School of Information Sciences

Takazawa defends dissertation

Doctoral candidate Aiko Takazawa successfully defended her dissertation, "'Tutteli to Japan': a Case Study of Spontaneous Collaboration in Disaster Response," on May 17.

Her committee included Professor Michael Twidale, chair and director of research; Professor Linda C. Smith; Professor Bertram C. (Chip) Bruce; and Preben Hansen, docent and associate professor at Stockholm University.

From the abstract: Japanese women living in Finland became organizers of a self-organized humanitarian effort in response to the 2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami disaster in Japan. The way these volunteer individuals managed to send bulks of baby formula, Tutteli, from Finland to Japan is a fascinating case to study for better holistic understanding of how people collaboratively seek, search, and use information and act on that information with technologies. Since this effort emerged in a natural setting without being guided through an established affiliation among participants or managed by an outside source, its emerging process of self-organizing provides deep insights into the substantive context for intertwined individual and collaborative information activities. Through a case study method, my dissertation advances a further explanation for an effective assemblage of individual information behavior as a process of collaborative information activities and learning. From the perspective of library and information science research, this case demonstrates the potential for expanding existing concepts of information seeking and search by looking at its gradually constructed information needs, resulting from browsing in social context, serendipitous searching, and collaborative learning.
 

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Student Spotlight: Daria Meshcheriakova

BSIS student Daria Meshcheriakova came to the iSchool with intention. Originally from Russia, where she lived for 17 years, Meshcheriakova moved to Chicago and attended Harold Washington Community College before transferring to the University of Illinois. Among potential universities, Illinois proved to be the best fit.

Daria Meshcheriakova

iSchool researchers present at ILA 2025

School faculty, staff, and students will present their research at the 2025 Illinois Library Association (ILA) Annual Conference, which will be held on October 14–16 in Rosemont. The theme of this year's conference is "You Belong Here."

Get to know Jade Carthans, BSIS student

Jade Carthans is interested in how human-centered design, machine learning, and data analytics can come together to solve critical problems that impact organizations and individuals. She gained firsthand experience in these areas through internships with Microsoft and State Farm.

Jade Carthans

Join the iSchool at the 2025 ALISE annual conference

Join iSchool faculty, staff, and students for the annual conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), which will take place from October 6–8 in Kansas City, Missouri. The theme of the 2025 conference is "Decolonising Pedagogies: Agency, Identity, Practices."

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Fax: (217) 244-3302

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

Back to top