Research at SLAIS
SLAIS is home to a community of researchers actively engaged in the investigation of questions of vital importance to society in the age of information. At the broadest level, we are concerned with the recorded artifacts of human experience: their creation, collection, organization, preservation, and use. Increasingly, these artifacts – books, documents, images, data, etc.- are created and/or preserved in digital formats that can be widely disseminated and used. Our collective work aims to ensure that this legacy of human experience, housed in both traditional and newer digital forms, is preserved, shared and explored, so that individuals and communities can continue to draw upon it to deepen their understanding of themselves and their communities and make new discoveries about our world.
While our overarching research agenda is broad, research at SLAIS is clustered around three core areas of inquiry:
- Management and preservation of digital records
- Creation and use of cultural materials
- Digital information systems and information interaction
Records, documents made or received and set aside in the course of a practical activity, have played a central role in human society for thousands of years. They augment memory, serve as evidence of processes and transactions, and manifest the links between the past and the present. Under the impact of new technologies, records are increasingly created and/or stored in digital forms that are vulnerable, mutable, and easily replicated, which raises serious concerns about their authenticity, reliability, and accuracy. A major ongoing research area at SLAIS is the management and preservation of permanent authentic records in electronic systems. Research carried out in the framework of the three phases of the InterPares project has made fundamental contributions to theory and practice in this field. This work is complemented by emerging research at SLAIS on digital records forensics and records-related risks in financial institutions, fostering collaborations with international researchers in diverse fields such as business, law and computer science.
Some of the questions addressed in this research:
- What constitutes a digital record?
- How can the authenticity of digital records be determined once they are removed from the original system?
- How can digital records be maintained and preserved such that their authenticity will not be questioned?
- How can records-related risks to financial institutions such as data-leakage, legal discovery challenges, compliance, etc. be reduced?
- What methods, standards and practices are effective for the management of digital records.
Related research groups and projects
- InterPARES 1, 2 & 3
- Digital Records Forensics
- Centre for the Investigation of Financial Electronic Records (CIFER)
- Records and Risk Management
- Evidence Based Governance in the Electronic Age - The World Bank/International Records Management Trust Digital Records Conversion
Library, archives, and museum professionals are major players in the collective and interdisciplinary effort to promote and preserve cultural materials and make them available over time to diverse populations. The stewardship of archives and collections of works of literature, art images, recorded performances, etc. and the study of their creation and use is an important and dynamic research area. SLAIS plays a major part in this effort as a centre for the study of Canadian and international children’s literature, book publishing and illustration. Faculty research in this area is strengthened by outstanding student work carried out in the context of the Master of Arts in Children’s Literature program. Other cultural materials research at SLAIS includes work on multimedia digital libraries, the organization and retrieval of art images, and the documentation and preservation of art and theatre performances. As the museum, archives, and library fields continue to expand and move towards greater convergence, we look forward to increased activity and new collaborations in this area.
Some of the questions addressed in this research:
- What role can information professionals and information institutions play in making cultural materials accessible?
- What is different about recording and making accessible information and materials produced in the context of the arts from other types of materials?
- How do we record and make accessible more fluent and dynamic forms of artistic expression, such as storytelling, dance and theatre?
- How do we maintain the richness and diversity of localized artistic expression in the face of the global economy?
- What contributions does children’s literature make to individuals, communities and to society as a whole?
Related research groups and projects
- Picturing Canada: A History Of Canadian Children’s Illustrated Books And Publishing
- Canadian Children’s Alternative Presses
- Canadian Children's Illustrated Books in English
- Present Memory: Knowledge Requirements for Archivists Preserving Live Theatre
- Ethical and Artistic Considerations in Documenting and Preserving Performances
- The Performing Arts Artistic and Cultural Heritage: Issues of Arrangement and Description in Repositories
Digital information flows from person to person through systems in a rich and complex process of representation, interpretation, and interaction. Understanding how this process occurs, including the cognitive, affective, physical, technological and situational variables that play a role, is essential to finding means to better support information flow and use in society. A major research focus at SLAIS is on the closely intertwined areas of human information interaction and digital information systems. We aim to extend current models of information interaction to include a greater focus on engagement with, and use of digital information as it relates to real world tasks and activities. In parallel, we are actively seeking new paradigms, techniques, and algorithms to improve the systems and tools that facilitate information interaction. As information science researchers in the area, we draw upon theories and methods from many disciplines: human-computer interaction, psychology, sociology, education, computer science, information retrieval and design and actively collaborate with colleagues from these fields.
Some of the questions addressed in this research:
- What are the effects of different contexts, situations and tasks on digital information interaction?
- How can systems better expose the ideas and intents embedded within information objects so that people can engage with them more directly and more deeply?
- How can systems be designed to support the emotional and experiential aspects of information interaction?
- How do we support users in environments that are complex, nonlinear and multimodal?
- How can existing meta-data and indexing structures be better utilized to increase retrieval effectiveness?
- How do we document and evaluate information interaction and use?
Related research groups and projects
- Digital Information Interaction Group
- Public Knowledge Project
- Synergies
- Seeking Common Ground: Genres of Communication for Digital Government
- Digital Librarians: Who Are They, What Skills Do They Need, and How Can They Be Educated?
- Digital Media Interns
- The Indexer’s Legacy: Exploring and Exploiting the Intellectual Contribution of Book Indexes in a Digital Environment
