Arrowsmith Information Diary Linking Your Information Activities to Your Research Processes Melissa Cragin and Tim Hogan Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Informatics Tools for Scientific Discovery and Collaboration University of Illinois-Chicago September 5, 2003

Information and Discovery in Neuroscience (IDN) Who’s on the project? – Carole L. Palmer, PI – Melissa Cragin and Tim Hogan, research assistants Project homepage: Our project is funded by the NSF (grant # )

IDN How do information activities affect neuroscience research and making discoveries? Arrowsmith as a Gateway Monitoring information searches that are part of ongoing research projects Develop cases studies out of critical information incidents and opportunities

Case Studies (diary, interviews, observations, documents) When and how problems or progress occur – the stage of the project or specific activities that lead to that point Life-cycle of discoveries –how new questions and investigations arise – steps or decisions that follow different types of Information Opportunities (e.g. changes in the intended path of the initial research trajectory) – where a line of research ends

Information Opportunity Situations The Arrowsmith team anticipates five types of IO situations to be logged:  when a preliminary hypothesis needs to be assessed  when pieces of the puzzle appear to lie in an outside discipline (i.e. nutrition)  when the significance of a new experimental or clinical finding needs to be assessed relative to current literature  when findings may bridge unconnected research areas and lead to the need to explore literature of other fields  when there is a need to retrieve deeper information than allowed by a typical literature search (Smalheiser, 2001)

Variety of Content Information Needs “What was the activation in the basal ganglia for single vs. dual task in the Grafton et al 1995 paper?” “Looking for connections between bipolar disorder and Brodmann area 7. What is the significance of greater activation of Brodmann area 7 in bipolar patients than controls during a task of recognizing facial expression of emotion.” “Has the weather prediction task by Barbara Knowlton and Larry Squire (Science, 1996) been studied using fMRI?” Comments or Findings “Ten potential references which may provide support for modeling the thalamocortical projection.” “Could not find journal…” “Received a brochure from a biotech company…searched Google.”

When Do You Use the Diary When do you fill this out? How does it fit into your own routines? Do you turn to the Diary when you are engaged in particular activities?

Questions and Comments What features of the Diary do you find the most helpful? Are there particular fields that are hard to complete? Are there features that could be added that would support your research?

Reflecting on Your Information Work What prompted this search? Do you have a specific “hunch” you are aiming at, or is this exploratory? What documentation do you need to answer your question, or evaluate someone else’s (possibly) relevant findings? What is missing from the papers or data you do find? How does this particular tool help your thinking about your research or possible hypotheses?

Contact Us Carole Palmer Telephone: Facsimile: Melissa Cragin and Tim Hogan Telephone: Facsimile: OR Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 E. Daniel Street, Champaign, IL