of graphic information designed for Future Books/Future magazine (UK) and Fortune magazine (USA) in the years immediately after the Second World War. It highlights work made by the Isotype Institute for Future, which is then situated against contributions by Abram Games and F. H. K. Henrion. Similar work in Fortune under the art editorship of Will Burtin is discussed in a parallel account, drawing on examples by him and by others including György Kepes, Matthew Liebowitz, Alex Steinweiss and Ladislav Sutnar. Attention is drawn to links and relationships between to the two periodicals and the graphic information published in both. Further comparisons are made between underlying editorial and design strategies pursued by Otto Neurath (Isotype Institute) and Will Burtin. An argument is made for recognising the little-known innovations of Future alongside the long-acknowledged innovations of Fortune.

Order and disorder in fiction labyrinths: the librarians` representations in some contemporary cultural productions

This paper, first result of a larger research, proposes a query about some aspects of social representation of libraries and librarians, as they appear in literary and cinematographic productions. Little by little, this query, which arose from purposes of organizing catalogues, revealed elements that established different series, in which the narrative genre (literary or cinematographic) has no relevance to either libraries or librarians` representations. The presence of these elements seems to show some expectations and utopias in relation to the common knowledge, independently from narratives being located in the past, in the present or in the future, stimulating reflection on some medieval and baroque traditions about the library universe and its main characters, the librarians. The cinematographic material selected for research was The time machine, Farenheit 451, The day after tomorrow, Star Wars - episode II and the novels Martin Eden, The man without qualities, The time machine and La sombra del viento.

Quantitative analysis of indexed publications on seventeen model organisms in nine countries, from 1974 to 2006

Developed countries have an even distribution of published papers on the seventeen model organisms. Developing countries have biased preferences for a few model organisms which are associated with endemic human diseases. A variant of the Hirsch-index, that we call the mean (mo)h-index (""model organism h-index""), shows an exponential relationship with the amount of papers published in each country on the selected model organisms. Developing countries cluster together with low mean (mo)h-indexes, even those with high number of publications. The growth curves of publications on the recent model Caenorhabditis elegans in developed countries shows different formats. We also analyzed the growth curves of indexed publications originating from developing countries. Brazil and South Korea were selected for this comparison. The most prevalent model organisms in those countries show different growth curves when compared to a global analysis, reflecting the size and composition of their research communities.

Community College Student and Faculty Information Needs and Information Seeking: an Ethnographic Study

This presentation was offered as part of the CUNY Library Assessment Conference, Reinventing Libraries: Reinventing Assessment, held at the City University of New York in June 2014.

Assessing the Implications of Faculty Beliefs and Expectations for Information Literacy Instruction

This presentation was offered as part of the CUNY Library Assessment Conference, Reinventing Libraries: Reinventing Assessment, held at the City University of New York in June 2014.