As Director of Information and Telecommunications Needs Research (a research partnership between Monash University and Charles Sturt University), Dr Kirsty Williamson recently spent some time working in Western Australia. Kirsty was interviewing for the Australian Research Council Discovery project: One Day, We'll All Invest This Way! Regulating Online Investment, and whilst there took the opportunity to interview the Chief Librarian of the City of Joondalup Libraries for the project, The Impact of the Retirement of the Baby Boomers on the Public Library. The latter project is funded by Upper Murray Regional Library, the State Library of NSW, and Public Libraries Australia.
Kirsty's involvement in this project stems from the belief that the level and standard of information seeking, undertaken by online investors, will indicate whether there is a need for further regulation of the activity. Kirsty notes that the four interviews she did in Western Australia were some of the most interesting that the group has done – providing a wide variety of information-seeking approaches.
Kirsty was invited to present on various research projects and was sponsored by ALIA West, the State Library of WA, and Information Studies in Faculty of Media, Society & Culture, Curtin University of Technology. The presentation covered both projects mentioned above, as well as her work with CSU PhD student, Terry Asla, on the information needs and behaviours of older people.
Also mentioned was the Australian Research Council Linkage project, Generating Knowledge and Avoiding Plagiarism: Smart Information Use by Secondary Students (in which Kirsty works along with Dr Joy McGregor, Professor John Weckert, Dr Yeslam Al-Saggaf as Chief Investigators). A CSU student from Western Australia, Maureena Lockyer-Benzie, who is investigating baby boomers in relation to public libraries for her PhD studies, also made a contribution to the presentation.
The PowerPoint used for the presentation can be found at:
http://infotech.monash.edu.au/research/groups/itnr/assets/perth-seminar.ppt
