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      • Home
      • Research
      • Teaching
      • Publications
      • Presentations
      • Practice
      • Service
      • Home
      • Research
      • Teaching
      • Publications
      • Presentations
      • Practice
      • Service
      • …  
        • Home
        • Research
        • Teaching
        • Publications
        • Presentations
        • Practice
        • Service
      • Home
      • Research
      • Teaching
      • Publications
      • Presentations
      • Practice
      • Service
      • Powered By
        Strikingly
        • Sarah Polkinghorne, PhD

          Hello! I'm a researcher and a librarian.

           

          This page shares current highlights.

          To read my full CV, please reach out. I'd be happy to hear from you.

           

          sarah.polkinghorne@ualberta.ca

        • Research

          A brief introduction

           

            My research focuses on information practices, including information organization and searching practices, which are unexamined, tacit, or assumed to be mundane. My research illuminates how people's everyday information practices are not mundane at all; they are complex, meaningful, and co-constitutive with identity. In my doctoral research, I worked with participants to capture their everyday food activities and the embodied information practices within them.

             

            I also have an abiding interest in how language choices, such as those of information professionals, reflect power relations, norms, and ways of thinking. I document information experiences that are often taken for granted, and question how such practices are predominantly or habitually discussed.

             

            My current research focuses on people's experiences of online health misinformation, particularly how people navigate embodied misinformation. I also have research on the go in the areas of information literacy and scholarly communication.

          • Teaching

            Recent

             

              • Human Information Interaction, Winter 2021, for the University of Alberta's School of Library and Information Studies. An exploration of how people experience information.
              • Information Resource Discovery, Fall 2020, for the University of Ottawa's School of Information Studies. An introduction to information services, information practices and experiences, and search.
            • Publications

              In progress & recent

               

                • "Getting past 'approachability': What cultural humility brings to library and information education." With Lilliana Montoya. Forthcoming in Hopeful visions, practical actions: Cultural humility in library work, eds. Sarah Kostelecky, Lori Townsend, and David Hurley. ALA Editions.
                • "Love is a lens: Locating love in library and information studies." With Mary Greenshields. Forthcoming in Library Trends special issue, "The Joy of Information," eds. Jenna Hartel and Hailey Sirackey.
                • "A devil in the details: Addressing authors' needs in transformative agreements." With Lisa M. Given. Common Place, special issue, The Global Transition to Open. [Link]
                • "Holistic approaches to research: From rhetoric to paradigm." With Lisa M. Given. Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology. [Link]
              • Presentations

                Upcoming & recent

                 

                  • "Reconceiving trial and error: A central information practice in everyday food life." (2021, September). For the 2021 conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE).
                  • "Interdisciplinary concept development as a path to impact: 'Vicarious sensory engagement' and YouTube food videos." (2019, October). Symposium of SIG-USE (the Special Interest Group for Information Needs, Seeking, and Use), at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Melbourne, Australia.
                • Practice

                  As an academic librarian

                   

                    Currently, the core of my work as a librarian is leading monograph collections at the University of Alberta, including ebook frontlists, approval plans, demand-driven acquisition, and assessment.

                     

                    Before this, I worked as a public services librarian. I helped people find and use information, manage research data, and work through processes such as making their publications openly available.

                  • Service

                    Recent & ongoing commitments

                     

                      • Currently serving as President (2021-2022) of the Canadian Association for Information Science/L'association canadienne des sciences de l'information (CAIS/ACSI)
                      • Reviewing for the Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Library Trends, Journal of Documentation, and others

                    This work is licensed under a

                    Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

                     

                     

                    Banner image by Kelly Tindall.

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