Me, November 2010
Hi, my name is Adam Worrall and I am a third-year doctoral student at Florida State University‘s School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS). My research centers around social informatics, especially social, collaborative information behavior and the social contexts of information and communication technologies in communities and collaborative environments. My 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. I build on existing research and theory, including Star’s boundary object theory, Strauss’s social worlds framework, and Burnett and Jaeger’s theory of information worlds, employing a social informatics-based approach that uses multiple and mixed methods of data collection.
Digital libraries as boundary objects will succeed if they coherently reconcile the meanings and understandings of the multiple communities, social worlds, and information worlds that use them, allowing users to collaborate and supporting the creation or emergence of a broader community around the digital library. I look at (a) how digital libraries act as boundary objects; (b) whether and how they facilitate the interface between existing worlds and the emergence of new worlds; and (c) what role the social norms, social types, information behavior, and information values of existing information worlds play.
You can view my curriculum vitae for more about my academic and professional career, and can also examine my portfolio, particularly my research statement, teaching philosophy statement, and service statement.
More about me
I was born in and lived near Chester, England for the first years of my life, later moving south to the Swindon area. Then, I moved to Miami, Florida (specifically the West Kendall area) when I was 10. After graduating from high school, I went to the University of Central Florida in Orlando for a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, which I earned in December 2002.
By the end of my undergraduate degree, I found myself interested in working to ensure not only functionally complete systems, but also systems that were accessible, usable, and provided helpful results for their current and future users. At least partly due to this, I began consulting with users and helping them solve problems they were having with computer hardware, software, and information systems. I found that most problems happened while users attempted to find, use, modify, and manage information resources—reports, e-mails, photos, web sites, etc. I also found that most problems were not with faulty hardware or with users, but with the information system and associated software.
An older photo of me, from December 2008
As a result, I enrolled in Florida State University‘s master’s program in Library and Information Studies, starting in August 2006 and graduating in April 2008 with my MSLIS. I took courses that covered digital libraries, usability, social informatics, metadata, and information architecture. These courses and my experiences in the program guided my increasing interests in the usability of digital libraries and web sites, the organization of information in these systems, and especially the socio-technical context of such systems. My coursework and internship with one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s regional libraries impressed on me the importance of considering both technical and social aspects when creating, managing, and maintaining digital libraries, web sites, and other information systems.
It took me a few months after graduating with my master’s degree to fully realize that I wanted a research career, one as a professor and researcher in academia. This way I could work to help improve not just those digital libraries, web sites, and information systems that I was personally involved with, but also those created, managed, and improved by other information professionals. Contributing to the field through research, teaching, and service was what I felt I should be doing, so I applied (and was accepted!) to pursue my doctoral degree in Library and Information Studies at FSU. I am currently pursuing my career and research interests in the doctoral program and associated activities; for more detail on these you can look at my current portfolio.
