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.     

The midcontinental regional medical library: a decentralized service

The Midcontinental Regional Medical Library area is described geographically as to medical population and as to library resources. Borrowing patterns in the region are analyzed.The first project of the Region was a Union List of Serials, whose history is given.Advantages and disadvantages of a decentralized system are discussed.     

Communication,culture and the growth of the individual self in third world societies 1

The paper examines the social impact of communication technology applying the insights of sociologists such as Durkheim, Mead and Shils. It argues that the introduction of modern communication technology to Third World societies has resulted in the sudden and rapid increase of ‘social density’ or social relationships by bringing to the consciousness of individuals issues and personalities outside their immediate experience. In some Third World societies this has resulted in the emergence of a heightened individual self‐identity in order to understand and give meaning to new and unfamiliar situations created by the media. The socio‐political consequences of this new self‐identity for the plural societies of Asia is examined using the media‐image of Mahatma Gandhi in pre‐independent India.     

The MEDLARS regional center at UCLA: a progress report

This paper supplements information given in earlier papers on the UCLA MEDLARS Search Station. Four major machine problem areas in the operation of a decentralized station are identified: adjustments required to run a large information retrieval type program in an academic computing facility serving many users; handicap in running time for COBOL programs; advent of the third generation of computers with attendant preparation; and need for constant current communication among all members of a decentralized network system. Statistics are given for the initial operating period, January-May 1966: 119 search requests received, 109 formulated, and 60 fully processed. Parallel searches with other MEDLARS installations, comparisons of MEDLARS and manual Index Medicus searches, and other search activities are reported.     

Communication management in the public sector: Consequences for public communication about policy intentions

Public communication about policy intentions is important but delicate. Government officials are confronted with four main constraints typical of the public sector compared to the private sector: more complicated and unstable environment, additional legal and formal restrictions, more rigid procedures, and more diverse products and objectives. These constraints imply that ministers communicating about policy intentions face specific communication issues such as intensive political and media interferences, need for democratic communication, and more rigid timing and budget constraints.     

Communication in the management of uncertainty: The case of persons living with HIV or AIDS

Communication is a means of managing uncertainty. In a state of uncertainty: (a) information seeking can reduce uncertainty by allowing for better discrimination between or among alternatives; (b) information seeking can increase uncertainty by increasing the number of alternatives, or by blurring the distinction between or among alternatives; and (c) information avoidance can maintain uncertainty. Individuals living with HIV or AIDS, like many other chronically‐ill or terminally‐ill individuals, must manage high levels of uncertainty about their illness. Participants in a focus group study of persons with HIV or AIDS reported effective uncertainty management, including managing uncertainty that was challenging, managing uncertainty that was essential for maintaining hope, learning to live with chronic uncertainty, and managing information problems. New information can serve uncertainty management even if it fails to reduce the number or ambiguity of alternatives, because new information can invite a reappraisal of uncertainty. A theory of uncertainty management based on these findings is offered.     

语义出版:数字时代科学交流系统新模型

语义出版是基于传统互联网技术和语义网技术,结合自然语言处理、本体和信息可视化技术而发展起来的一种新兴出版形态,代表着数字出版的前沿.本文梳理语义出版的多种表现形式,分析其功能特征,进而提出语义出版的DBIU层次模型.最后,本文就语义出版在科学研究范式变革、科学出版商角色转变、科研工作方式、用户“战略阅读”和“宏知识”获取方面的影响和意义进行了深入探讨.     

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.     

Library as place: results of a delphi study.

OBJECTIVE: An expert consensus on the future of the library as place was developed to assist health sciences librarians in designing new library spaces. METHOD: An expert panel of health sciences librarians, building consultants, architects, and information technologists was asked to reflect on the likelihood, desirability, timing, and impact on building design of more than seventy possible changes in the use of library space. RESULTS: An expert consensus predicted that the roles librarians play and the way libraries are used will substantially change. These changes come in response to changes in technology, scholarly communication, learning environments, and the health care economy. CONCLUSIONS: How health sciences library space is used will be far less consistent by 2015, as space becomes more tailored to institutional needs. However, the manner in which health sciences libraries develop and deliver services and collections will drastically change in the next decade. Libraries will continue to exist and will provide support for knowledge management and clinical trials, provide access to digital materials, and play a host of other roles that will enable libraries to emerge as institutional change agents.     

The play's the thing: Theater professionals make sense of Shakespeare

This study examines how theater professionals (actors, directors and others) make sense of the works of a culturally iconic author (William Shakespeare). The research aims to address critique of the information studies/science field's excessive focus on active information seeking and searching by developing an alternative approach, and to understand sense-making as more than the problem-solving behavior of individuals: to see it as an embodied, social process, involving emotion as well as rationality. In doing so it draws on theoretical approaches from a range of different disciplines and traditions, including Dervin's sense-making, Foucault's discourse analysis and Derrida's deconstructionism.     

