[Project] A Multidisciplinary Approach to Studying Information Needs of Gerontologists and Research Resources on Gerontology

Porject No.：NSC 95-2413-H-002-014
Peroid：2006.7-2007.10

Project Introduction

The aging population has become a global trend and the resulting issues have attracted much attention of researchers from many countries. However, the integrated study of Gerontology in Taiwan is still immature. We believe that a multi-disciplinary research resource of Gerontology, which encourage cross-field studies will be valuable.

This project is an applied research with a goal of building a comprehensive database of research resources. We have designed three stages for this project, including a survey of research resources of Gerontology, study of information need of researchers of Gerontology and an evaluation of the use of such research resources of Gerontology.

The main objective of the first stage is to extend the completeness of the study of
research resources of Gerontology. We collect many types of resources, including
periodicals, dissertations, government programs, laws and regulations, statistics,
overseas seminar report, industrial resources, industrial trend analysis books. We also develop a set of subject categories and use it in the setup of Gerontology
integrated resources website; a subject-based scheme for browsing Gerontology resources.


Releveant Papers

Chang, Shan-Ju L. (2005). Serious Leisure and Information Research. Journal of Library and Information Studies, 3(1/2),15-22.(Journal released in Dec.,2006)
Abstract
The coming of aging societies is a global trend and Taiwan is included as one of the aging societies, according to United Nation's criteria. There are many social, educational, and medical issues ahead and much research is needed to form the proper policies and decision-making.

This article traces the establishment and development of gerontology internationally, especially the responses from the American Library Association in forming the policies to serve the oldr population in recent years in the light of uch social movement. The author concludeds the paper with suggestions of the areas that library professionals need to consider for better services to the seniors in the future.

Keywords: Gerontology, Aging Societies, Libraries, Information Services, Policies

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[Project] A Knowledge Management Approach to Modeling Business Information Services in E-Commerce (I) (II)

Project No.：NSC 91-2413-H-002-022；NSC 92-2413-H-002-013
Period：2002.7-2004.7

Project Introduction

There are 2 sub-projects included: 1)A Knowledge Management Approach; 2)An Investigation of E-mails Usage and Business-focused Taxonomies.

At the first stage, based on an empirical case study of a well-known E-Commerce company, explores the practical issues of knowledge management from an information behavior research perspective. Using a questionnaire listed with open questions, a semi-structured in-depth interview and the documents analysis method, this study investigated the organizational information behavior of the company’s employees, particularly the managers.

The research questions for the case study include: what are the employees’ needs for
information to work efficiently? What information resources and channels they use
in the work environment? How do they seek out information and knowledge they need?
How do members in the organization deliver information and knowledge among them?
The principles of designing a knowledge-based business information service model are suggested on the basis of these findings.

At the second stage, the purpose is to systematically study the digital contents in
the managers’ emails and electronic resources of an E-Commerce organization, exploring the implications of the finding for designing better classification schemes
as part of knowledge management applications.

We adopts a case study approach and employs multiple methods, including literature analysis, email content analysis, in-depth interview and related existing tools survey. The potential contributions are two fold: 1. to identify important contents and their organization schemes for information providers; and to establish a knowledge taxonomy that is business-focused and industry-specific.


Relevant Papers

Chang, S.-J. L. & Hung, H-S. (2003). “An information behavior approach to knowledge management: From research to practice” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 44(3-4), 208-220. In English.
Abstract
In recent years, the concept of knowledge management (KM) has been promoted by business sectors. This article, based on an empirical case study, explores the practical issues of knowledge management from an information behavior research perspective. It is action research in nature and impacts teaching and business practice. Findings reveal why and what type of information and/or knowledge is considered important for daily work, as well as what and how different information resources are used. Suggestions for improving information services to achieve KM goals conclude the paper.  Fulltext...

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