The impact of using algorithms for managerial decisions on public employees' procedural justice

Algorithms are used in public management decisions, for instance, to allocate police staff to potential crime scenes. We study how the usage of algorithms for managerial decisions affects procedural justice as reported by public employees. We argue that some public management practices may be more suitable for algorithmic decision-making than others. We hypothesize that employees' perceptions differ depending on the complexity of the practice at hand. We test this through two survey experiments on 109 Dutch public employees and 126 public employees from the UK. Our results show that when a decision is made by an algorithm for practices that are low in complexity, procedural justice increases. Our results also show that, for practices that are high in complexity, decisions involving a public manager are perceived as higher in procedural justice compared to decisions that were made automatically by computers using algorithms. Nevertheless, adding an algorithm to a public manager's decision-making process can increase procedural justice for high complexity practices. We conclude that managers should explore automation opportunities for low complexity practices, but to be cautious when using algorithms to replace public managers' decisions for high complexity practices. In the latter case, transparency about algorithms and open dialogues on perceptions could be beneficial, but this should not be seen as a panacea.     

Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past

Archival interfaces are criticalnodes in archival systems where archivistsnegotiate and exercise power over theconstitution and representation of archives. Drawing on notions of interfaces from physical,technological, and computer systems, archivalinterfaces are both a metaphor for archivists'roles as intermediaries between documentaryevidence and its readers and a tangible set ofstructures and tools that place archivaldocuments in a context and provide aninterpretative framework. Interfaces in moderninstitutions and technological systems areneither natural nor neutral. In probingarchival interfaces, what may appear as neutraland objective processes are revealed as placeswhere archivists determine what constituteslegitimate evidence of the past and shapesocial memories. The emergence of computerinterfaces as an increasingly common mode ofuser interaction with archives demands thatarchivists confront the interpretative natureof their work and exploit opportunities toplace themselves visibly in the interfaces theyconstruct.     

Publishing,copyright, and the public good

For centuries publishers have acted as intermediaries between author and audience. Copyright, like freedom of expression, is an essential element of freedom in this role, because without it authors' rights are not fully protected. Only when they are protected against theft and other economic or moral infringements are authors free to express themselves without fear. Publishers, too, rely on copyright to protect their investments and their freedom Paul Nijhoff Asser has been secretary of the International Group of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), Amsterdam, since 1970. He has been active in publishing and bookselling for more than forty years. This article was adapted from a presentation at the seminar “East Meets West: Copyright and the Publisher in a Market Economy”, Hamburg, March 1991.     

科技期刊公众号成长记:从信息发布渠道到资源整合平台

2012年8月微信公众号正式上线,作为炙手可热的社会化媒体,微信公众号很快地成为各大媒体品牌延伸的必争之地,处于数字化转型的科技期刊也不例外.随着科技期刊对微信公众号认知的不断深入,以及微信为公众号提供的服务不断完善,科技期刊公众号在不断成长.科技期刊公众号信息内容从最初的纸版内容的信息重现,转向以纸版内容为基础加之独立生产的适于社交网络传播的内容产品的组合形式.已有科技期刊公众号告别了单纯信息供应模式,进入了信息服务与功能服务相结合的模式.用户导向是互联网思维的重要特征,功能服务可以更好地满足用户需求,增强用户黏度.而在“互联网+”的运作模式下,科技期刊微信公众号更是可以作为一个资源整合平台,盘活平台上个体与机构的各种资源,实现线上线下联动.文章对这一成长做一总结,并对未来进行展望,以期为科技期刊微信公众号的建设提供参考.     

For the record: document and record sensibilities of art conservators in the Philippines

In this article the authors present a study of the use of documents by a small group of art conservators in the Philippines. Documents are important for these conservators, but not just, or even primarily, for their role as memory devices. Also important are the functions they play in creating a sense of professional identity, for mediating the tensions created by a bureaucratically structured workplace and an occupation traditionally organised around notions of craftsmanship, and as creators of persuasive evidence for clients.     

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.     

From public sphere to public screen: democracy,activism, and the "violence" of Seattle

The WTO protests in Seattle witnessed the emergence of an international citizens' movement for democratic globalization. With the tactical exploitation of television, the internet, and other technologies, Seattle also witnessed the enactment of forms of activism adapted to a wired society. In the wake of Seattle, this essay introduces the “public screen” as a necessary supplement to the metaphor of the public sphere for understanding today's political scene. While a public sphere orientation inevitably finds contemporary discourse wanting, viewing such discourse through the prism of the public screen provokes a consideration of new forms of participatory democracy. In comparison to the public sphere's privileging of rationality, embodied conversations, consensus, and civility, the public screen highlights dissemination, images, hypermediacy, publicity, distraction, and dissent. Using the Seattle WTO protests as a case study and focusing on the dynamic of violence and the media, we argue that the public screen accounts for technological and cultural changes while enabling a charting of the new conditions for rhetoric, politics, and activism.     

文件生命周期理论与文件连续体理论关系研究述评

关于文件生命周期理论与文件连续体理论的关系问题,档案界目前尚未形成共识.本文试图通过归纳、评析各位学者的观点,对这一问题得出比较客观的认识.     

Reflections on the record

This article, based upon a presentation delivered at Simmons College in March 1995, offers the perspective of the former Acting Archivist of the United States on the internationalization of archival management, change, archival education and preparation for the future.Editor's Note: Contrary to the usual policy of the journal, we decided to reprint Dr. Peterson s Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture delivered at Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts, March 14, 1995, with minimal copy editing. The paper provides a unique and important perspective and does offer insights into preparation for the future.     

档案与档案工作:固化的记忆与记忆的固化

档案是一种记忆工具 ,是人类大脑记忆功能的延伸 ,是人们有意保存的固化记忆。档案工作是记忆的固化 :因为保持记忆需要固化 ,固化记忆需要选择 ,选择的对象必须是原始的记录(原生的记忆信息) ,并且必须具有保存价值。档案工作 ,是一项多层次、系统化的“记忆工程” ,有自身的发展规律 ,如集中化原则、有序化原则、稳定性原则、及时性原则等。     

Essentialism, adaptation and justice: Towards a new epistemology of museums

This article treats the prevalent confused mixture of utilitarian, art-and-knowledge-for-their-own-sake and ideological interpretations of the purpose of museums as a problem of epistemology, arguing that that key dimensions of museum knowledge (of objects, visitors, museums themselves, and of society) need to be integrated to achieve coherence. A new object-based, visitor-centred, storytelling epistemology is proposed. This would take an interdisciplinary approach and aim to unleash, rather than mute the real power of objects. It would address human destructiveness, as well as celebrating human creativity and the wonders of nature. It would respect the meaning-making practices of real, as opposed to idealized, imaginary visitors, and promote staff self-awareness in managing bureaucratic drift into introversion and avoidance of difficult issues. Incorporating a theory of justice, it would erode boundaries created by presentation traditions which, though marginal to object experiences, discriminate in favour of specific social groups—often groups with whom staff identify. Providing a museum service on a visibly fair basis is essential for museums to achieve intellectual coherence as well as societal support.     

Lakota winter counts,pictographic records,and record making and remaking histories

Winter counts are pictographic calendars created and used by certain Native American communities as mnemonic devices for remembering the sequence of events that mark each year, and for retelling community stories. Drawing on resources from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Anthropological Archives’ winter count collections and related literature, this study reviews and discusses the characteristics of pictographic records, traces their making and remaking histories, and revisits the pictorial tradition in the American history of records and record keeping.