Developing and sustaining a sense of place: The role of social information

This exploration of the role of information in helping people to develop and sustain feelings of belonging, or a sense of place, is based on a study that investigated the reasons for the high population turnover in the Northern Territory of Australia. The Northern Territory along with Darwin, its capital, has a number of unusual characteristics including geographical isolation. A key component of the theoretical framework for the research focuses on social information, which has similarities to the more commonly termed everyday life information. The specific concern is with the kind of information that helps people connect to a community and is clearly linked with social networking. The sample for the major empirical component for the article was recruited at Darwin's Mindil Beach Market. In telephone phone interviews with those who had agreed to participate, participants discussed how they learned about Darwin and the Northern Territory, and their views of Darwin as a place to live. Interpersonal contacts, including at the Market and at special events, were most often mentioned in relation to information, confirming literature findings on the importance of family and friends as an information source. Other sources were newspapers and physical markers around the City of Darwin. The conclusion is that the processes of social networking, which work well for some residents, could be enhanced through the use of information grounds, a concept widely discussed in the library and information science literature. Obvious information grounds in Darwin, where the usual processes could be enhanced by the distribution of information by formal information providers, include Mindil Beach Market and the special events for which Darwin is renowned.     

Neutrality, social justice and the obligations of archival education and educators in the twenty-first century

Codes of ethics around the globe exhort archivists to neutrality so that they and their repositories will be trusted by records creators, the general public, and posterity to be impartial in their actions. However, archival neutrality is increasingly viewed as a controversial stance for a profession that is situated in the midst of the politics of memory. Archival educators have been prominent among those calling for the profession to address more directly the cultural and ethical dimensions of the role played by archives and records in society. This paper contemplates how archival neutrality and social justice concerns can surface within the context of archival education. Drawing upon experiences of the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), it suggests pedagogical approaches for raising and addressing ethics and diversity issues within a social justice framework, and for encouraging students, as future practitioners and scholars, to engage critically, reflexively, and meaningfully with these issues in ways that support the public trust in archives and the archival profession.     

Feminism and social change: women's place in Taiwanese newspapers and public opinion

This study used a content analysis of editorial articles to explore the portrayal of gender in women's pages of Taiwanese newspapers between 1975 and 2009. In addition to topical themes and editorial format, we focused on how women's pages present political messages in terms of the topics addressed, style of argumentation, methods of challenging traditional gender roles, and the promotion of provocative actions. We compared the content analysis data with social development indicators and public opinion polls in the contexts of the evolution of the market and the women's movement in Taiwan. We found that in the early stages of the women's movement, the women's pages mainly played the role of shaping a collective identity among the female public. During the postfeminist period, the women's pages mainly address social problems rooted in the domestic realm and provide self-development advice.     

The end of collecting: Towards a new purpose for archival appraisal

In this essay, the author ruminates on the relationship between collecting and archival appraisal. He argues that collecting does not necessarily equal appraisal, although society and even archivists value it as an important function. The author stresses that the critical need is for archivists to have a clear perspective, whether highly theoretical or immensely practical, of what it is they hope to accomplish in appraising and that they need to document this process so that future researchers and archivists can understand what archival appraisal meant. As it is, archives might become more valued as important cultural symbols than for the records they actually hold. The notion of an “end” of collecting is in the sense that collecting is appraising, but appraising elevated to a professional function requiring more care, deliberate thought, and self-evaluation.     

The archival sliver: Power, memory, and archives in South Africa

Far from being a simple reflection of reality, archives are constructed windows into personal and collective processes. They at once express and are instruments of prevailing relations of power. Verne Harris makes these arguments through an account of archives and archivists in the context of South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy. The account is deliberately shaped around three themes — race, power, and public records. While he concedes that the constructedness of memory and the dimension of power are most obvious in the extreme circumstances of oppression and rapid transition to democracy, he argues that these are realities informing archives in all circumstances. He makes an appeal to archivists to enchant their work by engaging these realities and by turning always towards the call of and for justice. This essay draws heavily on four articles published previously by me: “Towards a Culture of Transparency: Public Rights of Access to Official Records in South Africa”,American Archivist 57.4 (1994); “Redefining Archives in South Africa: Public Archives and Society in Transition, 1990–1996”,Archivaria 42 (1996); “Transforming Discourse and Legislation: A Perspective on South Africa's New National Archives Act”,ACARM Newsletter 18 (1996); and “Claiming Less, Delivering More: A Critique of Positivist Formulations on Archives in South Africa”,Archivaria 44 (1997). I am grateful to Ethel Kriger (National Archives of South Africa) and Tim Nuttall (University of Natal) for offering sometimes tough comment on an early draft of the essay. I remain, of course, fully responsible for the final text. I presented a version of it in the “Refiguring the Archive” seminar series, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, October 1998. That version was published in revised form in Carolyn Hamilton et al.,Refiguring the Archive (Cape Town: David Philip, 2002).     

The concept of societal provenance and records of nineteenth-century Aboriginal–European relations in Western Canada: implications for archival theory and practice

Increasing interest amongst archivists in the history of records and archives leads to questions about how this historical knowledge may affect archival theory and practice. This article discusses its effect on the concept of provenance by suggesting that it indicates that records have what might be called a societal provenance. The article discusses some of the principal features of societal provenance and some implications for archival theory and practice of this concept. The article provides examples of the place of societal provenance in understanding Aboriginal-Euro-Canadian records by using the 1802–1803 birchbark journal of fur trader Jean Steinbruck, which has a provenance in fur trade society in northwestern Canada, and photographs from the late nineteeth century, which reflect a provenance in the new agrarian and urban society that ended fur trade society in the Canadian West.     

