PhD students Jessica Cheng and Lo Lee have been awarded Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships from the Beta Phi Mu Honor Society. The $3,000 fellowship supports students who are working on their dissertations in library and information science, information studies, informatics, or a related field.
Cheng's dissertation, "Agreeing to Disagree: Applying a Logic-Based Approach to Reconciling and Merging Multiple Taxonomies," focuses on solving metadata interoperability problems in knowledge organization systems—taxonomies, classification systems, metadata standards, and ontologies—by employing a logic-based approach to resolve conflicting vocabularies.
"My dissertation explores the logic-based taxonomy alignment approach in different domains and applications (i.e., geography, biodiversity informatics, metadata)," said Cheng. "I hope it will contribute to the information science community at large by providing pluralistic viewpoints in merged taxonomies."
Cheng's research interests lie at the intersection of information organization and data science methods. She is especially interested in topics related to knowledge organization, semantic web technologies, ontologies, and taxonomy alignment. Cheng earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in library and information science from National Taiwan University.
Lee's dissertation, "Exploring Information Behavior of Hobbyists and the Making Process of Arts and Crafts," investigates information behavior of arts and crafts hobbyists and how hobbyists interact with space during the making process.
"The findings seek to provide empirical evidence of creative information behavior and the potential influence of space and place on it," said Lee. "This research expects to enrich information behavior literature and practically inform information service and system design to promote innovative making practice."
Lee's research interests lie at the intersection of information behavior and creativity. She earned her master's degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois and bachelor's degree in foreign languages and literature from National Tsing Hua University.