A communication system approach to the problem of public library legitimacy

Public library systems intersect with both public and private spheres of social life, but how they negotiate public legitimacy and private influence remains a mystery. To better understand this problem, this study adopts a communication system approach. Using qualitative content analysis, this study examines data from three US public library systems. This study analyzes how private actors communicate with and through public library systems by parsing the signals into components: transmitter, receiver, medium, and message. The resulting signals form two dimensions: the Public Sphere dimension, where private actors govern, legitimate, and use the library, and the Private Sphere dimension, where private actors exchange personal services and exert economic power. A view of public and private signals in interaction reveals how public legitimacy is threatened and how public library systems can mitigate these threats. This study reveals how public/private conflicts in public libraries arise and how they might be resolved.     

Undergraduate students' experiences of using information at the career fair: A phenomenographic study conducted by the libraries and career center

Information literacy is vital to students seeking employment following their undergraduate education. Yet little is known about how students approach using information as part of their career search. This phenomenographic study examined how students experience using information as part of a career fair, or on-campus job expo. Researchers interviewed undergraduate students after a major campus career fair. The findings suggest that students may experience using information in a career fair context as: 1) navigators completing a series of steps, 2) performers seeking to connect with the right person, or 3) aligners determining if a company is a match for them.     

Using Practitioner-engaged Evidence Synthesis to Teach Research and Information Literacy Skills: A Model and Case Study

Service learning connects learning in the classroom to real-world experience and presents opportunities for deeper library engagement in the curriculum and the teaching of critical information literacy. We present a model for teaching research and information literacy skills in the service learning context, making use of the evidence-based practice paradigm and engagement with community partners and practitioners in the field, connecting academic research to real-world practice and problem-solving. This model addresses some of the challenges of ACRL's Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education and is adaptable to various disciplines and educational environments.     

Transparency in policy making: A complexity view

The literature on transparency in participatory policy making is flourishing. With the increased digitization of our world, recent work suggests that the digitally-enabled relationships of how policy makers and citizens observe each other may transform policy making in a fundamental way. In this paper, we use complexity theory to examine how digitally-enabled transparency affects the effectiveness of policy making in aligning citizens with the policy goal to improve collective human welfare. We map Kauffman's NKC fitness landscape model, a generalizable theory of co-evolutionary complexity, to the phenomenon of transparent policy making in order to explain how transparency as an enabling generative mechanism encourages citizens to align with the policy goal without exercising central control. In our framework, citizens are agents who co-evolve by adapting to information available in their citizen landscapes. These landscapes represent the citizens' decision context, which policy makers observe and modify throughout an iterative policy cycle. In our study we identify three types of transparencies that relate to three properties of the citizens' decision context: (1) individual decision interdependence; (2) decision bias; and (3) collective decision interdependence. Using conceptual modeling, a form of inquiry combining formal representation with empirical sense making in three policy domains (e-health, smart transportation, and smart energy), we articulate and empirically validate two generative mechanisms that explain transparency effects for each of the three transparencies: (1) orchestration via iterative landscape “tuning” to reduce ambiguity and simplify citizens' alignment with the policy goal; and (2) social learning via information sharing, a co-evolutionary social “nudge” that encourages citizens to be more open to behavioral changes. Our findings have implications for the literature on transparency in participatory policy making as well as the literature on complexity in public policy and public administration.     

A Campus Partnership to Foster Compliance with Funder Mandates

Data from federally funded research must now be made publicly accessible and discoverable. Researchers must adhere to guidelines established by federal agencies, and universities must be prepared to demonstrate compliance with the federal mandate. At Utah State University, the Office of Research and Graduate Studies and the Merrill-Cazier Library partnered to facilitate data sharing and create an audit trail demonstrating compliance with the terms of each researcher's award. This systematic approach uses existing resources such as the grant management system, the institutional repository (IR), and the Library online catalog. This paper describes our process and the first eight months of implementation.     

Factors influencing undergraduate use of e-books: A mixed methods study

Academic libraries invest millions of dollars to make electronic resources such as e-books available to students for free. However, free access might not necessarily result in students' sustained interest in and use of e-books. This interdisciplinary, mixed methods research investigates the factors influencing the intention of 279 undergraduate students to use e-books at a land-grant university in the southern US. Structural equation modeling of the survey responses suggests that organizational environment for information technology, external locus of control, subjective norm, perceived enjoyment (i.e., joyfulness), and information technology features play a significant role in influencing the intention of students to use e-books. Based on a combination of quantitative results and qualitative findings, this study identifies eight activities that libraries need to undertake in order to increase the use of e-books by undergraduate students.     

Historical case study: A research strategy for diachronic analysis

History and case study are two diachronic research strategies commonly used to study political discourse as it relates to public libraries. Though suitable for some studies, these strategies are inexhaustive. A new, blended research strategy is therefore needed to accomplish what history and case study alone cannot. This hybrid strategy, historical case study, must analyze cases from the distant past to the present, using eclectic data sources, in order to produce both idiographic and nomothetic knowledge. To develop historical case study, the universal components of diachronic analysis are first identified. A general research design for historical case study is then introduced. Finally, historical case study is tested in an actual research project. Findings from this project reveal that historical case study is a successful diachronic research strategy. Historical case study is a new and valuable research design suitable for addressing questions related to change, continuity, development, and evolution.     

