February 4, 2008
Anthropologists work to tame thesis research
kate.perry@rochester.edu
Graduate students lose precious hours needlessly
sifting through their digital archives looking for notes, the most recent
versions of their dissertations, and other misplaced odds and ends,
University researchers are finding.
To help these struggling students and their advisors
improve the efficiency and organization of their research, anthropologist
Nancy Fried Foster is leading a study into their habits with the goal of
creating a software system that will simplify the thesis process.
Todd White, lead ethnographer, uses video to study graduate students.
The study is the fourth at the University in which
anthropologists investigate the ways librarians and the library can better
serve students. The research is funded with a $330,000 grant from the
Institute for Museum and Library Services.
“It’s a no-brainer, but no one ever thinks
to study their students,” says Ronald Dow, the Andrew H. and Janet
Dayton Neilly Dean of River Campus Libraries.
The University’s library staff pioneered the use
of anthropologists in the library, and now Foster and others are sharing
their expertise at conferences around the world.
Dow says the ultimate goal of the graduate student
research project is to streamline the process of adding dissertations and
other so-called “gray literature” to the University’s
institutional repository, UR Research.
UR Research, https://urresearch.rochester.edu,
offers online users access to the valuable, but unpublished documents
created by faculty and students such as dissertations, conference
presentations, and working papers.
The new software will make submissions to UR Research
a seamless part of the writing and editing process by incorporating the
step into the work students and faculty already do.
Todd White, the lead ethnographer on the graduate
student research project, says some of the 27 students who were interviewed
for the study lack adequate systems for storing and maintaining the data
they have carefully gathered, and the writing they’ve painstakingly
crafted. Many dig through dozens of folders on their computers for files
they used just days before.
“Our graduate students are good at research and
they are good at writing papers, but they are not always well
organized,” he says. “They seem to be hungry for a system that
would clean up the mess on their hard drives.”
White videotaped interviews with the graduate
students, who graciously opened the doors to their workspaces for the
project. Susan Gibbons, associate dean for Public Services and Collection
Development, says a team of anthropologists, librarians, and software
programmers watched the videos for clues to how the new software should
function.
The programming team recently started building the
software and is tailoring the system to the needs of the students in the
study.
“We will create an environment where they can
write their dissertations, manage their notes and research, share it with
their advisors, and when they are done, they can post it on UR
Research,” Gibbons says.
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