My name is Adam Worrall and I am a Doctoral Candidate at Florida State University (FSU)’s School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS), part of the College of Communication and Information (CCI). I have 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.

My broad research interests include social informatics; digital libraries; collaborative information behavior; scientific collaboration; social media; and social and community theories in information science. These fall under the common thread of studying information behavior within and around the social and sociotechnical contexts—groups, communities, worlds, and other collaborative environments—of information and communication technologies (ICTs). My current focus is on the sociotechnical, community, and collaborative contexts and roles of digital libraries as boundary objects within and across social worlds, information worlds, and communities.

You can read more about my research, teaching, and service below. My full portfolio includes my research, teaching, and service statements; details of my publications and presentations; and information on my coursework while a doctoral student. You may also be interested my curriculum vitae (CV) or reading more about me, my research interests, and how and why I’m here.

Louis Shores Building, home of the School of Library and Information Studies at Florida State University

Research

As noted above, my research interests focus on social informatics, information behavior, and the two phenomena of communities and collaboration. I currently am examining these in the context of social digital libraries as boundary objects within and across social worlds, information worlds, and communities. Digital libraries, as boundary objects, will succeed if they coherently reconcile and translate the meanings and understandings of the multiple communities—existing and emergent—that use them. This will allow users to collaborate, interact, and build a broader community around a social digital library.

My research is both theoretical and practical and builds on existing work, drawing on Star’s boundary object theory, Strauss’s social worlds framework, and Burnett and Jaeger’s theory of information worlds. I look at whether and how digital libraries act as boundary objects; the roles they play in interfacing between existing communities and the emergence of new communities; and the roles played by the characteristics of those communities—seen as social and information worlds—in coherence between existing communities, the emergence of new communities, and collaboration across community boundaries. I take a social informatics-based approach that uses multiple and mixed methods of data collection, including interviews, content analysis, and surveys. Over time, I aim to establish a theoretical and practical understanding of social digital libraries as used within and across communities.

My other research experiences include:

• Graduate Research Assistant for NSF-funded Virtual Scientific Teams: Life-Cycle Formation and Long-Term Scientific Collaboration (VOSS) project, working to develop a model of the lifecycles of scientific teams and improve understanding of the social and organizational factors that help support such a team’s successful transition from short-term experiments to long-term programs of ongoing scientific research.
• Collaborator with Dr. Sanghee Oh on her Quality Evaluation of Health Answers in Social Q&A project (alongside Yong Jeong Yi), investigating the influence of social media in and on health information seeking and sharing behaviors. We are comparing health reference librarians, nurses, and questioners’ quality evaluations of answers to questions on Yahoo! Answers.

Read my research statement and review my CV, publications, and presentations for more details.

Teaching

I have been a teaching assistant for multiple courses at the FSU School of Library and Information Studies; these include courses in the undergraduate Information Technology and Information and Communication Technology programs and in the graduate Library and Information Studies and Information Technology programs. My tasks and activities have included grading papers and assignments, choosing readings, facilitating in-class and online discussions, and leading class and lab sessions. My teaching has been highly rated and praised by both students and professors.

In my teaching, I try my best to:

• Help students learn and creatively apply what they learn as part of a collaborative and interactive learning community
• Effectively facilitate such learning through strategies, activities, and assignments chosen appropriately for the course objectives, students, and learning community
• Know students’ multiple intelligences and learning styles, addressing them in activities and assignments
• Respect students and their other obligations, expecting mutual respect in return
• Keep open lines of communication, interacting with and assisting students while encouraging them to interact with and help each other as well
• Realize how my own limits and biases affect my teaching

Read my teaching philosophy statement and CV for more details.

Service

I am a strong believer in service to one’s institution, local community, and profession. My service as a doctoral student and candidate has included:

• Participating in SLIS’s Doctoral Program Committee (DPC) as one of four student representatives
• Presenting and facilitating research and teaching colloquia and proseminar sessions at SLIS
• Representing CCI in FSU’s Congress of Graduate Students (COGS) and serving as Vice Chair of COGS’s Academics and Student Life Committee
• Serving as Secretary of Beta Phi Mu, Gamma Chapter at FSU
• Leading and facilitating discussion by doctoral students of writing goals and career progress as part of SLIS’s Agraphia writing support group, with the assistance of our faculty advisor Dr. Gary Burnett
• Peer reviewing articles for the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, and paper and poster submissions for the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) 2012 annual meeting, 2012 and 2013 iConferences, and Social Theory in Information Systems Research (STIR) mini-track at the 2012 Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS)
• Membership in the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), and American Library Association (ALA)
• Serving as Communications Officer and Secretary for ASIS&T’s SIG SI, the special interest group for Social Informatics
• Serving as a member of the Task Force on ASIS&T’s Web Presence, formed by ASIS&T President Andrew Dillon and led by Diane Rasmussen

Read my service statement for more details on my professional service activities.