‘The Age of Discontent’: Greek Publishing Through Six Years of Austerity

The effects of the 2010–2015 economic recession on the Greek publishing market have been dramatic, by all means, affecting its structure, operation, quantity and quality features. What is interesting to investigate, thereof, is the response of the publishing environment to the economic downturn in the form of resilience, adaptation, innovation and change within the industry. While the ‘crisis’ has had more severe consequences for the firms at the top, connected often (but not always) to media groups, the experienced, specialized small to medium publishers and booksellers proved to be more resilient, sustaining a vibrant and diversified production within a fewer number of books published. New book titles were reduced by 35% between 2008 and 2012, with signs of further containment following to that. At the same time, a number of small, independent booksellers have sprung up, out of the need to support the distinct quality features of literary production, based on the ‘personal quality’ service model. An approximate 8% of the Greeks can be ranked among the ‘medium to systematic’ readers (i.e. reading over 10 books a year); they are the ones to support the volume and diversity of book title production, including some of the bestsellers, while the outbreak of the crisis concurred with a positive development towards the weaker strand of the readership. The international interest in the economic circumstances met in Greece has helped, to some extent, the export of rights of literary works either dealing with the individuals affected, or analyzing the reasons of the default. At the same time, digital innovation may prove to be a sign of a changing book publishing industry, striving to become international.     

"Is This a Chapter Book?": Parent-Involved Categorization in a Kindergarten Classroom Book Collection

Abstract

Many primary school classrooms have book collections. Most teachers organize and maintain these collections by themselves, although some involve students in the processes. This qualitative study considers a third approach, parent-involved categorization, to understand how people without library or education training categorize books. We observed and interviewed parents and a teacher who worked together to categorize books in a kindergarten classroom. They employed multiple orthogonal organizing principles, felt that working collaboratively made the task less overwhelming, solved difficult problems pragmatically, organized books primarily to facilitate retrieval by the teacher, and left lumping and splitting decisions to the teacher.     

It Takes an Academic Village: The Library’s Role in Supporting Interprofessional Communication through a Book Club

Book clubs offer a unique opportunity to support interprofessional learning on academic campuses. The purpose of this article is to discuss how a health sciences library partnered with the Center for Interprofessional Healthcare Education to develop a book club that fosters interprofessional communication. The article includes a discussion of the opportunities, approach, results, and challenges.     

Digitally-Wired and Mobile Device-Driven: Are Singapore Teenagers Still Reading?

Singapore teenagers are digitally-wired and mobile device-driven. Growing up digital, the question is how are their reading habits like? To better understand the state of reading for leisure in a highly digitally-wired country, the Singapore’s National Library Board (NLB) conducted the inaugural population-wide National Reading Habits Study in 2016 among Singaporeans aged 13 years and above. A mixed-method research design in the form of a quantitative survey and focus group discussions was employed for the study. This paper focuses on the reading habits of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19. The study ascertained that 71% of Singapore teenagers read any material for leisure frequently, i.e. at least a few times a week. Half of them (51%) indicated reading online articles on social media or websites, with the proportion for social media higher compared to websites. However, few of them had read news (35%) or books (32%) frequently. The study also found that the internet and digital devices are a double-edged sword, as they help them to read more, but at the same time distract them from reading due to their active connection to friends on social media. Strategies to better engage Singapore teenagers are discussed.     

“Still a Boys Club”: Perspectives on Female Sports and Sports Reporters in University Student Newspapers

Despite the growth of sports media, female athletes and sports reporters continue to struggle for recognition. This study builds on existing research that has documented the extent to which women are sidelined in sports media with an investigation of why this marginalization occurs. Interviews with student newspaper staff members suggest that, while intentional sexism and discrimination are uncommon, the male-dominated culture of sports and sports journalism continue to perpetuate the status quo and make meaningful change difficult.     

The End of Framing as we Know it … and the Future of Media Effects

Framing has become one of the most popular areas of research for scholars in communication and a wide variety of other disciplines, such as psychology, behavioral economics, political science, and sociology. Particularly in the communication discipline, however, ambiguities surrounding how we conceptualize and therefore operationalize framing have begun to overlap with other media effects models to a point that is dysfunctional. This article provides an in-depth examination of framing and positions the theory in the context of recent evolutions in media effects research. We begin by arguing for changes in how communication scholars approach framing as a theoretical construct. We urge scholars to abandon the general term “framing” altogether and instead distinguish between different types of framing. We also propose that, as a field, we refocus attention on the concept's original theoretical foundations and, more important, the potential empirical contributions that the concept can make to our field and our understanding of media effects. Finally, we discuss framing as a bridge between paradigms as we shift from an era of mass communication to one of echo chambers, tailored information and microtargeting in the new media environment.     

