SCN: UW-SLIS Colloquium / 3-2-2000 / Ann P. Bishop

[Ethan Scarl]

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From: Maija Haefer [mailto:maijah at u.washington.edu]

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UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Seattle, Washington 98195

School of Library & Information Science
Box 352930; Tel.:(206) 543-1794

COLLOQUIUM

SPEAKER:	Ann P. Bishop, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

TITLE:		Socially Grounded Design of Information Systems: An Example
from Community Health

DATE:		Thursday, March 2, 2000

TIME:		3:30 pm

PLACE:		Allen Auditorium
Map available from:  http://www.washington.edu/home/maps/northcentral.html

HOST:		Efthimis N. Efthimiadis, SLIS, UW

ABSTRACT:

Socially grounded system design is based on four simple principles. First,
it includes an assessment of the systems social consequences, especially
for traditionally marginalized groups. Second, it devotes close attention
to social practices associated with system use. Third, it includes
attention to social interactions and relationships related to system
use. And finally, it strives to maximize the participation of a broad
spectrum of potential users in all stages of the system's lifecycle, from
design and testing through implementation and evaluation. My current
Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) project involves working
with members of SisterNet, a local grassroots group, to develop web-based
information services that address the health concerns of African American
women in local community. As part of this project (for more information,
see the project website at http://www.prairienet.org/imls/), we are
employing use scenarios to help us design a service that local women will
find both usable and useful. Use scenarios are socially-grounded,
empirically based descriptions of real information needs and practices
that guide the design of a system and are employed further to judge its
usability, measure use, and assess outcomes. They form a bridge between
system developers and potential users, and between current and future
practice. As described by John Carroll--a pioneer of the scenario approach
to system design--use scenarios may be contrasted to other methods for
studying use and users in that they provide concrete descriptions, focus
on particular instances, are more open and informal, and aim at
envisioned (as opposed to specified) outcomes. This presentation will
report on our progress in employing use scenarios in the needs assessment
and usabilty testing stages of our current IMLS project.
......
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:

Ann Peterson Bishop is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of
Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois. Her major
interest lies in user-based approaches to the design and evaluation of
information services. Ann teaches courses in community information
systems, information needs and uses, knowledge organization and access,
social informatics, and information policy. Her research focuses on
socially-grounded research methods and the study of goals and outcomes
associated with the use of information systems by disenfranchised groups.  

Ann is currently Principal Investigator for "Community-Based Creation of
Networked Information Services: Developing Tools and Guidelines for Public
Libraries," a two-year project sponsored by the U.S. Institute for Museum
and Library Services.  She also serves as Principal Investigator for the
"Community Networking Initiative," a 2-yr. project--just winding
down--that was funded for over $1 million by the Kellogg Foundation and
the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program
(TIIAP) in the Dept. of Commerce. The research and evaluation component of
this project involves studying community information needs and computing
practices in low-income African American neighborhoods. Ann recently
served as Co-Principal Investigator in charge of needs assessment and
evaluation for the $4 million University of Illinois' NSF/ARPA/NASA
Digital Libraries Initiative project (1994-98). 

Along with Greg Newby, Ann is a co-founder of Prairienet, the community
network that serves East Central Illinois. She served on the national
advisory panel for the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment's 1995 study
of telecommunications technologies and Native Americans.  

................
Recent Publications:

Bishop, A.P. (In press). Socially grounded design and evaluation: The role
of use scenarios. In Bishop, A.P., Buttenfield, B.P., & Van House, N.
(Eds.). Digital library use: Social practice in design and evaluation.
Cambridge: MIT Press. 

Mehra, B., Bishop, A. P., & Bazzell, I. (In press). The role of use
scenarios in developing a community health information system. Bulletin of
the American Society for Information Science. 

Bishop, A. P. (2000). Communities for the new century. Journal of
Adolescent and Adult Literacy (JAAL), 45 (5).

Contractor, N., & Bishop, A. P. (2000). Reconfiguring community networks:
The case of PrairieKNOW. In Ishida, T. (Ed.). Digital cities: Experiences,
technologies and future perspectives. Munich: Springer. 

Bishop, A. P., Tidline, T., Shoemaker, S., & Salela, P. (1999). Public
libraries and networked information services in low-income communities.
Libraries & Information Science Research, 21 (3), 361-390. 

Bishop, A. P., Shoemaker, S., Tidline, T. J., and Salela, P. (1999).
Information exchange in low income neighborhoods: Implications for
community networking. In Woods, L. (Ed.). Knowledge: Creation,
Organization and Use. Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the
American Society for Information Science, Vol. 36 (pp. 443-449). Medford,
NJ: Information Today. 

.........

NOTE: The lecture is free.

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