School of Information Studies
Areas of Staff Expertise: Research Topics
Library & Information Management
Stuart Ferguson
Stuart Ferguson's doctoral work built on previous studies in political and literary theory and he continues to be interested in this inter-disciplinary field. His other research has focussed on information ethics and, more recently, knowledge management. Other related fields are information politics and human aspects of technology.
Philip Hider
Philip Hider's research interests are focussed on metadata and their use in information and document retrieval. This field is also known as information organisation, or knowledge organisation; in librarianship, it is also referred to as bibliographic control. Overlapping areas include information architecture, digtial libraries, and online communication.
Anne Lloyd
Anne Lloyd's primary research interests lie in the field of information literacy in theoretical and applied contexts, information practice and workplace learning. She has also researched in the area of lost and missing documentary heritage and has a strong interest in theoretical constructions of significance and the application of the construct in memory institutions.
Damian Lodge
Damian Lodge's research interests include library management, specifically developing positive cultures in libraries to help library managers manage change. Damian also researches, publishes and consults in the areas of performance measurement in libraries, building learning cultures, internet usage and peer to peer networks.
John Mills
John Mills's research interests include information-seeking behaviour, improving user-librarian interaction in service provision, international student experience and strategies for teaching and learning improvement for domestic DE and international students.
Bob Pymm
Bob Pymm is interested in the long term retention and preservation of the records of our society. These include both traditional records such as documents and audio-visual materials, as well as digital objects of all kinds. Bob's current research projects include:
- As part of a team, examining Web archiving and the manner in which websites can be collected and preserved. This includes examination of the National Library's whole domain harvests and the issues that this raises for access and preservation.
- Looking at the issues faced by commercial organisations and how they manage their digital records.
- Audiovisual archiving generally and more specifically, broadcast archiving and the impact that the move from physical media (tape) to digital has had on acquisition and preservation of these materials.
- The collecting and preservation of popular culture materials, including those relating to local history (Radio Station 2WG Women's Club for instance), and more broadly, such as television, video productions and digital objects.
Roy Sanders
Roy Sanders is currently researching the demand and need for undergraduate programs in Library and Information Management, and identifying the key differences between the Bachelor degree graduates and Graduate Diploma graduates, especially from the employers' viewpoint.
Ongoing research also into student attrition, first year student success, and graduate employment.
Jake Wallis
Jake Wallis has a background in digital library research, having worked on a range of large scale digitisation and electronic publishing projects. Jake’s research interests revolve broadly around the concept of the Information Society, with a particular focus on the emancipatory potential of information, culture and technology, and their dialectical relationships with power, dominance and control. His current research explores the nature of the Australian web domain in the contexts of online democracy and cultural plurality.
Kirsty Williamson
Kirsty Williamson is Director of Information and Telecommunications Needs Research, affiliated with Monash University and CSU. Kirsty's research interests are:
Information-Seeking Behaviour (information needs and sources; information use, including plagiarism; information literacy) with target groups including older adults, people with disabilities, online investors, secondary school students, people with breast cancer
Information and Communication Technologies - Social and cultural issues (internet use; web design; the digital divide particularly regarding older people and people with disabilities; online banking; impact of technological change.
The Future of Public Libraries - responsiveness to demographic and technological change.
Evaluation of School Libraries
Kirsty has three current Australian Research Council grants and one industry-funded project.
Suzanne Lipu
Suzanne Lipu's research interests focus on information literacy in relation to personal empowerment, communities and social change. Suzanne is particularly interested in indigenous womens perspectives and developing countries. Suzanne's current research is conducted within critical, postcolonial feminist frameworks and employs methods and research designs respecting these (including colloborative and narrative research). Her areas of expertise are information literacy, information issues in society, women's information issues, internationalisation of Australian higer education and Papua New Guinea. Suzanne's major research project is her PhD entitled Information Literacy: The Social Agenda - A Feminist exploration of information literacy, personal empowerment, and internationalisation.
Teacher Librarianship
Ashley Freeman
Ashley Freeman's research is currently in two areas - Bibliographic organisation in the school library context and educational history. His research in educational history largely focuses on New South Wales. His current work in this area is on itinerant education within the NSW government education system in the nineteenth century. Ashley's research in bibliographic organisation in the school library context largely focuses on subject access. He is currently working on a joint project with Philip Hider comparing the subject access provided by OPACS by SCIS Subject Headings (SCISSH) with that provided by the Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT).
Lyn Hay
- Teaching and leadership roles of the teacher librarian
- Information literacy
- ICT integration in schools
- Information policy issues in schools
- The impact of school libraries on student learning
- Principal influence and school libraries
- Smart information use as both concept and practice
- Online communities and workgroups
James Herring
James Herring's research interests lie in the fields of information literacy in schools, student use of instructional websites in schools and motivation and job satisfaction amongst teacher librarians. His expertise lies in developing information literacy, advanced searching and the use of Web 2.0 by teacher librarians in schools. James main current project is examining the extent to which Year 7 students transfer information literacy skills across time and subjects.
Joy McGregor
- Flexible scheduling in school libraries
- Thinking skills and information use
- Teaching role of the teacher librarian
- School libraries and learning
- Information use and plagiarism
- Inquiry–based learning
Arthur Winzenried
Arthur Winzenried's most recent doctoral work built on a series of international Delphi studies probing the future shape of libraries and in particular their staff. Branching from this (though continuing to occasionally operate a Delphi investigation to revisit TL role futures), Arthur has focused on the TL as information manager/ leader in provision of information to digital learning hubs; for example, IWBs. Recent research for publication in regards to the historical context of technology in learning has laid the foundation for more specific investigation of IWBs and other forms of colloborative learning hubs.