I study how people find, understand and trust information, especially when AI, library systems and accessible design shape the experience.
Grainger Engineering Library, UIUC
Systematic testing of Boolean search strategies across AI-enhanced academic databases following a standardized protocol, with collaborative data collection in Zotero group libraries.
Research Protocol Team, UIUC
Literature review and synthesis for a rapid review examining how newspaper industry responses to cultural change can inform academic library policy development.
View the research recordIDEA Lab, UIUC
Evaluated five high-traffic service areas, identifying navigation barriers and delivering recommendations for interface clarity and accessibility.
Simisaye, A. O., Adigun, A. R., Olushola, S. D., & Oduwole, E. O. (2022). Undergraduates' use of online forums in a Nigerian University of Education. Ilorin Varsity International Journal of Library and Information Science (IVIJLIS), 5(2).
Abstract and detailsAdigun, A. R. (2021). The Information Professional: Examining the Market Requirements in the Artificial Intelligence Era. Keynote, Grand Symposium, Department of LIS, Tai Solarin University of Education.
Abstract and detailsThe wider questions that connect my current studies, publications and projects.
What changes when an answer arrives before the search does?
People increasingly start a research question with a chatbot rather than a catalogue or a database. I am interested in what that shift does to the habits underneath searching: how queries are phrased, how much of the result gets checked, and what gets lost when a system answers instead of pointing.
Do our search strategies still behave the way we teach them?
Academic databases have quietly added relevance ranking, natural language search and AI summaries on top of Boolean logic. I test how those layers respond to carefully built search strings, because instruction librarians are still teaching strategies that assume the older behaviour.
How should a system tell you it is not sure?
Confidence is easy to display and hard to earn. I am interested in how information systems communicate uncertainty, provenance and limits, and in the policy and ethics work that has to sit alongside the engineering.
Where do people actually go first, and why?
Formal sources are rarely the first stop. My earliest published work looked at undergraduates using online forums for academic questions, and that interest in informal, social and workaround information channels has stayed with me.
What is the interface quietly making harder?
I run usability evaluations and design reviews on library and product interfaces, looking for the navigation choices, labels and flows that add friction to an otherwise good service.
Who is the system still leaving out?
Most accessibility failures I find are ordinary: an unlabelled link, a heading used for size, an image with no alternative text. I audit and remediate this work in library guides and university web content against WCAG 2.1 and ADA Title II expectations.
What does literacy mean when the source is generated?
Evaluating a generated answer is a different skill from evaluating a journal article. I work on what instruction has to add, and on building tools that make the limits of a model visible to the person using it.
How should libraries respond to change they did not choose?
Libraries absorb shifts in publishing, technology and culture, usually with policy written after the fact. I contribute to reviews and service development that try to get ahead of that, including research data and scholarly support content.