I am an assistant professor at the iSchool and I teach courses in knowledge organization, classification theory, and information systems. My research looks at the way that knowledge organization systems are designed, implemented, revised, broken or fixed. I am interested in the design of organization systems and how these systems might align with the values and activities of their communities. My dissertation work focused on classification systems – the designed structure of terms, their relationships and the rules for applying these terms tor documents or people.

I have an MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory (McMaster), an MLIS from UBC iSchool, and a Ph.D. from the Information School at the University of Texas at Austin. I have published extensively in classification and knowledge organization systems, and the design of organizing systems such as metadata schemas and controlled vocabularies.

• Information and knowledge organization
• Information ethics
• Computer-supported cooperative work
• Social computing
• Classification theory

• Bullard, J. Classification design: understanding the decisions between theory and consequence (Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin), May 2017.
• M Feinberg, D Carter, J Bullard, A Gursoy. Translating Texture: Design as Integration. Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, 297-307
• Bullard, J. “Warrant as a means to study classification system design.” Journal of Documentation 73 (1), 75-90. 2017
• SA Buchanan, J Bullard, W Aspray, et. al. Collaborative syllabus design for studying information work. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 54 (1), 630-632. 2017
• Bullard, J. Motivating Invisible Contributions: Framing Volunteer Classification Design in a Fanfiction Repository. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 181-193. 2016
• J Howison, J Bullard. “Software in the scientific literature: Problems with seeing, finding, and using software mentioned in the biology literature.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67 (9), 2137-2155. 2016.
• M Zhitomirsky‐Geffet, BH Kwaśnik, J Bullard, L Hajibayova, et. al. Crowdsourcing approaches for knowledge organization systems: Crowd collaboration or crowd work? Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 53 (1), 1-6. 2016
• J Bullard, J Howison. “Learning from Elitist Jerks: Creating high‐quality knowledge resources from ongoing conversations.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 66 (11), 2267-2276. 2015
• J Gruning, J Bullard, M Ocepek. Medium, Access, and Obsolescence: What Kinds of Objects are Lasting Objects?. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 3433-3343. 2015

Office Hours

• ONLINE – Tuesdays, from 10:00 to 11:45 a.m. – [Zoom meeting link]
• By appointment (email julia.bullard@ubc.ca to schedule an appointment)