%0 Book Section %B Genres on the Web: Computational Models and Empirical Studies %D 2010 %T Problems in the use-centered development of a taxonomy of web genres %A Kevin Crowston %A Kwaśnik, Barbara H. %A Rubleske, Joe %E Mehler, Alexander %E Sharoff, Serge %E Santini, Marina %B Genres on the Web: Computational Models and Empirical Studies %S Series: Text, Speech and Language Technology (Series Editors: Ide, Nancy & Véronis, Jean) %I Springer %C New York %V 42 %8 2010 %@ 978-90-481-9177-2 %& 3 %R 10.1007/978-90-481-9178-9 %> https://crowston.syr.edu/sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/081024%20book%20chapter%20as%20submitted.pdf %0 Conference Paper %B Colloquium on Web Genres, Corpus Linguistics %D 2007 %T Building a Corpus of Genre-Tagged Web Pages for an Information-Access Experiment %A Rubleske, Joe %A Kevin Crowston %A Kwaśnik, Barbara H. %A Chun, You-Lee %B Colloquium on Web Genres, Corpus Linguistics %C Birmingham, UK %G eng %> https://crowston.syr.edu/sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/corpus.longabstract.revised.IV16.pdf %0 Conference Proceedings %B Proceedings of the ISKO Conference %D 2006 %T Challenges in creating a taxonomy for genres of digital documents %A Kwaśnik, Barbara H. %A Chun, You-Lee %A Kevin Crowston %A D'Ignazio, J. %A Rubleske, Joe %B Proceedings of the ISKO Conference %C Vienna, Austria %G eng %> https://crowston.syr.edu/sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/ISKO06abstract.pdf %0 Conference Paper %B Connections: The 10th Annual Great Lakes Information Science Conference %D 2005 %T Can Genre Metadata Improve Information Retrieval? %A Rubleske, Joe %A Kevin Crowston %A Kwaśnik, Barbara H. %B Connections: The 10th Annual Great Lakes Information Science Conference %C McGill University, Montreal, Quebec %G eng %0 Journal Article %J Information, Technology & People %D 2005 %T Introduction to the special issue: Genres of digital documents %A Kwaśnik, Barbara H. %A Kevin Crowston %X Purpose – To introduce the special issue on “Genres of digital documents.” While there are many definitions of genre, most include consideration of the intended communicative purpose, form and sometimes expected content of a document. Most also include the notion of social acceptance, that a document is of a particular genre to the extent that it is recognized as such within a given discourse community. Design/methodology/approach – The article reviews the notion of document genre and its applicability to studies of digital documents and introduces the four articles in the special issue. Findings – Genre can be studied based on intrinsic genre attributes or on the extrinsic function that genre fulfills in human activities. Studies on intrinsic attributes include classifications of genres as clusters of attributes, though these classifications can be problematic because documents can be used in flexible ways. Also, new information technologies have enabled the appearance of novel genres. Studies on extrinsic function include ways to use genre for education or information accesses, as well as the use of genre as a lens for understanding communications in organizations. The four articles in the special issue illustrate these approaches. Originality/value – The paper provides a framework that organizes the range of research about genres of digital documents that should be helpful to those reading this research or planning their own studies. %B Information, Technology & People %V 18 %P 76–88 %G eng %N 2 %R 10.1108/09593840510601487 %> https://crowston.syr.edu/sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/itp2005genreintro.pdf %0 Conference Proceedings %B Proceedings of the 37th Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) %D 2004 %T A framework for creating a facetted classification for genres: Addressing issues of multidimensionality %A Kwaśnik, Barbara H. %A Kevin Crowston %X People recognize and use document genres as a way of identifying useful information and of participating in mutually understood communicative acts. Crowston and Kwasnik [1] discuss the possibility of improving information access in large digital collections through the identification and use of document genre metadata. They draw on the definition of genre proposed by Orlikowski and Yates [3], who describe genre as “a distinctive type of communicative action, characterized by a socially recognized communicative purpose and common aspects of form” (p. 543). Scholars in fields such as rhetoric and library science have attempted to describe and systematize the notion of genre, and have offered many different definitions of genre. We like Orlikowski and Yates’s definition because it takes into account all three aspects of genre that we recognize as fundamental: content, form, and purpose. A document’s genre is a subtle and complex concept in which the content and form of a document are fused with its purpose or function. As such, a document’s genre cannot be separated from the context in which it