About Me

I’m an assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. I received my Ph.D. in Information Science from the School of Information at Florida State University in 2019. My primary research interests are online peer production, health information behavior/interaction, and AI implementation in libraries.

For a full list of publications and teaching records, please refer to my CV. For manuscripts and presentation slides/posters, please refer to the publications page on my personal website. I’m currently working on several projects, including 1) Community governance and knowledge curation in online peer production communities, such as Wikipedia and Stack Exchange, focusing on contributor management, policy design, and the integration of automatic tools to support knowledge production while preserving community autonomy; 2) health informatics with an emphasis on health disparities and digital health information-seeking behaviors, particularly among minority groups and rural communities in the Deep South; 3) AI vs. human-generated health communication, investigating whether users prefer AI- or human-generated health information based on content quality or source labeling; and 4) AI adoption in libraries, examining organizational readiness, ethical considerations, and the impact of AI-driven services on knowledge institutions. If you are interested in these topics, please feel free to contact me!

Education

Ph.D., Information Science,  School of Information, Florida State University, 2019
M.S.,   Information Science,  School of Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013
B.S.,    Management Information System, School of Business, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2009

Primary Research Interests

  • Online peer production/Social Q&A communities (peer governance)
  • Health informatics/Health information behavior​ on social media
  • Human information interaction in general
  • ​AI implementation in libraries

Contact

​Office: 7034A, Amelia Gorgas Library
Phone: 205-348-1525
E-mail: hfu4 AT UA dot edu