ARCHIVED SITE (last updated Fall 2005)
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Current & Past Dissertation Topics

Recently Completed Doctoral Dissertations

ACQUISTI, Alessandro. Essays on Privacy, Anonymity, and Tracking in Computer-mediated Economic Transactions. 2003.

DUCHENEAUT, Nicolas. The Reproduction of Open Source Software Programming Communities. 2003.

Past Doctoral Dissertations

KIM, Youngin. Noun Phrases in Documents: Preprocessing, Automatic Extraction, and Statistical Analysis in Different Categories of Text. 2002.

KOX, Christopher Joseph. Politics, Publishing and Patronage (M.Duggan). The Collaborative Roles of Subscribers and Patrons in the Publishing of Thomas Hearne at Oxford 1710-1720.

CHEN, Hui-Min. An Analytical Approach to Deriving Usage Patterns in a Web-based Information System (M. Cooper). Data mining patterns of use of a Web-based information system.

McDONOUGH, Jerome P. The Application of a Feminist Sociology to Information Systems Design (Larson). How the design of computer-mediated communications systems affects the flow and the perceived authority of information.

CHEN, Aitao. Comparative Study of Pattern Recognition, Neural Network and Statistical Regression Approaches to Information Retrieval (Cooper, W).

KUNTZ, Lucy. Online Resources and the Information-seeking Process (Cooper, M.). On the role of electronic resources in the information-seeking processes of undergraduate and graduate students in the social sciences and the humanities.

SCHIFF, Lisa R. Ideology, the Production of Information, and Homelessness (Braunstein). The interaction between the understanding of a social problem and the generation of data describing that problem. Differing estimates of the number of homeless provide a case study.

WHITTAKER, Martha. A study of the Jesuit press at the Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City, between 1748 and 1767. Analysis of business aspects and publishing program of a Jesuit-owned press.

HE, Jianzhang. Survey Data Information Management and Access (M. Cooper). How can the existing code-book documentation of social science data sets be adapted to support computer-assisted selection and use?

PLAUNT, Christian J. A Functional Model of Information Retrieval Systems and Processes. Ph.D. 12/97 (Larson). The analysis of functional components yields a simple, recursive model of information selection systems (filtering, retrieval) composed of collections (sets) and two procedures: transformations and partitioning. Demonstrated in an experimental "workbench."

BENTON, Megan. Tradition, taste, and the cult of the book: Bibliophilia in America, 1920-1930 (Duggan). A cultural and economic analysis of demand in the fine book trade.

INOUYE, Alan. The Egocentric Social Networks of Software Designers: An Empirical Study of Their Association with the Features and Quality of Microcomputer Software Packages (Van House). How software engineers' job mobility and social networking affect the features and quality of software.

KAMINER, Noam. Network Use and Scholar's Productivity. 1997 (Braunstein). Measuring the extent to which the use of Internet services adds to the productivity of scholars.

LIU, Ziming. International Influences on Libraries in China and their Reflection in the Professional Literature, 1890-1990: A quantitative and analytical study. PhD. 12/96 (M.Buckland) How political changes affected the content and sources of international flows of technical knowledge. A case study.

HOTTA, Ann M. Children, Books and Children's Bunko: A Study of an Art World in the Japanese Context. PhD. 5/95 (M. Buckland). Anthropological field-study of how grass roots volunteerism among Japanese mothers has created hundreds of private neighborhood libraries for children to counteract the rigidity of the Japanese education system.

LEMBERG, William R. A Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of the Creation, Storage and Dissemination of a Digitized Document Collection. DLIS. 5/95 (M. Buckland). What if electronic copies of libraries' books were created? The economic impact, nationwide.

MELVILLE, Annette H. Managing With Less: Resource Strategies of University Libraries. PhD. 5/94 (M. Buckland). Analysis of how large university libraries have been attempting to cope with fiscal retrenchment.

LINDHOLM-ROMANTSCHUK, Ylva. The Flow of Ideas Within and Among Academic Disciplines: Scholarly Book Reviewing in the Social Science and Humanities. PhD. 5/94 (Y. Braunstein). Analysis of book reviews of university press books reveals very varying flows of knowledge between disciplines.

BERGER, Michael G. Information-Seeking in the Online Bibliographic System: An Exploratory Study. PhD. 5/94 (M. Buckland). Detailed reconstruction and analysis of searchers' sessions in the MELVYL online catalog sheds new light of both searchers' and the system's efficiency and effectiveness.

BEDFORD, Denise. Productivity, Efficiency, and Production Functions in Research Library Technical Services Operations. PhD. 5/93 (M. Cooper). A study of the optimizing of libraries' internal procedures.

CHAN, Shue-Leung. A Simulation Model of User Satisfaction with Library Policy Decisions. PhD. 5/93 (M. Cooper). Computer simulation of how different components of library service are interrelated.

GEY, Fredric C. Probabilistic Dependence and Logistic Inference in Information Retrieval. PhD. 5/93 (W. Cooper). Presents a new model for probabilistic and document retrieval that uses logistic regression to calculate a best-fit matching equation for a database, given a set of potential retrieval clues.

SANCHEZ-VEGAS, Saadia B. Library Managers' Communication Processes and Electronic Mail Use in the Context of an Academic Library Environment. PhD. 5/93 (Braunstein). How the introduction of e-mail changes communications flows in organizations.

DABNEY, Daniel P. Statistical Modeling of Relevance Judgments for Probabilistic Retrieval of American Case Law. PhD. 12/93 (W. Cooper) Studies the use of Logistic regression methods to meld relevance clues into a single probability of relevance estimate. The model is applied to the domain of American case law.

EASUN, Mary Susan. Identifying Inefficiencies in Resource Management: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis to Selected School Libraries in California. 12/92. (Braunstein) Theoretical analysis and measurement of the role of school libraries in determining public school quality.

BRANDT, Steven R. Jean Girard: Genevan Publisher (1536-1557). PhD. 12/92 (Duggan).

TONTA, Yasar A. An Analysis of Search Failures in Online Library Catalogs. PhD. 12/92 (M. Cooper). What impedes effective searching? Design implications.

SUTTON, Stuart A. Managing Legal Information: A Model of Institutional Memory Based on User Cognitive Maps. PhD. 5/91 (M. Cooper). Analysis of how attorneys proceed in seeking relevant prior case law. Implications for the design of law information systems.

BENIDIR, Samia. Information Seeking Behavior During the Decision Making Process: A Case Study. PhD. 12/91 (Buckland). How, where, and why do people obtain the knowledge they think they need before choosing and buying a personal computer with their own money? Changes during successive stages of the decision process.

GARDNER, Karen Marie. A Metaphorical Analysis of the Knowledge Acquisition Process. PhD. 12/91 (Wilson).

GILLESPIE, Thomas K. User Illusion and Information Retrieval. PhD. 12/91 (M. Cooper). Examines interface design for information retrieval systems from the perspective of visual thinking. Includes a detailed prototype development for a visual interface for an online catalog.