ASIS&T annual meeting pre‐conference activities: Evolving and emerging research methods: 2012 ASIS&T SIG/USE symposium

Abstract

AbstractEditor's SummarySIG/USE celebrated members' work and achievements in research methods at the 2012 ASIS&T Annual Meeting through a keynote speech, brief talks and awards. In her opening talk, professor Lisa Given challenged attendees to expand research methods to engage participants more fully, include qualitative findings and explore information behavior in nontraditional media. The topics of two‐minute lightning talks ranged from research techniques for exploring young people's information behavior to imaging brain activity related to relevance decisions. Others addressed incorporating mobile technologies in research, collaborative search, direct interaction with participants in contrast with background server log checks and working with data collections from social Q&A sites. Following the talks, small group discussions further explored topics such as cognitive approaches, content analysis and text analytics and usability. The symposium wound to a close with the 2011 Elfreda A. Chatman Research Award presentation on information strategies of the homeless and a preview of the 2012 proposed study on refugees' information seeking. Additional awards were presented for best paper and poster to support travel and further presentations. Pertti Vakkari was recognized for outstanding contributions to information behavior research and was inducted into the SIG/USE Academy of Fellows.