iSchool doctoral candidate Hengyi Fu and alumna Yun Fan are publishing a paper entitled “Music Information Seeking via Social Q&A: An Analysis of Questions in Music Stack Exchange Community.” The paper discusses how music Q&A sites like Music Stack Exchange are fruitful resources for identifying users’ music information needs, how those needs are expressed and intended use of the information once it’s obtained. Music Stack Exchange users asked questions that were motivated by the recognition of knowledge gaps, lack of resources, need for others’ opinions or interest in research issues. Music librarians and general-purpose music information system designers will be able to use the findings to help them enhance music-related controlled variables and improve the experience of users searching for relevant music information. The paper is being published as part of the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2016 full paper track.

Fu is also publishing a paper with Dr. Besiki Stvilia entitled “Knowledge Curation Discussions and Activity Dynamics in a Short Lived Social Q&A Community” as part of the JCDL 2016 full paper track. This paper provides a content analysis of member discussions and content curation actions on a short lived social Q&A interaction on Music Stack Exchange. The findings will help in the identification and assembly of community type specific repertoires of strategies, rules and actions of community design, governance, and content creation and curation.