The VOSS research group. Back row (left to right): Dr. Paul Marty, Dr. Chris Hinnant, Dr. Besiki Stvilia, Dr. Gary Burnett; Front row: Katy Schindler (former member), Dr. Kathy Burnett, Dr. Michelle Kazmer, Adam Worrall. (Not pictured: Shuheng Wu)
Principal Investigator
Dr. Kathleen Burnett is Professor at the College of Communication and Information. She earned her B.A. (1978) summa cum laude in German Literature, with a minor in Philosophy, from the University of California, San Diego and her M.L.S. (1979) and Ph.D. (1989) in Library and Information Studies with a specialization in the History of Printing and Publishing from the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Kathleen Burnett conducts research on the social meaning of information, including the development and application of theoretical frameworks to empirical studies of information worlds. Recent research has included the examination of interaction in online education, anticipatory socialization in doctoral education, and the emergence of disciplinary identity in information science. Currently, she is conducting studies of Latinas’ engagement with IT and scientists’ collaborative practices. She teaches courses in international and comparative information services, information behavior, and information education.
Co-Principal Investigators
Dr. Gary Burnett is an Associate Professor at the College of Communication and Information. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of California, San Diego, an M.L.S. from Rutgers University, and a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. Before coming to FSU, he worked as a bookseller, a librarian, and a small press publisher in addition to his professional experience as a Research Associate at the ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education and an adjunct faculty member at Princeton University and the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University.
Dr. Gary Burnett’s research focuses on information theory and on the intersection between information exchange, social norms, and social interaction in online settings, with a particular focus on textuality and interpretive practices. A book, titled Information Worlds: Behavior, Technology, and Social Context in the Age of the Internet, co-authored with Paul Jaeger of the University of Maryland, was published by Routledge in March, 2010. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology, Library Quarterly, and Library and Information Science Research.
Dr. Michelle M. Kazmer is an Associate Professor at the College of Communication and Information, and also holds a courtesy faculty appointment at the Florida State University College of Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences.. She earned her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, her MLS at the University of Pittsburgh, and a BS in mechanical engineering at Columbia University. She worked at Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, as a technical information specialist, and prior to that as an engineering librarian and electronic documents coordinator at the University of Illinois.
Her research focuses on participants in distributed social worlds, and in particular the processes of knowledge creation and sharing that those participants enact. One stream of her research explores how people disengage when they are preparing to depart from those worlds. She is especially interested in how knowledge is transferred between people who have left a social world and whatever parts of that world they left behind. She is also interested in the interaction between online and local settings for participants in distributed social worlds. She teaches in the areas of information organization, information needs, information sources and services, and theory development.
Dr. Paul F. Marty is an Associate Professor at the College of Communication and Information. He earned his PhD from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His educational background is in Computer Engineering and Classics. From 1996 to 2002, he was Director of Information Technology at the University of Illinois’ Spurlock Museum. His research and teaching interests include museum informatics, computer-supported cooperative work, and usability engineering. He specializes in the study of museums as sociotechnical systems, and is particularly interested in the social implications of introducing new technologies into the museum environment. His current research focuses on the evolution of sociotechnical systems and collaborative work practices in museums, the usability of museum websites, the evolving roles of information professionals in museums, the digital museum in the life of the user, and the digital convergence of libraries, archives, and museums.
Dr. Besiki Stvilia is an Assistant Professor at the College of Communication and Information. He received both his M.S. and his Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his M.S. in Applied Mathematics from Tbilisi State University, Georgia. He studies and teaches about Metadata and Ontology Design, Information Quality Assurance, Image Retrieval, and Social Informatics. In particular, he studies the evolving patterns of collaborative work organization and technology use in large community based open information systems, and develops models for information and metadata quality measurement, dynamics and effective intervention.
Senior Personnel
Dr. Chris Hinnant is an Assistant Professor at the College of Communication and Information. He is a former Fellow and Assistant Director in the IT Team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. His research interests include social and organizational informatics, digital government, information management and policy, public management, social science research methods, and applied statistics. He is particularly interested in how organizations employ Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to alter organizational processes and structures and how the use of ICT ultimately impacts institutional governance mechanisms. His research has appeared in journals such as Administration and Society, Government Information Quarterly, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
Graduate Research Assistants
Current
Adam Worrall is a third-year doctoral student at Florida State University (FSU)’s School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS), part of the College of Communication and Information (CCI). He has a MS in Library and Information Science, also from Florida State University, as well as a BS in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida. His research centers around social informatics, especially social, collaborative information behavior and the social contexts of information and communication technologies in communities and collaborative environments. His particular focus is on the social, community, and collaborative contexts of digital libraries as boundary objects within and across social worlds, information worlds, and communities. Adam joined the VOSS project in January 2010.
