Maria Souden: Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

I am beginning my final year as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Information. The Beta Phi Mu Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship has helped me to advance in my dissertation study, Information Work in the Chronic Illness Experience. My research looks at the information work done by people living with chronic illness to cope with and manage their conditions. Of particular interest to me is how information is sought and applied in the course of managing the disconnects between the work of illness, the work of everyday life and psychological work done to cope with illness.

The Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship provided support for direct research costs such as transcription, software and subject fees for my initial data collection and analysis. I presented my preliminary findings from this analysis in October at the ASIST 2008 Annual Meeting, where it received the “Best Information Behavior Poster” award. The quality of my work and the thoughtfulness of my methodological approach helped me to secure my current position as Program Specialist at the Ann Arbor VA Medical Center’s Health Services Research & Development Center of Excellence. In this position, I conduct ethnographic and qualitative research in order to more deeply understand clinicians’ use of information in treating diabetic patients in the primary care setting.