is used; the same document may be construed as being of a different genre depending on how it is invoked in a given situation. Starting from the document, a letter may be a personal communication, or a piece of evidence in a court of law, or an agreement, or even a work of art. Starting from the situation, we note that differences in an information situation are often reflected in the kind of document that is considered helpful (e.g., a problem set vs. a lesson plan vs. a tutorial about mathematics, for instance). Thus, we see genre as a multidimensional phenomenon, which takes into account not only the attributes of the document itself, but also of its role in human endeavor. In this paper, we discuss some considerations in developing a facetted classification for genres to address the problem of multi-dimensionality. %B Proceedings of the 37th Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) %C Big Island, Hawai'i, January %G eng %R 10.1109/HICSS.2004.1265268 %> https://crowston.syr.edu/sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/205640100a.pdf %0 Journal Article %J Library Trends %D 2003 %T Can document-genre metadata improve information access to large digital collections? %A Kevin Crowston %A Kwaśnik, Barbara H. %X We discuss the issues of resolving the information-retrieval problem in large digital collections through the identification and use of document genres. Explicit identification of genre seems particularly important for such collections because any search usually retrieves documents with a diversity of genres that are undifferentiated by obvious clues as to their identity. Also, because most genres are characterized by both form and purpose, identifying the genre of a document provides information as to the document’s purpose and its fit to the user’s situation, which can be otherwise difficult to assess. We begin by outlining the possible role of genre identification in the information-retrieval process. Our assumption is that genre identification would enhance searching, first because we know that topic alone is not enough to define an information problem and, second, because search results containing genre information would be more easily understandable. Next, we discuss how information professionals have traditionally tackled the issues of representing genre in settings where topical representation is the norm. Finally, we address the issues of studying the efficacy of identifying genre in large digital collections. Because genre is often an implicit notion, studying it in a systematic way presents many problems. We outline a research protocol that would provide guidance for identifying Web document genres, for observing how genre is used in searching and evaluating search results, and finally for representing and visualizing genres. %B Library Trends %V 52 %P 345–361 %G eng %> https://crowston.syr.edu/sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/libtrends03_0.pdf %0 Conference Proceedings %B Proceedings of the 34th Hawai'i International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS) %D 2001 %T Genre based navigation on the Web %A Roussinov, Dmitri %A Kevin Crowston %A Nilan, Michael %A Kwaśnik, Barbara H. %A Xiaozhong Liu %A Cai, J. %X We report on our ongoing study of using the genre of Web pages to facilitate information exploration. By genre, we mean socially recognized regularities of form and purpose in documents (e.g., a letter, a memo, a research paper). Our study had three phases. First, through a user study, we identified genres which most/least frequently meet searchers' information needs. We found that certain genres are better suited for certain types of needs. We identified five (5) major groups of document genres that might be used in an interactive search tool that would allow genrebased navigation. We tried to balance the following dual objectives: 1) each group should be recognizable by a computer algorithm as easily as possible 2) each group has a better chance of satisfying particular types of information needs. Finally, we developed a novel user interface for a web searching that allows genre-based navigation through three major functionalities: 1) limiting search to specified genres 2) visualizing the hierarchy of genres discovered in the search results and 3) accepting user feedback on the relevancy of the specified genres. %B Proceedings of the 34th Hawai'i International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS) %I IEEE %C Maui, HI, January %@ 0-7695-0981-9 %G eng %R 10.1109/HICSS.2001.926478 %> https://crowston.syr.edu/sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/09814013.pdf %0 Magazine Article %D 2001 %T Identifying document genre to improve web search effectiveness %A Kwaśnik, Barbara H. %A Kevin Crowston %A Nilan, Michael %A Roussinov, Dmitri %B The Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology %V 27 %P 23–26 %G eng %U http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Dec-01/kwasnikartic.html %R 10.1002/bult.194