PhD, University of Western Ontario (2019)
MLIS, University of Western Ontario (2013)
BEd, Brock University (2022)
BMus, Wilfrid Laurier University (2011)
Research Interests
In the largest sense, my research interests involve LIS and its intersections with the philosophically profound, the personally meaningful, and the transcendent. I am interested in the role of information in religious and spiritual practices, with a noted focus on the application of Buddhist philosophy and psychology to issues and topics within LIS. Other areas of research interest include LIS's intersections with queer culture, internet culture, the death positivity movement and the field of fat studies.
Doctoral Research
My dissertation sought to investigate the information practices of Western Buddhists of the New Kadampa Tradition. To date, the overwhelming majority of research within this sub-area of information behaviours and practices has focused on the behaviours and practices of ordained ministers as they seek to fulfill their roles as preachers, administrators and counsellors. There are very few studies which investigate the "everyday" religious practitioner and how they use information in their spiritual lives. Information practices are an integral part of people's practice of their religion. The study aimed to inventory Buddhists' spiritual information practices, examine their existential information needs, understand Buddhist spiritual realizations as an outcome of information use, and explore whether spiritual information practices were best classified as “everyday life” or “beyond everyday life”. Download it here
Publications
Chabot, R. (2021). Is the library for "every body"? Examining fatphobia in library spaces through online library furniture catalogues. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 44(2/3), 12- 30. https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/cjils/article/view/13632.
Julien, H., McKechnie, L., Polkinghorne, S., & Chabot, R. (2018). The “user turn” in practice: Information behaviour researchers’ constructions of information users. In Proceedings of ISIC, the Information Behaviour Conference, Krakow, Poland, 9-11 October: Part 1. Information Research, 23(4), paper isic1804. http://InformationR.net/ir/23-4/isic2018/isic1804.
McKechnie, L. Chabot, R., Dalmer, N., Julien, H. & Mabbott, C. (2016). Writing and reading the results: The reporting of research rigour tactics in information behaviour research as evident in the published proceedings of the biennial ISIC conferences, 1996–2014. Information Research, 21(4). http://www.informationr.net/ir/21-4/isic/isic1604.html.
Selected Conference Presentations
Chabot, R., & Chen, Y. (2020). Living your best life and radiating positivity: Exploratory conceptions of wholesome memes as "The New Sincerity." Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS/Actes du congrès annuel de l'ACSI. https://doi.org/10.29173/cais1172.
Chabot, R. (2019). Information in pursuit of the "good death": Libraries’ role in the death positivity movement. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS/Actes du congrès annuel de l'ACSI. https://doi.org/10.29173/cais1112.