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Failure in research is an underexplored topic in the information science literature. Many instances of research failure go unreported due to the success‐oriented nature of academic culture, and academic publishing in particular. In not discussing, or failing to enable the discussion and reporting of research failures, important learning opportunities are being missed by the information science community. The aim of this panel is to explore these missed opportunities and to consider the need for approaches to research design, research collaboration and relationships, community engagement, publishing, mentorship, and teaching that will make room for such discussions to take place. The panel will bring together prominent information researchers to discuss failure in research in a series of short themed provocations and moderated group discussion activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing recognition of the challenges academics working on short‐term contracts experience, as well as universities' increasing reliance on their labor. While discussions of these issues have expanded, there is a lack of empirical research around the information experiences of contract academic staff. This poster reports on initial findings of a qualitative research project that interviewed 34 contract academic staff (CAS) from across Canada, exploring institutional provisions of information, information practices in the workplace, and how marginalization and social inclusion influence workplace information practices. We present preliminary findings in three themes: precarity and uncertainty necessitate holistic and situational understandings, exclusion and isolation are enacted and experienced on many levels, and uncertainty as a barrier to investment and furthering careers, exploring what these findings mean for contract academic staff members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first phase of a larger research project exploring the information practices of contract academic staff, a review of the wider literature around academic casualization was conducted. This research begins to address the need for greater understanding of the experiences of these workers in the information‐intensive environments of higher education. A scoping review methodology was applied, and both academic and grey literature from multiple disciplines was reviewed. The literature points to casualization in academia as a growing phenomenon that has important consequences for staff, students, and universities themselves. This poster discusses the initial themes emerging from the literature, including: the precarity and marginalization of academic staff, the unrecognized emotional labor shaping information practices, and the impacts of multiple temporalities on the work, careers, and lives of such staff. The findings suggest the need for empirical research to address the lack of knowledge around the information environments of contract academics and set the stage for the next phases of the research project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information resilience has become a topic of interest to the information science community in recent years. The COVID‐19 pandemic has shone a light on the vulnerability of information and other networks and the impact on information providers and the information seekers who rely on them. In an exploratory study, we interviewed support workers who act as information intermediaries as part of their work roles about their experiences of providing information to vulnerable and marginalised people during the UK COVID‐19 lockdown. We present findings organised in three themes: shifting client information needs and support provisions, adjusting information sharing and communication practices and workarounds for physical information work. Throughout the themes, information resilience is evident as information intermediaries adapt their work practices to ensure they can continue to serve their clients. In this first stage of research our findings provide insight into the changes to information intermediaries' information behaviour and information work during a crisis, as well as the impact of these changes on the services they provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although open access (OA) to research outputs has been proven to improve research readership, citation, and impact, the uptake of OA in some disciplines has remained low. In this paper, we investigated and compared OA publishing practices of early career and mid‐career researchers in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) disciplines in Canada. The descriptive survey design with the use of online questionnaire was employed. Participants were drawn from a group of 15 public research universities via their openly available emails on university websites. Survey data was analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings show that in the last three years, 74.1% of mid‐career researchers have published in OA journals, compared to 63.1% of early career researchers. However, OA publishing of monographs (21.3%) and conference proceedings (29.9%), as well as the frequency and extent OA publishing remains low among all participants. ANOVA results (F [2, 218] = 3.683, p =.027, 휂2 =.033) showed that 3.3% of the variance in researchers' OA publishing frequency can be attributed to their disciplines. Overall, OA publishing among researchers in the HASS disciplines is still low. Hence, there is a need to identify factors that facilitate or hinder HASS researchers' OA publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting research that has social impact is more than simply disseminating research when it is completed. It is more than looking at the influence research has on a research field or discipline. Conducting research that has social impact is a process of engaging communities in the research process and ensuring that the communities that take part in the research experience benefits. Socially impactful research is messy and challenging. It takes commitment from researchers to consider social impact and integrate practices into the entire research process from planning to collecting data, to communicating and implementing findings with communities. While this research is taking place within the field of information behavior/information practices, many of the ways this research is carried out are hidden. In this panel, four information behavior/information practice researchers will discuss research projects that have social impact and "pull back the curtain" on their approach to this research, what this means practically for carrying out this research, as well as how research findings are communicated and applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal information networks are the personal connections of friends, family and colleagues that people use to help them find information. Recently, a great deal of attention has been paid to social network sites, and other social media, as a key source of information and misinformation in contemporary society. This panel will probe deeper, to investigate the personal connections that underpin and lie behind the social connections visible on social network sites. This issue is of increasing importance as more of our everyday lives are moved online. We will debate what we actually know, and do not know, about how people find information through others, both on‐ and off‐line. From the panel we hope to create a network of scholars interested in creating a research agenda to make informal networks a focus of study going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper examines social interaction (e.g. asking colleagues for help in the lunchroom) as an informative experience, a way to understand oneself and situation. The process of coming to an understanding is frequently hidden, but may be brought to light by examining the experiences of individuals undergoing a transition – a change that requires them