Dana McKay: CV

Curriculum Vitae

My career has been made up of a series of wonderful serendipities that have allowed me to focus on how people find, manage and use information. Some highlights of this are below; For a full up-to-date CV please email me.

Education

  • PhD in Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, awarded 25 July 2019. Thesis title Down the Superhighway in a Single Tome: Understanding information browsing and how to support it online.

  • Graduate Certificate in University Teaching, University of Melbourne, 2020

  • MSc(Hons) in Computer Science, University of Waikato, New Zealand.

Current Role

I am currently a Senior Lecturer in Innovative Interactive Technologies, in the School of Computing Technologies, STEM College, RMIT University. While I am most aligned to the data science discipline, I hope to have collaborations across the School and the University.

Prior to this role I was a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, in the School of Computing and Information Systems. I am affiliated with the Human Computer Interaction and Information Systems research groups.

Before working at the University of Melbourne, I spent 10 years working as a UX professional in an academic library making information systems easier to use for university students and staff. This role did not involve publishing as part of my job, but I ran a program of research anyway. It was this research that led me back to academia for my PhD.

Publications

For a complete list of my publications, please see my Google Scholar profile. You may find an earworm; I like to use song lyrics for my paper titles. A representative sample includes:

  • Mckay, D., Twidale, M.B. and Buchanan, G (2021) "Lady Chatterley's Library: Books and Reading as Public Performance and Private Act". 2021 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR '21). ACM 197–208. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3406522.3446032

  • McKay, D. and Miller, C. (2021). Standing in the Way of Control: A Call to Action to Prevent Abuse through Better Design of Smart Technologies. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 332, 1–14. DOI:10.1145/3411764.3445114

  • Pang, P.C-I, McKay, D., Chang, S., Chen, Q., Zhang, X., and Cui, L. (2020). Privacy concerns of the Australian My Health Record: Implications for other large-scale opt-out personal health records, IP&M, Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/j.ipm.2020.102364

  • Mckay, D., Makri, S., Gutierrez-Lopez, M., MacFarlane, A., Missaoui, S., Porlezza, C., & Cooper, G. (2020). We are the Change that we Seek: Information Interactions During a Change of Viewpoint. 2020 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR 2020) ACM 173-182. DOI: 10.1145/3343413.3377975

  • McKay, D. Makri, S. Chang, S. and Buchanan, G. (2020). "On Birthing Dancing Stars: The Need for Bounded Chaos in Information Interaction". 2020 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR ’20). ACM, 292–302. DOI: 10.1145/3343413.3377983

  • McKay, D. Chang, S., Smith, W. and Buchanan, G. (2019) “The Things We Talk About When We Talk About Browsing: An Empirical Typology of Library Browsing Behavior” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1002/asi.24200

  • Makri, S., Chen, Y. C., McKay, D., Buchanan, G., & Ocepek, M. (2019). "Discovering the Unfindable: The Tension Between Findability and Discoverability in a Bookshop Designed for Serendipity". IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT 2019). Springer, 3-23. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-29384-0_1

  • Buchanan, G. and McKay, D. (2017) “The Lowest Form of Flattery: Characterising Text Re-Use and Plagiarism Patterns in a Digital Library Corpus”, ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), June 19-23, IEEE 1-10 DOI: 10.1109/JCDL.2017.7991570

  • McKay, D., W. Smith and S. Chang (2014). "Lend Me Some Sugar: Borrowing Rates of Neighbouring Books as Evidence for Browsing." ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) Septemer 14-18, IEEE, 145-154. (Best International paper) DOI: 10.1109/JCDL.2014.6970161

  • Hinze, A., D. McKay, N. Vanderschantz, C. Timpany and S. J. Cunningham (2012). "Book Selection Behavior in the Physical Library: Implications for Ebook Collections." ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), June 10-14, ACM, 305-314 DOI: 10.1145/2232817.2232874

  • McKay, D., S. Sanchez and R. Parker (2010). "What's My Name Again?: Sociotechnical Considerations for Author Name Management in Research Databases." Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference (OZCHI) November 22-26, ACM, 240-247. (Best paper) DOI:10.1145/1952222.1952274

Research Funding

All funding is reported in Australian dollars.

  • $410,000 ARC Discovery Project (2021-4) 'Improving Interactions for Browsing Large Digital Collections', chief investigator

  • $925,000 ARDC project funding (2021), co-investigator.

