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In response to the rising calls for transparency in displaying collections information, an ongoing research project is developing and studying provenance research methods in four domains, which cross museum and archive settings and their legal oversight in the United States: art collections (furthermore colonial era and Nazi‐looted era), special collections and manuscripts, Native and Indigenous research, and local or rural history collections. We illustrate three resilient values underpinning successful or at least informative provenance research: transparency, due diligence, and digital inclusion. Together the values, when practiced further, will guide information professionals towards researching collections provenance more effectively according to internal and public‐facing goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been an increased focus on information encountering and serendipity within information behavior research and practice. Serendipity has the potential to facilitate creativity and innovation in various spheres, including in libraries, archives and museums. However, do we wait for chance to occur, or can serendipity be designed and facilitated? What are the characteristics of systems that support serendipitous discovery, and what methods can be used to study its occurrence? Extending and building on the concepts and definitions introduced at a 2016 ASIS&T Annual Meeting panel led by Erdelez, we feature in this 40‐min panel innovative work that creates opportunities for discovery within research spaces. Attendees engage through an interactive two‐part discussion and a hands‐on ideation session on impacts and guidelines for systems designed to facilitate serendipity, emphasizing sustainable, accessible researcher and user experiences. Presenters focus on the role of socio‐technical constraints and affordances to inform systems' design in a variety of research contexts, each contributing expertise in navigating particular issues in serendipity research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context—"the complex web of social relations which [the individual] inhabits" (Spratt & Florian, Teaching and Teacher Education, 2015, 49, 89–96, p. 90) touches everything, including individual and group circumstances, positionalities, feelings, experiences, and environments. Context shapes not only how we communicate information in the field and in the classroom, but also several significant processes: searching for information, accessing information, and the interpretation and use of information (Encheva, Journal of Library Administration, 2016, 56, 595–602; Mitchell, Technical Services Quarterly, 2017, 34, 283–296; Yeo et al., The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2015, 658, 172–191). Furthermore, such contexts affect how information scientists teach and conduct their research and how information (in a classroom setting or otherwise) can be delivered to individuals and communities for action. How we, as information scholars and professionals, take individual and community contexts into account will affect our work. Issues of context will be thoroughly interrogated from a number of different perspectives by both the panelists and audience members in this interactive and participation‐based session. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humanities research informs people's movements across time and reshapes cultural worldviews. While we know that humanists integrate information resources into their research program and that serendipitous discoveries enable truly transformative knowledge creation, our picture of discovery in the humanities is unclear. There is an important role for information professionals to better support humanistic discovery as routine practice. To fully comprehend the complex research activities of humanities scholars it is necessary to expand upon existing models of information encountering (IE) by analyzing discovery episodes and the temporal and topical factors in play. We take particular interest in studying how scholars in the art history and archeology disciplines conceptualize, pursue, and often complete research projects. Ultimately we present an amended IE model that reveals intricate connections between IE, rediscovery, and altruistic collaboration mutually evolving over distinct timespans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research activities of humanities scholars are complex. Novel methodologies are needed to facilitate investigation of their information behavior processes. This poster presents a case study designed to evaluate use of information encountering (IE) model as a methodological framework for soliciting rich feedback about serendipity in information behavior via research activities of an art historian. The preliminary findings reveal intricate connections between information encountering and searching that evolve over a long period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to authenticate the meaning of collections and to preserve their evidentiary value, archivists create documents (finding aids) that describe the provenance and original order of the records (MacNeil, 1995). Metadata standards such as Encoded Archival Description (EAD) enable finding aids to be encoded, searched, and displayed online. However, recent research has begun to draw attention to problems with the quality of EAD finding aid data and metadata, and the encoding practices by which finding aids are created. Since the next frontier in archival description involves reusing finding aid data for advanced information visualization techniques that support additional ways of engaging with collections, there is a pressing need for further study of data quality and how it might impact information visualization. This work analyzes a set of 8729 finding aids aggregated by the Texas Archival Repository Online (TARO) using VADA, a visual analytic tool for finding aids. The results show previously unidentified problems that have significant impact on the ability to visualize this data. The paper explains how these problems relate to both EAD's design and the actual encoding practices of EAD, and provides recommendations for improving the quality of finding aid data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Recognizing that current curricula address but a sliver of the wide range of careers pursued by information studies graduates, a team worked collaboratively to design a syllabus for a graduate course dedicated to exploring the societal frames and characteristics of information work. Ultimately comprising 10 modules, the syllabus centers students' awareness of an expanded occupational landscape and evaluation of policies and labor structures impacting information workers. Created over the course of a semester, the syllabus complements an earlier set of empirical studies that revealed areas in which information educators might focus future teaching efforts. This paper articulates the role for iterative and collaborative processes in curriculum development and doctoral study around information work - a research arena requiring macroscopic and future-oriented thinking. We present the topical and pedagogical organization of the new syllabus and suggest paths forward for integrating its key concepts at other graduate and undergraduate levels of information studies coursework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Panel members discuss ongoing efforts to preserve and access four different types of historical resources useful to anyone interested in doing research and publication on the history of ASIST and the field of information science and technology generally. Each presenter will conclude with a discussion of areas of weakness/neglect in these resources, and recommendations for improvement. These resources are: (1) the archives of ASIST; (2) the foundational and developmental histories of ASIST Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and Chapters; (3) the photographic/visual record of ASIST; (4) the oral history record of ASIST and information science leaders. This progression will facilitate the panelists' discussion of opportunities for engaging with ASIST resources at the national, regional, and individual levels. Each panel member has extensive experience in working with the resources discussed and was a member of the 75th Anniversary Task Force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]