Research

My research investigates the practical problems scientists face that result from information overload and the large-scale fragmentation of information and knowledge due to the increasing specialization of disciplines. In particular, I am studying how life scientists use information resources such as structured data sets and the biomedical literature in their work processes. From a theoretical perspective, I am interested in advancing what we know about human information interactions, particularly cognitive processes involved in readers' interpretations of text, data, and images. From a development perspective, I am interested in methods and systems for de-fragmenting and integrating data and literature to facilitate the discovery process, from both the top-down and end-user perspectives.

My current projects focus on the creation and use of Gene Ontology annotations in model organism databases. This research has been funded by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and an unrestricted research gift from Microsoft Research (Gary Marchionini and Catherine Marshall, PIs).

Funded research projects

• Principal Investigator, "Information Integration Using Annotation Evidence". National Library of Medicine Individual Biomedical Informatics Fellowship (1F37LM009194-01), 2006-2008, $72,344.
  
  
• Principal Investigator, "Manual literature annotations as potential evidence for annotation behavior principles, document features, and interface design". GSLIS ICR Seed Fund grant, 2008, $7,555.
  
  
• co-Principal Investigator (with Carole Palmer), "A Graduate Program for Scientific Communication Specialists: Getting Past the Prototype in Biological Informatics". National Science Foundation (NSF) (IIS-0534567), 2005-2009, $249,189.

Research Assistants for 2007-2008: Shu-wen Huang (GSLIS), Zilong Wang (Statistics), and Liu Yang (Industrial Engineering)

Teaching

Fall 2008

• LIS590DCL, Foundations of Data Curation
• LIS590BI, Introduction to Biological Informatics Problems and Resources
• Office hours: Mondays, 14:00 - 15:00 CT, Tuesdays, 16:00 - 17:00 CT, or by appointment (email is the best contact method).

Spring 2008

• LIS530BLE, Health Sciences Information Services and Resources (syllabus on Moodle)
• LIS590BI, Introduction to Biological Informatics Problems and Resources (syllabus on Moodle)

Fall 2007

• LIS590DCL, Foundations of Data Curation

at the University of North Carolina

• Bioinformatics Research Review (INLS 279), Fall 2005. (syllabus)
• Health Sciences Information (INLS 225), Spring 2005. (syllabus; requires username & password)
• Management for Information Professionals (INLS 131), Summer 2003. (syllabus; requires Onyen & password)

Service

Committees

• UIUC GSLIS Doctoral Studies committee, AY 2008-2009
  
• UIUC GSLIS Curriculum committee, AY 2007-2008
  
• Faculty Advisor, UIUC GSLIS Student Chapter of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T), AY 2007-2008, 2008-2009

Ad hoc peer reviewing

• ACM Transactions on Information Systems
  
• Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIS&T)
  
• Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)

Advising

• Dan Wright (dissertation committee member)

Education

• Ph.D, Information & Library Science, 2007.
  School of Information & Library Science
  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC.
  Focus: Biomedical informatics and health sciences librarianship
  
  
• Master of Science, Information Science, 1997.
  School of Information & Library Science
  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC.
  Focus: Technology strategy and management
  
  
• Bachelor of Science, Liberal Arts/Business, 1994.
  Northeastern University, Boston, MA.
  Magna cum laude

Publications

Peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers

• MacMullen, W. John (2006). Quantifying literature citations, index terms, and Gene Ontology annotations in the Saccharomyces Genome Database to assess results-set clustering utility. In Proceedings of the 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T), Vol. 43. [abstract]   [supplementary data]
• MacMullen, W. John and Denn, Sheila O. (2005). Information problems in molecular biology and bioinformatics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 56(5), 447-456 (special issue on bioinformatics). [abstract]
• MacMullen, W. John, Vaughan, K.T.L., & Moore, Margaret E. (2004). Planning bioinformatics education and information services in an academic health sciences library. College & Research Libraries 65(4), 320-333.

