ITNR - Information and Telecommunications Needs Research

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A Focus on Information Research: from Online Investments, to Information Use and Plagiarism, to Public Libraries and Retired Baby Boomers.

(1) One Day, We'll All Invest This Way! Regulating Online Investment.

ARC Discovery Project: $285,000 over three years, 2005-2007. Chief Investigators: Professor Dimity Kingsford Smith, University of NSW, Dr Kirsty Williamson, MU, Professor Stephen Bottomley, Australian National University.

This project is investigating the need for legal regulation to increase the safety of online investing, given the greater vulnerability of investors who use this mode. The key ‘information’ focus of the project results from the need to examine the ways in which online investors seek financial information, as well as their knowledge and skills for so doing. The study is significant because little is known about how investors seek information without the advice of a professional adviser. While once it was possible to infer that most investors would act on the advice of their advisers, how investors make investment decisions in the non-advisory, direct execution circumstances which apply to online investing, is much more opaque. The findings of the research will be partly positioned in relation to theory and empirical research from the generic field of information-seeking behaviour, including through the Internet as frequently occurs with online investors. The findings will also be set in the context of some important bodies of legal and economic thinking about information, price formation, and investment decision making in financial markets.

The project is now beginning its second year when the empirical work will take place. The latter will consist of a preliminary survey to collect background information about the kinds of investments online investors are making, and their associated information-seeking activities. Based on the responses, a number of participants will be invited to take part in individual interviews so that in-depth perspectives can be obtained.

If you are an online investor and would be interested in taking part in the research, we would be very pleased to hear from you. We would also be grateful if you would tell others who are online investors who might be interested.

(2) Generating knowledge and avoiding plagiarism: Smart information use by secondary students.

ARC Linkage project: Total of $136,372 over two years, 2006-2007, including $110,372 from ARC and $26,500 from collaborating organisations. Chief Investigators (all from CSU): Dr Kirsty Williamson, Dr Joy McGregor, Professor John Weckert, Dr Yeslam Al-Saggaf. Partner Investigator: Suzette Boyd, Scotch College. Collaborating Organisations: Scotch College, Wesley College, Mater Christi College (all in Victoria), Kooringal High School, Wagga Wagga, NSW.

As we all know, plagiarism is now a major problem, world wide, especially in tertiary education. The ‘information use in relation to plagiarism’ project will create the opportunity, not only to try to gain common understandings about what plagiarism is, but also to help ameliorate the problem by beginning the education process well before students come to tertiary education. This will be done in creative ways, without using detection as the principal focus. The project involves a coalition of CSU academics and a representative range of secondary schools (including a country high school). The partners have a vision of undertaking a research project which will be of benefit to the whole of the secondary school sector and beyond, to the tertiary level. They believe, particularly, that it is important to engage students at primary and secondary levels in understanding appropriate information use and to explore innovative ways of doing this.

The following are the key aims of the project.

• To explore both staff and student understandings of plagiarism, in the case of the latter in relation to the extent to which they recognise it in the work of others and its occurrence in their own work;
• To develop models of teaching, in various subject areas, to encourage students to generate new knowledge and avoid plagiarism; and

To develop an innovative electronic toolkit, based on the outcomes of the project.

The electronic toolkit will be the key mechanism for disseminating the findings of the project and for providing assistance for the teaching of effective information use.

(3) Public libraries as a catalyst for community connection, participation, and creativity: the case of the retiring baby boomers Proposed ARC Linkage project.

Chief Investigators: Dr Kirsty Williamson, CSU, Professor Don Schauder, MU, Dr Graeme Johanson, MU. Partner Investigators: Mrs Lynn Makin Upper Murray Regional Library and Public Libraries Australia, and Ms Kerrie Burgess, State Library of NSW. Collaborating Organisations: Upper Murray Regional Library, Public Libraries Australia, State Library of NSW and Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA).

As in other western countries, Australia is experiencing major demographic change which will have significant consequences including for public libraries. Implicated in this change is the retirement of the baby boomer cohort, which comprises more than one-quarter of the Australian population. Throughout their lifetime baby boomers have had significant influence on Australian society. The project will assess the needs of retiring baby boomers in order to develop public library services that will foster boomers' connection with, and participation in, their community and stimulate their creativity. So that the public library can in future respond to changing population profiles, the research will investigate how to achieve this. An innovative element will be a "knowledge commons", based on the principles of e-democracy using cutting edge technology to encourage baby boomers and others to participate in planning and decision making.

The following are the key aims of the project.

• To investigate the needs of retiring baby boomers that could be met by public libraries,   together with possible responses.
• To examine how a responsive public library, meeting baby boomer and other client groups’ needs as they change, can be developed, funded and sustained.
• To investigate how the library community can be involved in policy development, based on the concept of the “knowledge commons”, using tools which will take advantage of the latest technologies.

Research Methods Book

The second edition of Research Methods for Students, Academics and Professionals: Information Management and Systems (Kirsty Williamson with a number of SIMS people: Frada Burstein, Kerry Tanner, Graeme Johanson, Sue McKemmish, Don Schauder, Peta Darke) has been in strong demand from a number of different countries apart from Australia (including Sweden, Canada, USA, Italy, South Africa) and from a diverse range of fields apart from information management and systems (including engineering, business and eco tourism). Recently there have been a number of favourable reviews, including in JASIST and Australian Universities Review. Also recently, there was an order for 120 copies from a scholarly book shop in Sweden and a request for the book to be translated into Swedish. An excellent Monash/Charles Sturt University collaboration, as the introduction to the book was written by Professor Ross Harvey of the School of Information Studies at CSU, and published by its Centre for Information Studies.