Information quality and value

Inferring gender of movie reviewers: exploiting writing style, content and metadata

by Jahna Otterbacher

'Helpfulness' in online communities: a measure of message quality

by Jahna Otterbacher

Inspiring Research, Inspiring Scholarship: The value and benefits of digitised resources for learning, teaching, research and enjoyment

by Simon Tanner

This document draws evidence from a wide number of sources and seeks to provide a compelling account of the advantages... more This document draws evidence from a wide number of sources and seeks to provide a compelling account of the advantages of digitised content. The aim is to provide key information and strong exemplars for the following primary stakeholders:

- Memory institutions and cultural heritage organisations such as libraries, museums and archives.
- Holders and custodians of special collections.
- Managers, project managers and fundraisers who are seeking to justify further investment in digitised resources.
- Academics looking to establish digital projects and digital scholarship collaborations with collection owners.
- Publishing, media and business sectors which may be considering the best means to collaborate and align with collection owners, with academia or memory institutions.


This report performs the task of synthesising information relating to the benefits of digitisation and helps to provide a compelling argument for future digitisation work. Thus, you will find in this document information on:

Where the value and impact can be found in digitised resources,
What modes of value and impact are achievable, and
Who are the beneficiaries gaining from the impact and value?
Special attention is worth paying to the section upon 5 modes of value for digitised resources in Creating Digital Britain. The basic value modes suggested here may act as a guide for future digitisation impact assessment. If these value models to society as a whole are satisfied then many other benefits identified in this report will also accrue.

This document therefore provides strong information to support:

Fundraising and revenue development plans,
Audience development,
Designing evaluation and impact assessment,
Project planning, and
Planning educational activities to augment digitised resources.
Re-use, divide and repackage this document for your benefit. Please attribute the source/authorship according to the licence, but feel free to re-use.

Quality evaluation of health answers in Yahoo! Answers: A comparison between experts and users

by Adam Worrall

Oh, S., Worrall, A., & Yi, Y. J. (2011). Quality evaluation of health answers in Yahoo! Answers: A comparison between experts and users. In A. Grove (Ed.), Proceedings of the 74th ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Communication and information in society, technology and work, New Orleans, LA, October 9-12, 2011. Silver Spring, MD: American Society for Information Science and Technology. doi:10.1002/meet.2011.14504801269

This work-in-progress study investigates perceptions regarding the quality of online health answers that people share... more This work-in-progress study investigates perceptions regarding the quality of online health answers that people share in social contexts. The current study differs from previous research by focusing on the topic of health and comparing the evaluations of users against experts. Three groups of evaluators—questioners, health reference librarians, and nurses—are invited to assess the quality of health answers posted in Yahoo! Answers. Forty evaluators from each group review a total of 400 health answers, rating them 1 to 5 according to 10 evaluation criteria. Preliminary results from the quality ratings of 10 answers evaluated by librarians and questioners indicate that librarians rated the quality of answers lower on most of the evaluation criteria than questioners. Further results and analysis [were] provided at the poster presentation at the 2011 ASIST conference [and confirmed these results]. This research will help librarians and nurses better understand how lay people such as their patrons and patients evaluate online health information in social contexts, leading to the offering of better health information services to these audiences.

Information quality discussions in Wikipedia

by Besiki Stvilia

Information Quality Work Organization In Wikipedia

by Besiki Stvilia

Issues of cross-contextual information quality evaluation—The case of Arabic, English, and Korean Wikipedias

by Besiki Stvilia

IS/IT is the business: Information Does Matter

by Philip Noah

DRAFT COPY (c) Philip D. Noah Jr. All rights reserved 

Carr in his well-known article IT Doesn’t Matter argues that information technology is no longer relevant. The days... more Carr in his well-known article IT Doesn’t Matter argues that information technology is no longer relevant. The days of gaining a competitive advantage by having the latest server or the newest network are gone, IT (Information technology) is a commodity, and IS (information systems) are part of the cost of doing business (Carr, 2003). Carr’s argument is valid if the definition of IT focuses only on the technology, the servers, and switches, which make up the traditional IT infrastructure. If we view IT in terms of The Information Age Organization, we find that not only does IT matter but also it is the business. The storage of data, the retrieval of information, and the creation of knowledge are key business processes for any information age organization.

The impact of data quality and analytical capabilities on planning performance

by Maurice Kuegler

Co-authored with Johannes Warth and Gernot Kaiser; Published in the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI 2011), Zurich, Switzerland

Conventional wisdom suggests that data quality plays a central role for compiling valid and reliable plans to make the... more Conventional wisdom suggests that data quality plays a central role for compiling valid and reliable plans to make the right decisions. At the same time, it is acknowledged that planning processes are both data and knowledge intensive and characterized by the human-computer interface. However, there are limited academic investigations on how data quality and analytical capabilities simultaneously impact planning performance. Drawing on the conceptual approach of business analytics, we introduce the notion of analytical capabilities, which is operationalized through three distinct resources: IT-usability, user competence, and analytical execution. To assess the impact of data quality and analytical capabilities on planning performance, we develop a structural equation model, which is then tested using data from the automotive industry. Our results suggest that analytical capabilities are a significant mediator for the effect of data quality on planning performance.