Shuheng Wu is a third-year doctoral student in the School of Library and Information Studies at the College of Communication and Information. She received a M.S. in Library and Information Science (MSLIS) from Syracuse University, and a B.S. in Management from Sun Sat-Sen (Zhongshan) University, China. She is interested in knowledge organization, including classification, cataloging, indexing, and social tagging. Her current research interests include the enhancement of bibliographic records in the library OPAC, and the added value of socially created metadata to traditional knowledge organization systems. Shuheng joined the VOSS project in April 2011.
Brian Knop is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University. He has a B.A. and M.A. in sociology from the University of Mississippi. His research interests include gender, work and organizations, and the sociology of science. Brian began with the VOSS project as a graduate intern during the Fall 2011 semester, and became a graduate research assistant for the project in January 2012.
Former
Katy Schindler was a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. Within the department, her area of study was Stratification and Social Justice. She earned her B.A. in the Liberal Arts from the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, with a concentration in American Studies and minors in Women’s Studies and History. Her research interests included social movements, organizations, race, and gender. She was particularly interested in the development of group identities and the role of social structures in shaping perceptions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Her other projects included a study of inequalities among children who participated in the Head Start program, as well as an analysis of regional variations in media coverage of the Terri Schiavo case. Katy was with the VOSS project from January 2010 until February 2011.
Undergraduate and Graduate Interns
Former
Lauren Lachowsky was a senior undergraduate student majoring in Sociology and Women’s Studies and minoring in Business. Her research interests included social stratification and the sociology of deviance. After graduating in Fall 2011, she hoped to attend graduate school in Sociology at The University of Arkansas or Boston College or Tulane University Law School. Lauren interned with the VOSS project during the Spring and Fall 2011 semesters.
Andrea Haranki was an undergraduate student majoring in Communication, studying radio and television technology and advertising. Andrea worked with the VOSS project during the Fall 2011 semester, assisting with interview transcription, data analysis, and other necessary tasks. She graduated at the end of Fall 2011.
Wilhelmina Randtke was a masters student in the School of Library and Information Studies at the College of Communication and Information. She has a B.S. in Zoology from the University of Florida, and a J.D. from the FSU College of Law. Her research interests include access to knowledge, the interaction between intellectual property laws and scientific research, open access publishing, and e-government. After graduation in Summer 2011, she planned to pursue a career in law librarianship. Wilhelmina interned with the VOSS project during the Spring and Summer 2011 semesters.
Jessica Roberts was a senior undergraduate student majoring in Sociology and minoring in Business, who interned with the VOSS project during Fall 2010 and Spring 2011. Her research interests include group dynamics, the post-modern media culture and identity economics. After graduating in the Spring of 2011, she attended graduate school, studying conflict resolution and mediation at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Aprille Case was a senior Public Relations and International Affairs student. Her research interests include developing new methods for collecting and applying quantitative data, social media and consumer behavior. After graduating in Spring 2011, she moved on to graduate school in Integrated Marketing Communication at Florida State University. Aprille interned with the VOSS project during Spring 2011.
Ryan Huff was a senior undergraduate student in Information Technology at the College of Communication and Information, and interned with the VOSS project during Fall 2010. His interests in information technology included information organization and architecture and applications of technology that make tasks better, faster, and/or easier. After graduation in December 2010, he hoped to pursue a career in project management, as an IT analyst, or as an IT consultant.
External Evaluator
Dr. Kenneth R. Fleischmann is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. He holds degrees in computer science, anthropology, and science and technology studies from Case Western Reserve University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he received his Ph.D. His research explores the ethical implications of the role of values in the design, management, and use of information technology. His current NSF-funded research projects include the design and evaluation of an educational simulation for computing and information ethics, a comparative field study of the role of values in different computational modeling research laboratories, and the development of automated detection and classification systems for human values in telecommunications policy debates. He has published in journals such as Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Communications of the ACM, Computer, Telecommunications Policy, and The Information Society.