Ranking journals using social choice theory methods: A novel approach in bibliometrics

We use data on economic, management and political science journals to produce quantitative estimates of (in)consistency of the evaluations based on six popular bibliometric indicators (impact factor, 5-year impact factor, immediacy index, article influence score, SNIP and SJR). We advocate a new approach to the aggregation of journal rankings. Since the rank aggregation is a multicriteria decision problem, ranking methods from social choice theory may solve it. We apply either a direct ranking method based on the majority rule (the Copeland rule, the Markovian method) or a sorting procedure based on a tournament solution, such as the uncovered set and the minimal externally stable set. We demonstrate that the aggregate rankings reduce the number of contradictions and represent the set of the single-indicator-based rankings better than any of the six rankings themselves.     

Rethinking archival,ethical and legal frameworks for records of Indigenous Australian communities: a participant relationship model of rights and responsibilities

Archival systems have been based on the conventional understanding of the relationship between record subjects as third parties and record creators as the principal parties to the record transaction, thus limiting the rights of those captured in and by the record. An alternative approach is a participant relationship model which acknowledges all parties to a transaction as immediate parties with negotiated rights and responsibilities. A number of legal and archival concepts support a participant model of co-creatorship and associated responsibilities in relation to ownership, access and privacy. The application of the participant model to Indigenous Australian record subjects, in particular to records about them held in archival institutions or in creating organisations would enhance Indigenous rights in records. Indigenous claims to ownership over archival sources of Indigenous knowledge can be characterised in the legal concept of a bundle of rights that recognises more than one interest to control, disclose, access and use records. Human rights principles in international and national human rights instruments also support the assertion of Indigenous rights in records. Archival and legal reform is required to fully implement the participant model but a number of archival, ethical and legal strategies would accelerate its implementation. The re-conceptualisation of the record subject as a record co-creator can also be applied to non-Indigenous contexts and therefore has significant archival and legal implications.     

Past perfect, future tense: A survey of issues in collection development

Libraries have always been valued for and measured by their collections. The process of collection development has undergone many changes in the past few decades. This article examines those changes while concluding that the core values remain the same.     

Meztizaje and remembering in Afro-Mexican communities of the Costa Chica: implications for archival education in Mexico

This paper summarizes some of the major themes of a larger study that used Afro-Mexicans of the Costa Chica as a case study to understand archival education in Mexico. This study seeks to provide insight on how absences of Mexicans of African descent from the official record and recordkeeping came into being in Mexico; to examine the role that education of archival professionals might play in addressing or contributing to these absences; and to produce recommendations for remedying this under-documentation—at least in part—through changes to what is currently taught in formal archival education at the university level.     

Habermas,emancipation, and relationship change: An exploration of recovery processes as a model for social transformation

Critical theory provides an opportunity for exploring the interaction between individual and social change. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the recovery movement provides an instance of critical theory in action. Drawing from critical theorists, recovery movement literature, and interview data, this article examines points of comparison between the recovery movement and critical theory. Common core assumptions, including a reliance on systems theory and social constructionism, a rejection of positivism, notions of ‘distorted’ communication and self‐reflection, and the centrality of the family in social processes, are among the similarities examined.     

The environmental self and a sense of place: Communication foundations for regional ecosystem management

In order to engage in large‐scale ecosystem management, natural resource managers must take into account the perceptions of citizens living in areas to be managed in a sustainable manner. Among other bases for perception, an individual's “sense of place” and beliefs connecting the self to a larger environment play pivotal roles in the process of attending to advocacy regarding natural resource policies. This study examines the perceptions of individuals living in the Lake Superior basin regarding their identification with a sense of place. Analysis of interview and survey data reveals that interviewees relate themselves to their region and environment primarily by way of “natural” and “social” features in their daily lives and that one's focus on either of the two dimensions, as well as their perceptions of various activities, is mediated by how long they have lived in the area. Implications for the development of ecosystem management communication campaigns are discussed.     

Patently Obvious: The place for patents in information literacy in the sciences

Patents are an underutilized source of scientific information, particularly in the life and health sciences. Patents and patent applications usually contain the first disclosure of new technologies and processes and serve to link theory with practice, providing ‘real world’ examples of the application of scientific research. Increasingly, scientific discoveries are reported first in the patent literature, rather than in academic journals. To ensure that science students have the skills that match the information resources they will use as professionals, patent searching must become part of their information literacy instruction. This article will discuss how valuable the patent literature can be to students, and how to incorporate patent searching into library instruction. By way of illustration, a case study will document how students in one class, Biochemistry 561, were introduced to patents.     

大数据时代档案数据质量控制:现状、机制与优化路径

档案数据是大数据时代经济社会发展的重要信息资源,进行档案数据质量控制研究有助于促进档案治理能力现代化的提升。通过调查分析可知,档案数据存有政策法规缺失、数量巨大结构复杂、数据实践处于起步阶段等现状。基于现状特征构建了档案数据质量控制机制:数据监督管控机制、技术保障机制、质量评估机制,并提出增强档案数据质量控制顶层设计,筑造档案数据质量技术保护屏障,构建档案数据质量评估方法体系等优化路径。