to redefine their sense of self and situation. Using exemplars from previous research and drawing on Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of situated learning, this paper explores the importance of social interaction to information practices. The role of social interaction will be discussed, including: information seeking to become part of a community, and social interaction as a source of information and as a site for information comparison (a type of information use) to situate oneself in a new environment. The paper proposes making social interaction a focus of study to better understand how individuals use information to change perception about and situate themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This research examined the information behavior of parents (including legal guardians) during an emergent health situation with a child. Although many studies examine health-related information behaviors, very few explore health consumers' information practices during moments of health crisis. This study explored parents' information needs, source use, and source preferences during a visit to the emergency department. An online questionnaire was administered using iPads given to 897 parents with children at one of 32 participating general emergency departments (ED) across Canada. Before taking their child to the ED, only 38.8% (n=348) of parents looked for information; those who did search looked most frequently for information about specific symptoms or severity of illness. Prior to visiting the ED the sources most frequently accessed were the internet and direct contact with healthcare professionals. At the emergency department, parents' information needs centred on immediate concerns, including explanations of their child's illness, treatments, and care instructions. Household income, education level, and parents' age were factors that affected information seeking in emergent health situations. Overwhelmingly, speaking to a healthcare professional in person is the typical and preferred way to obtain health information when facing a health crisis involving a child. The results have implications for how and when healthcare information is shared; the findings add to the limited research on parents' information behavior, particularly their roles as information proxies for their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a qualitative study of the information behavior of early career academics transitioning from doctoral studies to their first continuing academic positions, participants used the phrase "bouncing ideas" with relative frequency to describe their interactions with colleagues. Using constructivist grounded theory methodology, interviews with 20 early career academics were analyzed and for themes and sub‐themes. "Bouncing ideas" emerged as a sub‐theme, related to collegial information exchange, an important way early career academics find workplace information. Despite its common usage, the term remained vague in participant discussions and unexamined in the information science literature. This poster will investigate the meaning of "bouncing ideas" as used by participants, exploring its potential constituent parts including: information seeking, information sharing, collaboration, and information creation. ASIS&T conference attendees will be encouraged to think about and actively engage in discussion about the phrase, in an attempt to answer the research question, What does "bouncing ideas" mean? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics are increasingly being asked to demonstrate the impact of their research beyond the walls of the academy. Societal impact measures were introduced as part of the Research Excellence Framework exercise in the UK in 2014 with a number of other countries, including Australia, considering similar assessments. As societal impact measures continue to proliferate there will be significant implications for academics, institutions, and academic libraries to document and support these activities. Information science is well-placed not only to guide practical supports within our institutions, but also to develop metrics and qualitative approaches to assess this type of research impact. This exploratory qualitative study -- situated in a constructivist grounded theory methodology -- investigated academics' experiences and perceptions of the concept of societal research impact and the supports needed to facilitate this work. The definition of impact varied greatly among participants, but regardless of the participant's conception, interviewees felt that they were not prepared, trained, or had access to the needed supports to adequately document non-academic types of impact. The data point to a number of emergent themes including a lack of relevant methodologies for tracking societal impact, the shortcomings of metrics approaches to document impact outside of academe, and the need for academic libraries to extend current reference and training supports to provide researchers with the tools and skills needed in this new impact landscape. Implications for research and development in information science related to scholarly communication, researchers' information behaviors, and impact measures are also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been much interest in children's use of different technologies, research is often done with schoolage children in their classrooms. This exploratory research study looks at fifteen preschool children (aged three to five) in Queensland, Australia and their use of different technologies in their own homes. This paper examines data from a checklist of technologies available in the home and video recording data of children's interactions with online technologies and other people captured by parents, which were analyzed using a modified 'seating sweeps' (Given & Leckie 2003) approach to gain a detailed, descriptive analysis of the home environment. A range of technologies are available to children, with the television and DVD player being most common in the home. Unlike desktop and laptop computers, which were restricted to adult use in half of homes, mobile computing devices (e.g., tablets and smartphones) were quite prevalent and generally available for children's use. In almost all cases children used devices designed for adults and often used them in common spaces in the home, such as the home office (38%) or living room (36%). Many children (45%) engaged independently with technology, able to accomplish activities and learn on their own. This study contributes to a growing body of literature about how young children connect to technology and the growing digital world around them. Examining children's interaction with technology and in the home environment allows researchers to better understand the role of technology in children's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Information Science (IS), as well as other disciplines, discourse analysis has been used to extend the range of contextual data gathered using other research approaches. This form of textual analysis can enrich our understanding of complex information practices and contexts, particularly in relation to the ways that society and individuals construct understandings of various phenomena. However, not all discourse analysis approaches are the same; linguistic, Foucouldian, and psycho-social discourse analysis practices vary in their intent and their application. This panel will provide an overview of the discourse analysis methodology, including how the approach is conducted in various disciplines. By focusing on three projects by IS scholars that use discourse analysis, the range of data collection and analysis possibilities - including benefits and limitations of the approach - will be explored. The panel will also discuss how discourse analysis can be used in mixed methods studies, or with research participants engaged in other methods, to extend the research knowledge in the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]