Short conference papers and posters

• MacMullen, W. John. Searching for Uses and Users in Gene Ontology Research. Short paper for the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T), October 2008 (accepted).
• Smith, Linda C.; Cragin, Melissa; Heidorn, P. Bryan; Palmer, Carole; MacMullen, W. John (2008). Developing an Effective Data Curation Education Program. Presentation at the "Education for Digital Stewardship: Librarians, Archivists or Curators?" workshop at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), June 20, 2008; Pittsburgh, PA.
• MacMullen, W. John (2008). Understanding biocurators: Attributes and roles of model organism database curators. Poster for the Medical Library Association (MLA) Annual Meeting, May 2008.
• MacMullen, W. John (2007). A Research Design for Measuring Variation in Database Curators' Annotations Through Prospective Randomized Controlled Studies. Poster for the 3rd International Digital Curation Conference, Washington DC, December 2007.
• MacMullen, W. John (2007). Measuring variation in curators' GO annotations through a controlled multi-MOD study. Poster for the Second International Biocurator Meeting, San Jose CA, October 2007. [abstract] [poster]
• Cragin, Melissa H.; D'Avolio, Leonard; MacMullen, W. John; Smith, Catherine Arnott (2007). The Effects of Context on Data Quality in Biomedical Data Reuse. (MacMullen's presentation: 'Gene Ontology annotations as an example of the impact of curatorial variation on data reuse'.) Panel at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T).
• MacMullen, W. John (2007). Contextual Analysis of Variation and Quality in Human-Curated Gene Ontology Annotations. Poster at the 2007 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) annual conference doctoral poster competition. Awarded Honorable Mention.
• MacMullen, W. John (2006). Facets and measures of Gene Ontology annotation quality in model organism databases. In Proceedings of the 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T), Vol. 43. [abstract]   [full text & poster]
• Cragin, Melissa H.; MacMullen, W. John; Wallis, Jillian C.; Zimmerman, Ann (2006). Managing Scientific Data for Long-term Access and Use. (Panel at the 2006 ASIS&T Annual Meeting.) Presentation: 'Achieving cross-species knowledge integration with model organism databases and the Gene Ontology'. [abstract]   [full-text ]
• MacMullen, W. John (2005). Inter-database annotation linkages in model organism databases. In Proceedings of the 68th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T), Vol. 42. [abstract] Also presented at the First International Biocurator Meeting, December 2005.
• MacMullen, W. John (2004). Effects of geographic factors on the education and training of health sciences librarians in the mid-Atlantic states. Medical Library Association (MLA) 2004 Annual Conference, p. 59.
• MacMullen, W. John (2003). Discovery support systems for the integration of biomedical knowledge. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 27(4), 78. Abstract from Connections 8 conference, Long Island NY, June 2003.
• MacMullen, W. John (2003). PROMIS: An XML-based metadata framework for proteomics. In Proceedings of the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T), Vol. 40, pp. 526-527. [full poster]
• MacMullen, W. John, Moore, Margaret E., Vaughan, K.T.L., Jenkins, Carol G., and Hemminger, Bradley M. (2003). Planning bioinformatics education and information services in an academic health sciences center library. Medical Library Association (MLA) 2003 Annual Conference.
• Denn, Sheila O. and MacMullen, W. John (2002). The ambiguous bioinformatics domain: A conceptual map of information science applications to molecular biology. In Proceedings of the 65th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T), Vol. 39, pp. 556-558. [full poster]  
• MacMullen, W. John, Parmelee, Mary C., Fenstermacher, David A. and Hemminger, Bradley M. (2002). Defining an open metadata framework for proteomics: The PROMIS project. In Proceedings of the 2002 American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium, p. 1093. [full poster]  
• MacMullen, W. John and Fenstermacher, David A. (2002) Toward the development of an open metadata framework for compositional proteomics. In Caulfield, H. John, et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th Joint Conference on Information Sciences (JCIS 2002), p. 1274. [full poster]

Other publications

• MacMullen, W. John (2006). Contextual Analysis of Variation and Quality in Human-curated Gene Ontology Annotations. Dissertation overview and poster for the 2006 i-Conference Doctoral Colloquium.
• MacMullen, W. John (2005). Annotation as Process, Thing, and Knowledge: Multi-domain studies of structured data annotation. SILS Technical Report TR-2005-02. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, School of Information and Library Science, Technical Report Series.
• MacMullen, W. John (2003). Requirements Definition and Design Criteria for Test Corpora in Information Science. SILS Technical Report TR-2003-03. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, School of Information and Library Science, Technical Report Series.
• MacMullen, W. John (1998). "Anonymity, Privacy, and Security on the Internet" and "Internet Commerce: A Global Marketspace". In Dempsey, Bert J. and Jones, Paul, (Eds.), Internet Issues and Applications, 1997-98, pp. 67-85 & 133-144. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1998. ISBN: 0810834308.
• MacMullen, W. John (1997). Rethinking the Enterprise: Applying Business Process Re-Engineering Principles to the Evolution of Inter-Organizational Communication. Master's Thesis, UNC-Chapel Hill, School of Information and Library Science, May 1997, 93 pages.

Awards

• Beta Phi Mu (2008)
• 2007 ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
• Individual Biomedical Informatics Fellowship (F37 LM009194) from the National Library of Medicine (2006-2007).
• Honorable Mention award, 2007 ALISE doctoral poster competition.
• Travel award to the 2006 i-Conference Doctoral Colloquium.
• The Margaret Ellen Kalp Memorial Fellowship, SILS, Fall 2005.
• ASIS&T SIG/STI student travel award, 2003.
• The Lester Asheim Scholarship, SILS, 2003-2004.
• Bioinformatics Fellowship, Program in Bioinformatics & Computational Biology, UNC, 2002-2003.
• Bioinformatics Fellowship, UNC Health Sciences Library, via the National Library of Medicine, 2001-2002.
• MCI Fellowship in Information Science, 1996-1997.

Conference Participation

• American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) Annual Meeting, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007.
• American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006.
• Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Annual Conference, 2003, 2004, 2007.
• Medical Library Association (MLA) Annual Meeting, 2003, 2004, 2008.
• i-Conference 2006 and the associated Doctoral Colloquium. Ann Arbor, MI, October 2006.
• ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), Chapel Hill, NC, June 2006.
• 3rd International Digital Curation Conference, Washington DC, December 2007.
• Gene Ontology Annotation Camp, Stanford University, June 2005, July 2006.
• Second International Biocurator Meeting, San Jose, CA, October 2007.
• First International Biocurator Meeting, Asilomar, CA, December 2005.
• ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2004.