German Book Publishers’ Barriers to Disruptive Innovations: The Case of E-Book Adoption

To succeed in a period of change, German book publishers need to adopt innovations, e.g., implement e-books into their product portfolio. Yet, in the book industry, the adoption of new technologies is not commonplace: Despite being the second biggest book market worldwide, only 1.2 % of all published books in Germany are available as e-books. This problem leads us to investigate the factors that determine whether publishing companies decide in favor or against entering the e-book market. Based on a standardized survey of more than 240 German publishing houses, barriers to innovation adoption are examined from a micro, meso and macro perspective. Our main findings show that individual characteristics of management and the company’s corporate culture strongly predict adoption. Also, organizational communication seems to be critical. Taking this into account, the key resource to enable innovation seems to be information underlining the necessity of communities of practice.     

A Systematic Review of Financial Literacy as a Termed Concept: More Questions Than Answers

Financial literacy, as a concept by that name, has only been explored in library science literature for a little over a decade. The concept, and especially the role of libraries in furthering this literacy, is still evolving. This systematic literature review examines the current definition of financial literacy, why financial literacy matters, where the public has been accessing financial literacy education to date, the difficulties encountered, by libraries and others, in providing this education, and how these challenges might be addressed moving forward.     

Still Too Much of a Good Thing? The Replication of Tong,Van Der Heide,Langwell, and Walther (2008)

Tong, Van Der Heide, Langwell, and Walther (2008) tested the relationship between the number of Facebook friends and impressions of the profile owner. They found the number of Facebook friends a person had influenced impressions of social attractiveness and extraversion, but not physical attractiveness, of the profile owner. The current study replicates their original study by experimentally testing for differences when the Facebook profile owner has 102, 302, 502, 702, or 902 friends. Results of the replication indicated no significant effect of the number of Facebook friends and impressions of social attractiveness or physical attractiveness. However, results did indicate significant differences in impressions of extraversion. Warranting theory is applied to aid in interpretation of results.     

Development and validation of a parasocial interaction measure: The audience‐persona interaction scale

This research attempted to develop a multidimensional measure of parasocial interaction. A 47‐item questionnaire derived from qualitative responses was submitted to principal components analysis ‐ resulting in a 22‐item, four‐factor Audience Persona Interaction (API) Scale. The four sub‐scales were: Identification with Favorite character, Interest in Favorite character, Group Identification/Interaction, and Favorite Character's Problem Solving Ability. In the initial analysis, the index and it's subscales were found to be very reliable and positively correlated to program exposure level. In an additional construct validity test, mild linear relationships were found between PSI ‐as measured by the API Scale ‐ and viewing level.     

“The Best Minute and a Half of Audio”

In the introduction to a police audio recording of Bristol Palin describing her family’s involvement in an Alaska house party brawl, CNN anchor Carol Costello commented: “This is quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across.” The incident, however, involved an alleged assault—an act that mainstream journalism generally reports in a serious manner. Costello’s glib treatment of the event could therefore be seen as potentially breaching the boundaries of professional practice, which brought a widespread media response from both mainstream organizations and right-leaning blogs. Through textual analysis of these items, this study illustrates the challenge of conducting media boundary work—and the role strain that results—when the subject of a story occupies space within both entertainment and news spheres.     

The Archival and Library Viewpoints of a Collection in a Digital Environment: Is There Any Room for Compromise?

ABSTRACT

This article explores the archivists' and librarians' definition of a collection, and how they respectively arrange their collections in the context of collection development and collection management issues in a digital library. It centers on possible cooperative solutions and highlights, as a case study, the efforts of the Auburn University Digital Projects Committee to meet these challenging collection issues.     

Print Newspapers: Are They Still Being Used in Academic and Research Libraries?

A six-month print newspaper usage study at the University of Michigan's Hatcher Graduate Library showed a marked decrease in use from a more limited study done four years previously. In general, patrons used only the major national, international, and regional newspapers. Communications with other academic and research libraries confirm these findings.     

Scopus™: The Product and Its Development

ABSTRACT

Scopus is a new all-science abstracting and indexing (A&I) database. It is the result of a two-year collaboration with librarians and researchers from all over the world. Scopus covers over 14,000 scientific, technical, medical and social science titles from 4,000 publishers. It offers new sorting and refining features so that researchers can easily find and access more than 27 million abstracts and citations stretching back to the mid-1960s.

This article recounts the development of Scopus from its inception in 2002 to its success in securing over 100 customers within weeks of its recent launch. The story is told by one of the librarians heavily involved in testing and shaping the product and by one of the Product Managers who built it.     

“Once a Foster Child … ”: Identity Construction in Former Foster Children's Narratives

The present study is a thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008 Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. [Google Scholar]) of 17 former foster children's online stories. The author explores the question, “What identities are constructed in narrative tellings about one's foster child experience?” Three pervasive, non-exclusive identities emerged from the former foster children's narratives: victim, survivor, and victor. These identity constructions are discussed in relation to redemptive tellings, wellbeing, and the foster care system.