“Omega is a Four-Letter Word”: Toward a Tension-Centered Model of Resistance to Information and Communication Technologies

The adoption of enterprise-wide information and communication technologies (ICTs) has become a growing trend in a wide range of industries. Resistance has been identified as one of the most common reasons for unsuccessful implementations. Assuming technologies as fixed objects, many existing theories tend to reduce resistance to psychological mechanisms or structural misalignment. The purpose of this study is to retheorize resistance to ICTs by integrating a social constructionist perspective of technology and a framework of organizational tensions. By employing qualitative methods, a case study examined the adoption, implementation and use of an enterprise-wide software system in a technology service organization. The in-depth case analysis revealed a tension-centered process model, which shows that resistance to ICTs is constituted in a dynamic, reflexive interplay between the ongoing construction of ICTs and organizational tensions. In this process, an ICT adoption brings into play various organizational tensions, which then shape the interpretations of the ICT in oppositional terms, and reactions to these tensions and oppositional interpretations result in various forms of resistance behaviors. This tension-centered process model offers a useful alternative to existing research on resistance to ICTs in the workplace.     

“The Homosexual” as Problem Patron

Summary

Libraries host a range of human activity, some of which is overtly and unabashedly sexual. What's a librarian to do about public displays of affection? Cruising? Public sex? First, naturally, we read up on the issue. Unfortunately, problem patron library literature is spotted with vivid illustrations of irrational bias against gay men, male-to-female transgender women, and men-cruising-men. It also discounts the private nature of most consensual sex in public places. This article discusses sex and gender biases in library literature, arguing that gender equitable, privacy-respecting practices will better serve librarians administering public space.     

Catalog Users “In the Wild”: The Potential of an Ethnographic Approach to Studies of Library Catalogs and Their Users

An increasing number of library user studies are employing ethnographic techniques as an alternative to more traditional qualitative methods such as surveys. Such techniques, however, are only beginning to see significant application to catalog user studies. Beginning with a discussion of the applied ethnographic method and its current usage within the field of Library and Information Science research, this article will assess methods that have traditionally been applied to studies of catalog users and present the case for the potential of an ethnographic approach for future catalog evaluation and design.     

Documentation practices and recordkeeping: a matter of trust or distrust?

Records are more and more important as instruments of trust, for instance to ascertain accountability. However, they are also objects to be trusted upon themselves. Rather rigorous requirements are established to guarantee the trustworthiness of records; requirements are more elaborated in the digital environment than those that have previously been attributed to analogue records. The purpose of this study is to discuss the conceptualization of trust and trustworthiness in relation to records, and to analyze the relation between the increasing reliance on formal documentation in contemporary organizations and the requirements on records and recordkeeping systems that has been advanced recent years. It can be argued that the effort to enhance trustworthiness actually is a manifestation of diminishing trust.     

The “Problem Patron” Public Libraries Created

Summary

Normal adolescents are generally suspect within public and retail settings in the U.S., thanks in part to relentless negative media coverage of the age group, and to adult fear and misreading of their appearance. These suspicions also occur in public libraries, with occasional justification, but an argument can be made that public libraries have created this problem for themselves through a set of often taken-for-granted service assumptions. This article addresses these assumptions, pointing out how they contribute to the creation of a “problem” class of users, and how they might be changed or adjusted to change the situation.     

“Barbarism Is the Absence of Standards”

Summary

Many standards have been developed over the years to manage serial information. From the familiar ISSN, to the Serial Item and Contribution Identifier (SICI), which tracks serial information down to the article level, to the new Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which locates discrete components of information in the electronic world, methods for searching, retrieving, and performing transactions on serial publications and their contents continue to expand, particularly in the electronic environment. The serials professional needs to be involved in the development and approval of relevant emerging standards, or risk losing authority in the way serial information is stored and disseminated.     

A Review of “Understanding the Semantic Web: Bibliographic Data and Metadata”

Successful subject searching depends upon the terminology of the search query. This paper compares the terminology of book titles with that of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) ¹ on a semantic level. Methods of ananlyzing titles into title phrases that serve as matching units are described. Guidelines used to choose LCSHs with the closest semantic matches to title phrases are set forth. The pairing of title phrases with semantically related LCSHs constitutes the data of the study. Categories representing the types of semantic relationships holding between pairs of terms are defined. Results of the study show that the most common semantic relationship holding between title phrases and LCSH is a hierarchical one where title phrases are more specific than LCSHs.     

“Here be Dragons”: A Wayfinding Approach to Teaching Cataloguing

Teaching cataloguing requires instructors to present and integrate information about the variety and complexity of the field while providing an adequate theoretical foundation for practice. A problem solving pedagogy called “wayfinding” that focuses on instruction about ways to navigate the structural features of rule sets is described. It enables students to learn not only about common rules but also about less well known cataloguing problems (“dragons”), embedding this knowledge in the theoretical foundation of the rule sets underlying cataloguing practice. It provides both pragmatic and pedagogical benefits that mitigate differences between face-to-face and distance learning environments.     

The Importance of “Focusness”: Focus Groups as a Means of Collection Management Assessment

ABSTRACT

In order to assess the Library's collection, the Collection Development Assessment Team at Cleveland State University used focus groups to complement the information gathered in LibQUAL+?. Groups of undergraduates, graduates, and faculty participated in four separate focus groups. All groups reported they were essentially satisfied with the collection but also wanted better local collections and used OhioLINK to supplement their research; fewer users also utilized the rich resources of the public library systems. In keeping with previous surveys, all groups wanted more full-text available electronically, faster access to materials, and a more navigable website. It appeared that the more sophisticated the user, the more satisfied they were with the collection. The Special Collections focus group would like to have more materials digitized, improved accessibility to the collection and website, and increased interaction with the community to heighten awareness of the collection and in order to gather more primary materials for the collection.