The boundary-spanning role of a cooperative support organization: managing the paradox of stability and change in non-traditional organizations

This project provides an interpretation of how one cooperative support organization, the Nebraska Cooperative Council, discursively functions to help its constituent cooperatives consolidate resources in order to better intersect with organizations in a larger bureaucratic system. In analyzing qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews, surveys, and organizational documents, we found the paradox of stability and change a revealing prism through which to make sense of participants' experiences. We work toward locating and describing how the Council, through its boundary-spanning activities, helps cooperatives manage the paradox of stability and change while protecting their core participatory ideologies. By providing networks of learning, promoting the legitimacy of cooperative forms of organizing, and protecting cooperatives' interests, the Council is an entity helping cooperatives to reconcile their internal requirements for democracy with the external demands of the marketplace.     

Masculinity(s), the agrarian frontier myth, and cooperative ways of organizing: contradictions and tensions in the experience and enactment of democracy

This study explores how members of the Nebraska Cooperative Council and its constituent producer-owned cooperatives understand and enact democratic ideologies, drawing particular attention to how emergent contradictions and tensions are experienced and managed. The Council serves as a particularly rich context in which to explore traditionally feminine ways of organizing (i.e., cooperative enactment) in a historically male-dominated arena (i.e., agriculture). The dialectic of independence and solidarity became a revealing prism through which to make sense of how members enact cooperative life. This dialectic manifests itself in the discourse of cooperative life as members struggle to manage tensions between efficiency and participation, equality and equity, and the paradox of agency. Communication theorizing about gendered organizing and the history of American agrarianism is used to explore intersections between the social construction of masculinity(s), the agrarian frontier myth, and tensions embedded in the discourse of cooperative organizing.     

A Brief History of the OCLC Members Council

ABSTRACT

On May 19, 2009, the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) Members Council held its 90th and final meeting. It was the end of an era that began in 1977, when the Ohio College Library Center changed its name to OCLC and adopted a new governance structure that extended membership in the cooperative to libraries outside Ohio. In the ensuing 30 years, libraries around the world elected 450 delegates to attend three Council meetings each year at OCLC.     

The Changing Role of the Local News Media in Enabling Citizens to Engage in Local Democracies

Using Leeds City Council in the United Kingdom as a case study, we analyse comparatively the changing role of local journalism in the public communications and engagement strategies of local government. Drawing on over 20 semi-structured interviews with elected politicians, Council strategists, mainstream journalists, and citizen journalists, the article explores perceptions of the mainstream news media's role versus new modes of communication in engaging and communicating with citizens. We evaluate the Council's perceptions of its online and offline practices of engagement with different publics, and focus in particular on their interactions with journalists, the news media, and citizen journalists. The article considers how moves towards digital modes of engagement are changing perceptions of the professional role orientations of journalists in mediating between the Council and the general public.     

Best Practices in Cooperative Collection Development

ABSTRACT

Best practices in cooperative collection development are based on interviews with 18 successful programs, which fall into three categories of cooperative effort: selection of print; electronic acquisition; and access, storage, and preservation. Questions probe opportunities, barriers, best practices, and lessons learned. Findings are collapsed into three areas of analysis: formation and founding; decision making, organization and administration; and funding and infrastructure. The successful cooperatives displayed best practices in four important areas: communication and consultation, goals and focus, flexibility and adaptability, and technological infrastructure.     

Reflections on healing: framing strategies utilized by acquaintance rape survivors

This study examines the stories acquaintance rape victims tell through semi-structured interviews. Acquaintance rape, viewed here as a particularly paradoxical crime, creates a need for women to resolve the inconsistency of their experience. By conducting interviews with victims and analyzing their verbal communication, this project explores how victims frame their rape experience. Framing strategies used by victims of sexual harassment served as a guide for the initial identification of framing strategies for victims of acquaintance rape. Women in this study utilized strategies of paradox management to assess blame, define, and reframe their experiences. Recognition of these management strategies can assist social support networks and law enforcement professionals in identifying the communicative strategies of female victims of varying types of violence.     

E-Mail Reference: Improving Service by Working Cooperatively

SUMMARY

E-mail reference service provides complex challenges, but the service can be planned effectively and improved through cooperative work among reference staff and various library departments. Staff members from the Michigan State University Libraries have engaged in extensive cooperative work to evaluate, improve, and maintain effective e-mail reference services. Two library committees and an e-mail reference team have developed new service procedures, and have worked with other library departments to improve e-mail reference service. This article explores the collaborative work of the MSU committees, and discusses how e-mail reference has improved through cooperative work.     

The rebirth of European publishing: An Anglo-European perspective of “1992”

The Single European Market heralds the biggest and most exciting change in English-language publishing since the Anglo-American copyright agreement was signed a century ago. Now the change is being driven by economic factors; by social, educational, and cultural elements; and by dreams of an age in which publishing prospers in a totally literate world. Philip Attenborough has been Chairman of Hodder & Stoughton, London, since 1975 and has been with the firm for 32 years, serving as export manager, director, and sales director. He has been a member of the Publishers Association Council since 1976 (and was its President from 1983 to 1985). He is a Director of Book Tokens Ltd, Chairman of the British Council Publishers Advisory Committee, and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Publishers Association. He is a former member of the British Library Advisory Council.     

