Designing for Communities with Communities: Co-designing Public Libraries. Public libraries are critical social infrastructure for communities across Australia. This project investigates how to involve community participation in the design of their public library spaces by analysing the efficacy of co-design activities introduced into three case studies. New knowledge will be generated about engaging community participation in the design and re-design of library spaces, as the societal role of p ....Designing for Communities with Communities: Co-designing Public Libraries. Public libraries are critical social infrastructure for communities across Australia. This project investigates how to involve community participation in the design of their public library spaces by analysing the efficacy of co-design activities introduced into three case studies. New knowledge will be generated about engaging community participation in the design and re-design of library spaces, as the societal role of public libraries continues to expand. Expected outcomes include an online guide and overarching framework, and blueprints for community participation that ensure genuine engagement and input.Read moreRead less
Studying 'research' in Australia’s library and information profession. With over 111 million annual visits, libraries are fundamental to Australia's social fabric and increasingly to its success as a national economy. In the current volatile economic climate Australia's libraries are being called upon to do more with less. This project aims to help Australia's libraries to contribute in a more powerful way to national productivity by helping library and information professionals make tough decis ....Studying 'research' in Australia’s library and information profession. With over 111 million annual visits, libraries are fundamental to Australia's social fabric and increasingly to its success as a national economy. In the current volatile economic climate Australia's libraries are being called upon to do more with less. This project aims to help Australia's libraries to contribute in a more powerful way to national productivity by helping library and information professionals make tough decisions in an environment where there is competition for limited resources. This project aims, for the first time, build an evidence base on research in Australia's library and information profession. It will establish a framework that can be used by library and information professionals to build a research culture that enables the adoption of "practitioner-researcher" as an approach to professional practice.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220100295
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$410,523.00
Summary
Public libraries in the lives of people experiencing homelessness. The number of Australians living without secure housing grows every year. Increasingly this community is reaching out to our public libraries for shelter, connection to others and access to resources and services. Despite this relationship, there are no public policies to guide libraries in supporting this community or in partnering with housing agencies. Using a process of particpatory design with the homeless community, public ....Public libraries in the lives of people experiencing homelessness. The number of Australians living without secure housing grows every year. Increasingly this community is reaching out to our public libraries for shelter, connection to others and access to resources and services. Despite this relationship, there are no public policies to guide libraries in supporting this community or in partnering with housing agencies. Using a process of particpatory design with the homeless community, public library staff and users, and housing agencies, the research builds theoretical frameworks and public policy foundations to support the design of public library services, resources and environments that will meet the needs of the Australian homeless community in our urban, regional and remote contexts.Read moreRead less
Real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance. This interdisciplinary research project aims to explore how records co-creation can be conceptualised in child protection and information law and overseen dynamically through a new digitally enabled, child-centred and rights-based advocacy and regulatory framework, to play an integral role in ensuring that the systems to protect children from abuse and neglect do not themselves cause harm. This project seeks to develop participatory information go ....Real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance. This interdisciplinary research project aims to explore how records co-creation can be conceptualised in child protection and information law and overseen dynamically through a new digitally enabled, child-centred and rights-based advocacy and regulatory framework, to play an integral role in ensuring that the systems to protect children from abuse and neglect do not themselves cause harm. This project seeks to develop participatory information governance as a new theoretical foundation for proactive recordkeeping and rights advocacy for childhood out-of-home Care. Improved transparency, accountability, efficiency and access to justice are anticipated benefits from this legal, recordkeeping and information infrastructure design research.Read moreRead less
