By: Diane Stirling
(315) 443-8975
School of Information Studies (iSchool) Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Barbara Kwasnik participated in several key academic activities at the annual American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) conference this week.
Along with Anne Diekema, an iSchool Ph.D. graduate who is now an assistant professor at Utah State University, Kwasnik conducted a working session on the topic, “Cognitive Work Analysis for More Practical Progress in PIM.” The goal of the session was to use the CWA framework to better support personal information management tasks by understanding the constraints and context of the work being accomplished, she said. Kwasnik and Diekema plan to continue the analysis in the coming year, providing an assessment of how distance learning supports or fail to support personal information management.
Kwasnik also was part of the 22nd annual workshop sponsored by the Special Interest Group on Classification Research (SIG/CR). The classification workshop was originated by Kwasnik and a colleague more than two decades ago to review classification techniques (such as ontologies, metadata, and concept networks) and to review the role of classification principles in studying Big Data as a phenomenon in and of itself.
In addition, Kwasnik also served as a panelist for the session, “Preparing for Academic Job Market: An Interactive Panel for Doctoral Students.” The panel provides doctoral students who are in the job market with “everything from war stories to tips and pointers for on-campus visits,” Kwasnik added. Working with her on the panel was Howard Rosenbaum, an iSchool Ph.D. program graduate who now is associate dean at Indiana University.
iSchool alumni who participated in this year’s ASIS&T conference included Jiangping Chen, Anne Diekema, Philip Doty, Sanda Erdelez, Kristin Eschenfelder, Shuyuan Ho, Joe Jaynes, Youngseek Kim, Howard Rosenbaum, Victoria Rubin, Candy Schwartz, Linda Smith, and Kyunghye Yoon, according to Kwasnik. Representing the current group of doctoral students at the iSchool at the conference were Angela Ramnarine-Rieks and Jasy Liew.
Additional faculty attending ASIS&T were Dean Elizabeth Liddy and Stephen Sawyer, director of the school’s Ph.D. program, professor, and associate dean for research.