Donghee Sinn Assistant Professor Department of Information Studies College of Computing and Information University at Albany (State University of New York) email:             DSinn (at) uamail (dot) albany (dot) edu phone: 518-442-5117 campus address: Draper Hall 102

Brief Bio

Donghee Sinn is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Information Studies. She specializes in Archives and Records Management, and her research interests focus particularly on the archival research in relation with public memory, archival use/user studies, and personal archiving in the web environment. She has a B.A. and a Master's in Library and Information Science from Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Korea with a focus on history of books and Korean bibliography, and a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh, specializing in Archives and Records Management. Previously, Donghee worked at the National Archives in Korea in acquisition and appraisal, taught at a college in Korean bibliography, and worked as a reference librarian in Korea. While working for a Ph.D. in the States, she worked in the East Asian Library for the Korean Collection at the University of Pittsburgh. Since then she has been participating and serving on the Library Technology Committee and the Membership Committee of the Council of East Asian Libraries, which is a sub group of the Asian Studies Association. She also worked as a webmaster for one of the institutes at the University of Pittsburgh. Her dissertation study was recognized and prizes were awarded from the ALA (American Library Association) and her own school. She is very interested in building bridges among several disciplines including archival studies, archiving in the web environment, and the East Asian culture and heritages

 

Research Interests

My research interests are varied and based on field experiences in archives and libraries. One of my major interest centers on the use of archival holdings and the actual influence of archival materials in the entity of knowledge in a certain area. It is crucial for archives to understand how users discover and actually utilize archival holdings and how much credibility they grant to them for their research. To date there have not been many archival user studies investigated from actual publications of archival researchers.

My research interests also include the general public's personal archiving in the web environment. Individuals' personal records will be future historical resources that document the era in which they lived. These days, people create their letters and diaries in electronic formats and many preserve them in web domains. Individuals' personal web contents have not yet been regarded as historic resources or archival materials to the same degree as traditional personal records. In a similar context, web communities or institutions which do not exist in a physical form might also encounter the same situation in archiving their history. Whenever there is a need to preserve documents in any format, information professionals should play a definitive role to provide guidance and consultation in archiving activities.

Another area of research interest is archival research in relation with public memory, especially for various cultures and historical events. The American society is composed of diverse ethnic groups and cultural heritages, giving the country a unique character and thereby creating a dynamic driving force in society. However, little has been explored about the relationship between public memory and archival collections in the history of various cultural heritages.