The Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering’s difference-making research in library and information science was displayed during the 86^th annual meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology. The world-renowned conference was held in late October in London.

The Luddy School’s Howard Rosenbaum, professor of information Science, was awarded the prestigious Watson Davis Award for Service, which recognizes an ASIS&T member who has shown continuous dedicated leadership and service.

Rongqian Ma, assistant professor of Information and Library Science; Allan Martell, assistant professor of Information and Library Science; Kahyun Choi, assistant professor of Information and Library Science; and John Walsh, associate professor of Information and Library Science; presented papers and facilitated workshops. Pnina Fichman, professor of Information Science, and Rosenbaum moderated doctoral colloquiums and panels.

Five doctoral students -- Alexandra Wingate, Jieli Liu, Ravi Regulagedda, Meredith Dedema and Pei-Ying Chen -- presented posters, facilitated workshops and served on panels.

“ASIS&T is an excellent place for networking, offering significant opportunities to reconnect with fellow researchers from other institutions and to create new connections with people sharing similar research interests,” Choi said.

Martell said Luddy’s presence at the conference -- which included Dean Joanna Millunchick -- showcased the school’s mission to shape tomorrow, confront problems and create solutions.

“(Millunchick’s attendance) was a clear statement that our school values this shared space between researchers and practitioners,” Martell said.

He added that Rosenbaum, Fichman, Hara and Dedema led important conversations about the evolution of social informatics.

The strong representation reflected the quality of Luddy School research, said Noriko Hara, chair of Information and Library Science and professor of Information Science.

“It’s very impressive that many faculty and Ph.D. students from our department in the Luddy School are contributing to ASIS&T, which is a premier conference in the field of Information Science,” Hara said. “I am especially proud that our assistant professors presented their innovative research.”

Ma moderated a panel titled, “Evaluating the Value of Exploratory Tools in Digital Humanities Collections and Scholarly Projects: Discussions from Researchers, Developers, and Users’ Perspectives,” and served as a facilitator for a pair of workshops -- “Visual Research Round-Up” and “Exploring Collaborative Interpretive Practice.”

“The conference offered a great opportunityto connect and work with researchers with similar interests and to seed new ideas and projects,” Ma said. “Our collective presence at ASIS&T makes me feel proud of being part of an engaged community, and I hope to contribute more to the community in the future.”

Choi presented the paper, “Computational Thematic Analysis of Poetry via Bimodal Large Language Models.”

She said the paper “proposes a multilabel poem topic classification algorithm utilizing large language models and auxiliary data to address the lack of diverse metadata in digital poetry libraries.”

Choi also served on the panel “Public Library-University Partnerships in Library and Information Science: Approaches, Challenges, Implications for Translating Research into Practice.”

“This panel featured five groups of panelists, highlighting a diversity of public library-university partnerships within LIS and their approaches, models, practices, and implications towards consequential pedagogies and programming at public libraries,” she said. “We also had discussion sessions with audience members experienced in such partnerships, from which we gained valuable insights.”

Martell presented a paper for the workshop, “Exploring Collaborative Interpretive Practice,” which was titled, “Collaborative Interpretive Practice in Developing a Conceptual Boundary Object: the Case of Social Memory Infrastructures.”

Martell said the workshop provided new insights about the challenges of pursuing interpretive research such as striking a balance between being transparent with the messiness of interpretive work while also demonstrating analytic rigor.

The poster sessions enabled him to meet many emerging scholars.

“Some are trying to understand how information activists support individuals aggrieved by the death of their loved ones,” he said. “Others are figuring out ways to support under-funded libraries in West and Central Africa.”