Tamara Marnell's Portfolio

Collection Development

This course covered the selection, evaluation, and management of library collections. Units were devoted to acquisitions, interactions with publishers, policy making, institutional repositories, intellectual freedom and censorship. The final project for this class was the selection of materials for a fictional library on a budget of $2500.

Database Design

This course focused on the principles of relational database design. The course covered the basics of data modeling, relational algebra, normalization, MySQL, and the construction of tables, forms, queries, reports, and macros in Microsoft Access 2007/2010.

For my final project, I worked with a group of students to design an Access database for an employee of the Area 10 Agency on Aging in Ellettsville, IN. This database is currently used to organize senior volunteers in the federally funded America Reads program.

Evaluation of Information Systems

This course addressed performance measurement and methodology in the evaluation of information systems and services. Material included the formulation of objectives, performance measures, data collection approaches, and basic statistics. For the course project, I worked with the Monroe County Public Library on public surveys and task-based analyses to evaluate its website.

Human-Computer Interaction

This course introduced user-centered design approaches to the production and evaluation of new technologies. Projects emphasized the design-development cycle from information gathering through reiterative prototyping and testing. During the semester, I produced a high-fidelity prototype of an "app" for the university's Residential Programs and Services. For the final project, my group designed and evaluated a serious game to teach college students about cooking and nutrition.

Information Seeking Behavior

This course focused on the literature investigating how people find, manage, evaluate and use information in professional and personal contexts. Central concepts included Dervin's theory of sensemaking, Fisher's theory of information grounds, and the roles of social networks. For the final project, I wrote a research proposal to investigate the information behavior of a select user group.

Introduction to Research Methods

This course on sociological research methods covered research ethics, survey design, project management, and data analysis and presentation. I completed two major projects for this class: first, a group project surveying masters of library science students' outlooks on the job market, and second, an individual research project observing the behavior of college students in a library computer lab.

Library Management

This course was an introduction to business management for library science students. Material included organization theory, the role of managers, ethics and organizational culture, budgeting, conflict management, leadership and human resources. Four weeks of the class were devoted to developing a fictional budget within a team of four, and each student gave three presentations on papers and projects. For the final project, I wrote a short literature review of attitudes towards bureaucracy from 1920 to 2010.

Organizational Informatics

This class focused on the impact and management of information technology in an organizational setting. Over the course of the semester, I wrote multiple short case studies of organizations who had implemented information technology successfully or unsuccessfully into their operations.

Reference

This class provided practical experience in evaluating and using information resources. Assignments were devoted to answering potential reference questions using online databases, encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, government documents and websites, and other specialized sources. For the final project, I constructed a pathfinder of plant systematics for the IU Libraries.

Representation and Organization

This class covered the cognitive science of information processing, the theoretical framework of classification schemes, vocabulary and semiotics, thesauri, ontologies, and metadata.

Systems Analysis and Design

This class, a part of the core curriculum for the Information Science program, focused on contextual inquiry and data modeling for isolating potential breakdowns in systems and producing recommendations for improvement. Throughout the semester, I worked with a group to address a key problem in the university's Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Center (ATAC). We interviewed key stakeholders, modeled crucial workflows and artifacts, and collaborated on a report with recommended solutions to present to ATAC management.

XML

This summer workshop covered the basics of XML and related languages. During the workshop, I produced an XML version of my resumé, validated against a custom Document Type Declaration and XML Schema and transformed dynamically with XSLT 1.0. For my final project, I created a display of a Pokémon card collection, with detailed facsimiles of individual cards produced with PHP, CSS and XSLT from XML.