人类认知的局限与跨文化传播--一个致力于跨文化融洽交流的计划

本文就世界文化课程内容的具体设置,及联合大学与传媒以更好实现课程积极目标等问题进行了探讨.文中通过多层次的论证强调指出人们始终持有相异或相冲突的宗教、哲学以及意识形态,尚没有一种普世真理足以使世间所有人心悦诚服.即便是广泛接受和运用中的科学知识,其发展亦受阻于人类本身的局限而不可确定.尽管科学在前沿问题研究上竞争激烈,也仍然无法回答和消除所有的问题和差异.因此,从全球或泛人类立场观之,人类现有的知识与理解能力具有不确定和不完整的特点,而这样的特点浸透在所有的具体文化信仰之中.认识到共同局限性的人们--尤其是政界的领导人--亟需摒弃极端的文化分离思想,以更宽容理解的心态进行思考和行动,这样才能避免不同民族及不同国家间的不断冲突和互相伤害.     

Perfect present,perfect gift: finding a place for archival consciousness in social theory

In 1924, Canadian Dominion Archivist Arthur Doughty (1860–1936) characterized archives as “the gift of one generation to another.” This essay takes these words seriously. It sets aside the common habit of thinking of archival work in terms of “keeping” and “preserving” and experiments with—re-imagines—archives as a form of gift giving. However, as a growing body of scholarship across numerous disciplines is discovering, gift giving is a complex social act. Thus, construing archives as a form of gift opens up new avenues of critical inquiry into archives’ unique temporal consciousness and its importance to accounts of the establishment and unmaking of any social order. This article explores the nature of archival consciousness and its place in social theory.     

Continuous usage of e-participation: The role of the sense of virtual community

Local governments around the world are increasingly implementing e-participation platforms to involve citizens in consultation and decision-making processes. E-participation platforms usually succeed and produce positive effects in the community when adopted in the long-term scenario. The adoption of those platforms is still a challenge for local governments. The understanding of the factors that influence the continuous intention to use e-participation over time is critical for the design of diffusion and promotion strategies that motivate the citizens to keep using e-participation. This article explores the drivers that predict the post-adoption of e-participation platforms from the perspective of the sense of virtual community theory, that is the degree of affective attachment to a given community mediated by information technology. Specifically, our research model evaluates the association between the sense of virtual community with use behaviour and the continuous intention to use e-participation. Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the data collected from 370 citizens who experienced an e-participation platform hosted by a European capital city. We found out that the direct association between the sense of virtual community and use was significant. Even though the direct association between the sense of virtual community and the continuous intention was non-significant, the indirect association sense of virtual community to use to continuous intention was statistically significant. This finding may indicate that the use behaviour is triggered by the influence of other members of the community for a short period of time, but it does not persist to influence the continuous intention over time.     

An ecosystem perspective on developing data collaboratives for addressing societal issues: The role of conveners

With the open and big data movement in full swing, data sharing becomes more ubiquitous and more often crosses sectoral boundaries. The promise of data to help address societal issues and foster innovation requires public organizations to work together with businesses and researchers. Data collaboratives whereby actors collaborate to share and use data for public good gain increasing interest. Most of these collaborations, however, tend to be one-off, small, and limited in impact due to a complex web of legal, technical, ethical, commercial, and organizational challenges. Initiators of data collaboratives, termed as conveners, can potentially alleviate some of these concerns by playing various roles in developing a more sustainable data ecosystem for the data collaboratives. Our study investigates what convener roles are perceived to be critical in developing data collaboratives. By drawing on data ecosystems thinking, we developed a framework of convener roles and sub-roles which we further used to analyze four cases in the Netherlands and Sweden. We conclude that connecting role and learning catalyst role are critical at the initiation stage, while stimulating and mediating roles emerge as future critical roles as the data ecosystem develops. We further identified convener meta-roles that are associated with particular data ecosystem structures (keystone-centric, marketplace-based, intermediary-based, and platform-centric). Our research can be instrumental to actors leading the efforts of creating such data ecosystems as it provides insights on the needs and resources that can be leveraged to stimulate development and innovation.     

图书馆：文化传承和交流的社会机构——2009IFLA参会有感

2009年国际图联大会在意大利米兰举行,会议主题:"图书馆创造未来,筑就于文化遗产之上".我设计的海报因与会议主题相关被大会录用,海报的题目是"历史并不沉重".参加国际图联大会是我憧憬了好久的一件事情.终于得以成行,心中充满了期待,希望能够通过这次会议,开拓视野,结识更多的同行,对他吲的文化和教育有直接的体会.