Bradley Wade Bishop and Lauren H. Mandel Have Paper Published in Library Hi Tech Best Young Professionals Special Issue

Bradley Wade Bishop and Lauren H. Mandel Have Paper Published in Library Hi Tech Best Young Professionals Special Issue

Bradley Wade Bishop, PhD, former Research Associate of the Information Use Management & Policy Institute (Information Institute) and current Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky School of Library and Information Science, and Lauren H. Mandel, Research Coordinator, of the Information Institute, recently published a paper in the Library Hi Tech Best Young Professionals 2 Special Issue. Their paper, entitled Utilizing geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Library Research, discussed the library research projects that have employed GIS as a data analysis and display tool.

Mandel noted that there are a number of applications for GIS methods and many of these approaches significantly improve the overall quality of the research. She said “both in terms of data collection and presentation, GIS applications greatly enhance the impact of such research.” Many of these applications are summarized in the Library Hi Tech publication.

The Information Institute at the College of Communication and Information, Florida State University has done several projects that employ GIS as a tool to measure and analyze library data: Needs Assessment of Florida Public Library E-Government and Emergency Management Broadband Services (2009), Public Libraries and the Internet (2007), and Who’s Asking? Geography and Demographics of Florida’s Ask a Librarian Service (2007) – this project was published as “The Geography of Virtual Questioning” in Library Quarterly.

Two current projects at the Information Institute will use GIS mapping techniques to analyze and display broadband needs assessment data for rural anchor institutions in Florida: North Florida Broadband Authority (NFBA) Broadband Needs Assessment and benchmarking of Anchor Institutions (2010) and Florida Rural Broadband Alliance (FRBA) Broadband Needs Assessment and benchmarking of Anchor Institutions (2010). More information on these projects is available at the NFBA project website and the FRBA project website.