Melanie Feinberg on Personal Digital Collections (All Students)

The School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, the iSchool at University of British Columbia, is pleased to welcome Dr. Melanie Feinberg of the University of Texas at Austin as the next speaker in our 2012-13 Colloquium Series. She is speaking Wednesday, October 17, from 12 noon to 1 p.m., on the topic of “Personal Digital Collections as Creative Expression.”

Dr. Feinberg will describe her continuing project to examine how personal digital collections, such as Pinterest boards, Amazon wishlists, and GoodReads shelves, work as manifestations of creative curatorship, and how best to support the design of such expressive personal collections. Initial work took a humanities-oriented approach to propose a set of expressive characteristics–an eclectic purpose, a unique authorial voice, and emotional intimacy–that enable personal digital collections to achieve what Umberto Eco describes as “the poetry of lists.” A subsequent user study suggested that the design space of personal digital collections includes multiple document genres that make use of the same form: collections that serve as personal information management tools, for example, coexist in the same systems with collections oriented toward public expression in the same environment. A second user study illuminated the notion of framing devices in facilitating a design reorientation to the genre of public expression, as opposed to personal information management. These findings contribute to our understanding of personal digital collections as expressive media and to the design of authoring environments for expression-oriented collections.

Melanie Feinberg is an assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research considers collections as a form of creative expression, and the means by which collections apply an interpretive frame to the resources that they gather, enacting a particular viewpoint onto their contents. She received her PhD from the University of Washington, a MIMS from the University of California at Berkeley, and a BA from Stanford University.
The talk will be given in the Dodson Room, in the Chapman Learning Commons of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC.

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