Margaret Sullivan is an assistant professor in the School of Information at Florida State University. She completed a doctorate in Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina. She also has a Master’s in Information Systems and a Master’s in Library Science from Drexel University. Her research areas of interest focus on the health-seeking behaviors and patterns of stigmatized populations, with a focus on the opioid-use population. Dr. Sullivan studies the impact that information access, information literacy, health literacy, and reading and literacy has had in affecting the health and well-being of the people that she studies. She also studies, publishes on, and advocates for the universal human right to access to credible health information. Her work is currently funded by The Institute of Museum and Library Services, Network of the National Library of Medicine, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Research Interests
Health information seeking of stigmatized populations, health literacy, information literacy, health information access as a human right
Teaching Interests
Information organization, access, and retrieval across diverse populations, grant writing, information literacy
Publications & Research
Bianca A. de Castro, Levens, S., Sullivan, M., & Shaw, G. (Under Review). Recommender systems use in weight management mHealth interventions: A scoping review. Obesity Reviews. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Sullivan, M. A. (Under Review). The perception of people with opioid use disorder on safe consumption sites: A study from Kensington. Substance Use & Misuse. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Sullivan, M. A., Pakenham-Walsh, N., Royston, G., Zielinski, C., & Gill, S. (2024). Universal access to reliable healthcare information: A global consultation for the World Health Organization. Healthcare Information For All. Retrieved from https://www.hifa.org/sites/default/files/other_publications_uploads/HIFA-WHO_report_final.pdf
Sullivan, M., Hancock, J., Ni, C., & Shaw, G. (2024). Health information-seeking of people who use opioids on Reddit. Information Research Journal.
Aliche, O., & Sullivan, M. A. (2024). Health Literacy and Immigrants, Refugees, and Migrants: In Practice. In Vardell, E, & Charbonneau, D (Eds.), Health Literacy and Libraries. The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.
Sullivan, M. (2023). Libraries in society: Comparing international metrics of societal progress to library usage statistics. Information Research, 26 pages.
Sullivan, M., & Shaw, G. (2023). The health information behaviors of people who inject drugs: a scoping review of the literature. The Journal of Documentation, 17.
Sullivan, M. (2023). Health information as a human right: A human rights and philosophical justification. Library Quarterly, 93(2), 141-156.
*Below articles are in my former name, Zimmerman.
Shaw, G., Zimmerman, M., & Vasquez-Huot. (2023). Deciphering Latent Health Information in Social Media Using a Mixed-Methods Design. Healthcare, 14.
Zimmerman, M. (2023). The information behavior of suicide survivors. LIBRI, 29. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1515/libri-2021-0119
Zimmerman, M., & Rodgers, B. (2022). Exploring ways of knowing: Teaching the skill of health literacy to refugee and immigrant women. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, e20190083, 25.
Zimmerman, M. (2021). Health information-seeking behavior in the time of Covid-19: Information horizons methodology to decipher source path during a global pandemic. Journal of Documentation, 77(6), 1248-1264.
Zimmerman, M., & Ni, C. (2021). What we talk about when we talk about information literacy. IFLA Journal, 47(4), 453-467.
Zimmerman, M. S. & Ni, C. (2020). What we talk about when we talk about information literacy. IFLA Journal. Forthcoming.
Zimmerman, M. S. & Rodgers, B. (2020). Exploring ways of knowing: Teaching the skill of health literacy to refugee and immigrant women. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science. Forthcoming.
Shaw, G., Zimmerman, M.S., Vasquez-Huot, L. (2020). An analytical framework to discover health information in social media data: Implications for dissemination research. Frontiers in Communication. Revised.
Zimmerman, M. S. & Beam, H. (2020). Refugee and immigrant health information needs. International Journal of Migration, Health, and Social Care, 16(2), 161-171.
Zimmerman, M. S. (2020). Information literacy as a social justice issue: Where’s the research? Journal of Information Ethics, 29(1), 45-64.
Zimmerman, M. S. & Shaw, G. (2020). Health information seeking behaviour: a concept analysis. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 37(3), 173-191.
Zimmerman, M. S. (2019). Mapping literacies: Comparing information horizons mapping to measures of information and health literacy. The Journal of Documentation, 76(2), 531-551.
Zimmerman, M. S. (2018). Information horizons mapping to assess the health literacy of refugee and immigrant women. Information Research Journal, 23(4), 963-964.
Zimmerman, M. S. (2017). Assessing the reproductive health-related information-seeking behavior of low-income women: Describing a two-step information-seeking process. The Journal of Health Communication, 23(1), p. 1-8.
Zimmerman, M. S. (2017). Reproductive health information needs and maternal literacy in the developing world: A review of the literature. IFLA journal, 43(3), 227-241.
Zimmerman, M. S. (2017). Information poverty and reproductive healthcare: Assessing the reasons for inequity between income groups. Social Work in Public Health, 32(3), 210-221.
Zimmerman, M. S. (2016). Assessing the impact on female literacy and education on maternal and infant health. International Journal of Gender Studies in Developing Societies, 1(4), 365–375.
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