Process mining applied on library information systems: A case study

Process mining techniques have already been studied in a wide range of sectors, revealing useful information on the processes. In this study, a five-step methodology is applied to an integrated library system (ILS) for the first time. Given two event logs from two different organizations the ILS, a process mining tool is used for process discovery and data analysis. The findings reveal that although both of the organizations were using the same system, there were differences in the activities, sequences, and approaches followed by each one in daily tasks. The results of this kind of analysis can be used to highlight best practices and improve processes. In addition process model comparisons can then be made across various systems and organizations.     

The peritextual literacy framework: Using the functions of peritext to support critical thinking

The peritextual literacy framework (PLF) is a tool for accessing, evaluating, and comprehending the content of media using elements that frame the body of a work and mediate its content for the user. Paratextual elements are the focus of research in classification, bibliometrics, reader’s advisory work, and in studies of authorship and publication. However, paratextual theory is just beginning to be acknowledged in LIS. The PLF closes a gap in paratext theory by categorizing the functions of peritext into six types: production, promotional, navigational, intratextual, supplemental, and documentary. The PLF is unique that it provides both a framework for further research on peritext, as well as a pedagogical tool that supports teaching in the areas of information literacy, media literacy and analysis, critical thinking, reading, and media design and production.     

Caregivers' beliefs about library visits: A theory-based study of formative research

Currently, no research has systematically investigated the beliefs underpinning caregivers' intentions to visit public libraries with their young children. Drawing from the theory of planned behaviour, this study adopted a three-phase program of formative research to examine the decision making processes of parents and carers with young children living in a low socio-economic area. Phase 1 identified seven behavioural, five normative, and ten control beliefs as modal salient beliefs held by parents and carers. Phase 2 identified a variety of key behavioural, normative, and control beliefs as significant predictors of intention to visit the library with their young child. Phase 3 elicited the reasons underpinning these key beliefs guiding parents' and carers' intentions, identifying 34 reasons that could be used in messages to promote library visits. The results provide useful information that intervention designers, councils, and library services can use to encourage library use among parents and carers with young children.     

How academic librarians experience evidence-based practice: A grounded theory model

This study explored academic librarians’ experience of evidence-based practice. A better understanding of evidence-based practice from an empirical basis can help fulfill the aims of evidence-based library and information practice to continuously improve practice and make effective, value-adding decisions about library and information services for their clients and communities. This research uses a constructivist grounded theory approach to investigate the question: How do academic librarians experience evidence-based practice? Thirteen Australian academic librarians participated in semi-structured interviews. The study used the methods of constant comparison to create codes and categories towards constructing a new theoretical model of experiencing evidence-based practice in the academic library context. The model consists of six categories of experiences: empowering, intuiting, affirming, connecting, noticing and impacting. This model can provide a platform for developing support for academic librarians andtheir educators by increasing awareness of various mindsets and actions experienced in the workplace context towards facilitating evidence-based information practice.     

Ethical perspectives on data and software sharing in the sciences: A research agenda

Data and software are critical components of scientific work. Increased data and software sharing promises many benefits for science. Many stakeholders are building infrastructure and implementing policies to promote sharing. However, sharing remains rare in practice. Attention must be paid to researchers' ethical perspectives on sharing to fully realize the promise of sharing and promote greater circulation of data and software and better uptake of infrastructure for data and software curation. This research presents an agenda for researching these perspectives, including characterizing and accounting for researchers' perspectives; examining how these perspectives shape decisions related to data and software sharing; and understanding how and why differences in perspectives arise and are contested, negotiated, and resolved in multidisciplinary scientific collaboration. This agenda will enable stakeholders to identify and resolve differences in ethical perspectives, and develop policies, infrastructures, and education that support existing ethical perspectives, and cultivate better ethical practices.     

Cognitive authorities in health education classrooms: A nexus analysis on group-based learning tasks

Socio-technical changes have transformed information practices and challenged conceptions of cognitive authorities, referring to information sources that are deemed credible and legitimate and influence people's thinking. Cognitive authorities in group-based knowledge-construction projects in health education lessons were explored in this study. Nexus analysis was used to analyze participant interviews and video-observed social actions in three secondary school health-education classrooms (Grades 8–9) in Finland. The findings show how group-based projects employing multiple information sources offer opportunities for the distribution and co-construction of cognitive authorities. However, explicit negotiations on the authority of sources were rare. Cognitive authorities appeared as contextual and situational but also guided by broader discourses circulating in the scene of action. By embedding information literacy instruction throughout the curriculum, information professionals and teachers can support young learners to recognize relevant authorities in different spheres of knowledge and to become competent users of health information.