AI-driven Effective Query Formulation for Better Systematic Reviews. This project aims to develop novel AI-based search engine methods to make the creation of systematic reviews cheaper, faster and unbiased. Systematic reviews are the cornerstone for evidence-based decisions in clinical practice and government policy making. Given the pace new research is published at, it is unsustainable to manually conduct systematic reviews in the traditional manner, taking on average 2 years and $350K and be ....AI-driven Effective Query Formulation for Better Systematic Reviews. This project aims to develop novel AI-based search engine methods to make the creation of systematic reviews cheaper, faster and unbiased. Systematic reviews are the cornerstone for evidence-based decisions in clinical practice and government policy making. Given the pace new research is published at, it is unsustainable to manually conduct systematic reviews in the traditional manner, taking on average 2 years and $350K and becoming already outdated when published. The outcomes of this project will lead to systematic reviews of higher quality, while reducing their financial and temporal costs, providing significant benefits to organisations performing reviews and their funders, and to people impacted by decisions made from the reviews.Read moreRead less
Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universal ....Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universally inferior to real-world counterparts. Given the lack of fundamental theories to inform design, this is unsurprising. After creating a detailed and systematic account of user behaviour in browsing, we will create novel designs that will accelerate the discovery of information, particularly for innovative work.Read moreRead less
Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of syste ....Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of system effectiveness. This project should provide significant advances that will benefit all users of search engines.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200100064
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$422,022.00
Summary
Fair and Transparent Information Access in Spoken Conversational Assistants. This project aims to investigate how rich information needed to answer complex questions can be delivered via a speech-only communication channel. Using laboratory user studies, where users can interact with a smart speaker to ask for information about controversial or multi-perspective topics, the project expects to advance knowledge on how to expose pertinent information without creating or reinforcing biases. Expecte ....Fair and Transparent Information Access in Spoken Conversational Assistants. This project aims to investigate how rich information needed to answer complex questions can be delivered via a speech-only communication channel. Using laboratory user studies, where users can interact with a smart speaker to ask for information about controversial or multi-perspective topics, the project expects to advance knowledge on how to expose pertinent information without creating or reinforcing biases. Expected outcomes include novel presentation strategies to access rich information via audio in a fair manner. This should significantly benefit the visually impaired and low-literacy communities by enhancing their access to topics with multiple point of views, which would impact decision making such as who to vote for in elections.Read moreRead less
Legal and social dynamics of eBook lending in Australia’s public libraries. Legal and social dynamics of eBook lending in Australia’s public libraries. This project aims to develop an evidence base of quantitative and qualitative data about how eBooks are used in libraries. EBooks have tremendous beneficial potential, particularly for Australians in remote areas and those with impaired mobility or vision. However, libraries’ rights to acquire and lend them are more restricted than for physical b ....Legal and social dynamics of eBook lending in Australia’s public libraries. Legal and social dynamics of eBook lending in Australia’s public libraries. This project aims to develop an evidence base of quantitative and qualitative data about how eBooks are used in libraries. EBooks have tremendous beneficial potential, particularly for Australians in remote areas and those with impaired mobility or vision. However, libraries’ rights to acquire and lend them are more restricted than for physical books. Libraries and legal, social and data science researchers will investigate eBook lending practices and understand their social impacts. The project will identify ways of reforming policy, law, and practice to help libraries fulfil their public interest missions. This project is expected to enable libraries to extract more value from existing public investments.Read moreRead less
Suharto's enablers? Social complicity in the Indonesian killings of 1965-66. This projects aims to revolutionise understandings of civilian involvement in the most critical and bloody turning point in modern Indonesian history, the 1965-66 killings, and to transform the evidence base for Indonesian history-writing. By accessing critically endangered and never before used survivor community archives, the project will examine the complicity of civilians in the killings and how the violence shaped ....Suharto's enablers? Social complicity in the Indonesian killings of 1965-66. This projects aims to revolutionise understandings of civilian involvement in the most critical and bloody turning point in modern Indonesian history, the 1965-66 killings, and to transform the evidence base for Indonesian history-writing. By accessing critically endangered and never before used survivor community archives, the project will examine the complicity of civilians in the killings and how the violence shaped modern Indonesian national identity and moral consciousness. It will further generate a new, centralised archive of these preserved materials and compile new oral history interviews with the remaining witnesses to these pivotal events.Read moreRead less