Barbara teaches in the areas of organization of information, theory of classification, and information science. She is especially interested in how classifications are translated from one culture or application to another. The purpose is to help support increasingly diverse contexts. Other ongoing research (with Kevin Crowston) includes investigating whether genre information can help in searching, and a project (with Carsten Oesterlund) on the nature of documents and documenting work.
Classification
Translation of classifications: Issues and solutions as exemplified in the Korean Decimal Classification. (with You-Lee Chun), Proceedings of the ISKO Conference (2004)
The aim of this study was to describe how the Korean Decimal Classification (KDC), which...
A Framework for creating a facetted classification for genres: Addressing issues of multidimensionality. (with Barbara H. Kwasnik), Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Hawai'i International Conference on System Science (HICSS-37) (2004)
People recognize and use document genres as a way of identifying useful information and of...
Stretching conceptual structures in classifications across languages and cultures. (with Victoria L. Rubin), Cataloging and Classification Quarterly (2003)
The authors describe the difficulties of translating classifications from a source language and culture to...
"Commercial Websites and the Use of Classification Schemes: The Case of amazon.com." In Lopez-Huertas, Maria J. Challenges in Knowledge Representation and Organization for the 21st Century: Integration of Knowledge across Boundaries., Proceedings of the Seventh International ISKO Conference. (2002)
The structure and use of the classification for books on the Amazon.com website are described...
Identifying document genres to improve web search effectiveness. The Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (with K. Crowston, M. Nilan, and D. Roussinov), The American Society for Information Science and Technology (2000)
Browsing
Genre-based navigation on the web (with Kevin Crowston, M. Nilan, X. Liu, and J. Cai), Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Hawai'i International Conference on System Science (HICSS-34) (2001)
We report on our ongoing study of using the genre of Web pages to facilitate...
A descriptive study of the functional components of browsing., Proceedings of the IFIP TC2/WG2.7 Working conference on Engineering for Human Computer Interaction (1992)
The paper describes a descriptive study of the functional components of browsing, which is viewed...
An analysis by means of naturalistic approaches of two complex behaviors. In Gilbert, Nigel (Ed.) Proceedings of the Workshop on Complex Systems, Ethnomethodology and Interaction Analysis., American Association for Artificial intelligence Conference. (1990)
This paper describes two studies I which naturalistic approaches were used to investigate complex human...
Extraction of knowledge about the cognitive process of browsing from discourse and thinking-aloud protocols. Also published as part of: Kwasnik, B. et al Automatic Knowledge extraction from dictionary text: Project development. (with Elizabeth D. Liddy and Myaeng H. Sung), International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligent. (1989)
Genres of Digital documents
Genres of digital documents: Introduction to the special issue. (with Kevin Crowston), Information Technology & People (2005)
Purpose – To introduce the special issue on “Genres of digital documents.” While there are...