  • $499,676, Paul Ramsay Foundation Award (2021-3) 'A Fair Day's Work' co-investigator

  • $36,497 Melbourne Social Equity Institute Grant (2021), 'Why Do They Do That? An Investigation into the Perpetrator Perspective on Technology Facilitated Abuse', chief investigator

  • $23,000 Melbourne Early Career Researchers Grant 'Social Media Information Influencing Viewpoints', (2021) chief investigator

  • $5,000 Dyason Fellowship (2021), chief investigator

  • $40,000 C0onsultancy project with Museums Victoria (2019), collaborator

  • $10,000 Google PhD fellowship in HCI (one of only 4 awarded in 2016)

  • $4500 Special study grant from University of Melbourne (matched by City, University London, partially funded by Google News Initiative) (2019)

  • $5,000 as the industry liaison on a LiSRA RADAR grant (2017)

  • $2,509 as a visiting researcher stipend to City University London (2015)

  • $637 as a visiting researcher stipend to University of Waikato in Hamilton New Zealand (2012)

Awards

  • Best Paper, Interact 2019 for "Discovering the Unfindable: The Tension Between Findability and Discoverability in a Bookshop Designed for Serendipity ", DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-29384-0_1

  • Honourable mention, JCDL 2019 for "One Way or Another I'm Gonna Find Ya: The Influence of Input Mechanism on Scrolling in Complex Digital Collections ", DOI: 10.1109/JCDL.2019.00048

  • Honourable mention, CHIIR 2017 for "Slide Over Here: The Various Adjacencies of Co-borrowed Ebooks." DOI: 10.1145/3020165.3022159

  • Best International Paper, JCDL 2014 for "Lend Me Some Sugar: Borrowing Rates of Neighbouring Books as Evidence for Browsing." DOI: 10.1109/JCDL.2014.6970161

  • Best Paper, OzCHI 2010 for "What's My Name Again?: Sociotechnical Considerations for Author Name Management in Research Databases." DOI:10.1145/1952222.1952274

Selected Media Appearances

  • May 2021, on the role of Influencers in decision making, ABC.

  • May 2021, Australia Talks on Misinformation

  • March 2021, ABC Australia television interview, based on Pursuit 'The Importance of Teaching Boys About Brilliant Women'.

  • February 2021, BBC New television Interview about the Facebook Australian News Ban, CNN International News Interview about the Facebook Australia news Ban, and ABC Australia television interview about the algorithms used in the Facebook Australia news ban

  • January 2020 Techtalk longform interview on Southern FM community radio.

Selected Invited Talks

The most manic of these were the two talks in 48 hours on opposite sides of the planet: the Women's Day talk at Melbourne Museum, and the talk at Aalto. I have been deeply fortunate to speak in five countries, and to a range of professional associations; each talk has brought out new ideas and thinking in my research.

  • 'Sowing the Seeds – How Libraries can Support Innovation and Creativity' Keynote, AIUG Conference 2019

  • 'Space Oddity: Understanding and Supporting the Interactions Between Physical and Online Library Services', Keynote, CRIG Seminar, 2019

  • 'Not All Who Wander Are Lost: On Collection Browsing, and How To Support It Online' Centre for HCI Design, City, University of London, July 2019

  • ‘Don’t Forget to Be the Way You Are: On Researcher Identity’: School of Design, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland, March 2019

  • ‘This Pedestal Is High and I am Afraid of Heights: We All Balance Better on the Ground’, International Women’s Day Address, Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Australia March 2019

  • ‘Don’t You Forget About Me: Information Seeking Beyond Search’: iSchool, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada June 2017

  • ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For: Research Tales from an Academic Library’. CRIG Seminar Keynote, Melbourne, December 2016

  • 'Lend Me Some Sugar', The Information Retrieval General Reading Group, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia, October 2014

  • Physical, Digital, Interactive, Human: More Tales from an Academic Library', Centre for HCI Design, City University London, UK March 2014.

Academic Service

  • Steering Committee member, CHIIR 2021-

  • Program Chair, JCDL 2021

  • Short papers chair, CHIIR 2021

  • Workshops and tutorials chair, TPDL 2021

  • Doctoral Consortium Mentor, HT 2021

  • Workshops and Tutorials chair, CHIIR 2020

  • Doctoral Consortium Chair, OzCHI 2019

  • Programme chair, OzCHI 2018

  • Secretary, HFESA CHISIG 2012-

  • Workshops and Tutorials co-chair, OzCHI 2011-2015, 2017

  • Conference reviewer OZCHI 2011-,JCDL 2014-, TPDL 2012-, CHIIR 2016-, iConference 2012, 2016, ASIS&T 2018-, CHI 2018-, MobileHCI 2019, UbiComp 2019

  • Journal Reviewer International Journal of Digital Libraries, IP&M, PLoS One

Career Curiosities

  • I speak fluent Finnish as a result of a student exchange and considerable subsequent travel. At conferences I can be found looking for people with whom I can practice

  • I can read some MARC as a result of analysing library circulation data for my PhD

  • I have written two date extraction systems in Perl, one for data crosswalking in MARC, and one for historical dates

  • In my undergrad days I wrote a multitasking kernel and a prolog theorem prover in my second year