Reflections on healing: framing strategies utilized by acquaintance rape survivors

This study examines the stories acquaintance rape victims tell through semi-structured interviews. Acquaintance rape, viewed here as a particularly paradoxical crime, creates a need for women to resolve the inconsistency of their experience. By conducting interviews with victims and analyzing their verbal communication, this project explores how victims frame their rape experience. Framing strategies used by victims of sexual harassment served as a guide for the initial identification of framing strategies for victims of acquaintance rape. Women in this study utilized strategies of paradox management to assess blame, define, and reframe their experiences. Recognition of these management strategies can assist social support networks and law enforcement professionals in identifying the communicative strategies of female victims of varying types of violence.     

Resource sharing in university libraries: A tool for information interchange

Experience developed in two university libraries, Advertising and Marketing School of Rio de Janeiro library and Medicine Faculty of Petrópolis library, members of CBIES/RJ-resource sharing consortia of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, with the aim of identifying benefits for both institutions through their participation in the consortia. The main results are as follows: scientific and technological knowledge sharing, cooperative acquisition of software and databases, and the development of a cooperative online serials catalog; facilities to search for and access information. This experience shows how library consortia are efficient tools to information resource sharing and can contribute to increase the quality of academic education.     

Identifying and re-imagining the paradox of workplace bullying advice

The present study contributes to the growing body of research on workplace bullying by examining the advice targets receive along with their interpretations of its usefulness. Based on an analysis of interviews with 48 individuals from a variety of occupations, we identified a paradox of workplace bullying advice where targets described themselves as offering the same advice to other targets they had received, even though they believed following the advice either would have made no difference or made their own situations worse. We address the paradox by considering the possibility that urging individual targets to ‘remain calm’ and ‘stay rational’ overestimates the difference a single individual can make, downplays the significance of strong emotional responses to bullying, and constrains the ability to think and act with greater freedom.     

Paradoxes of Strategic Renewal in Traditional Print-Oriented Media Firms

This article continues and extends the emerging scholarship of strategic media management by examining the day-to-day challenges that media managers face when managing strategic renewal in traditional print-oriented media firms. The aim, in particular, is to shed light on the tensions and paradoxical situations that middle managers need to deal with in contexts where taken-for-granted industry recipes and well-established business practices have become problematized as a result of industry-wide technological and cultural change. Based on an empirical case study, the article identifies and elaborates on three interconnected paradoxes, rooted in the history of the company and past decisions of its top-management: (1) balancing employees’ needs for stability with organizational needs for change; (2) bridging employees’ needs for security and tradition and the organizational need for learning and taking risks; as well as (3) reconciling employees’ needs to “focus on themselves” with organizational needs to collaborate for collective success. Theoretically, the article contributes to the literature by working toward a new paradox perspective on managing strategic renewal in media organizations. This theoretical perspective is offered as an interpretive framework for empirically exploring and critically examining the dynamics and complexities of strategic media management in the continuously changing business environments of the industry.     

Exploring employee engagement through communication

Employee engagement has been shown to be related to higher organizational productivity and profitability, among other favorable outcomes; however, there is disagreement in the literature regarding the definition of employee engagement and how employees enact their engagement. The current study explored how employees of a cooperative communicatively displayed their own engagement to others inside and outside of the organization. Fifteen semi-structured interviews with employees were conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results showed that employees displayed their engagement to others through external displays, which contradicts past research done on employee engagement. The study also revealed that social exchanges occurred between the organization and the employees. The ways in which employees communicated their engagement was a direct response to the exchanges occurring between these multiple stakeholders.     

From Council to Program: Creating the Program for Cooperative Cataloging

Abstract

By early 1994, the Cooperative Cataloging Council had created the framework for a Program for Cooperative Cataloging to put its principles and goals into action, but much remained to be done. Decisions taken in the months ahead regarding standards, training, uses of technology and the future of existing cooperative programs would be crucial in gaining buy-in from catalogers and administrators, and determining whether the PCC would achieve the goals of better, cheaper, faster, and more cataloging.     

Wake Up That Back Row! Interactive Library Instruction Without Hands-On Student Computers

Abstract

A review of education literature reveals a pedagogical shift away from linear, step-by-step, instruction toward a fostering of critical thinking and information literacy through active student participation. This conceptual change reflects advances toward cooperative and participatory learning in education. In addition to the students learning more when they are engaged and thinking, we are invigorated as instructors and our tendency toward burnout is reduced or alleviated. This article discusses how those bibliographic instructors who only have one teaching computer in the instruction room can involve the students in their own learning. The author shares ways to conduct a fifty-minute bibliographic instruction session in which all of the students are intellectually engaged in the research process, actively participate in the problem solving of on-line searching, and have fun in a library. Once the students are given agency in the bibliographic instruction session, they begin to develop the critical thinking skills essential to mastering the tools and methods of library research.     

图书馆抢救保护非物质文化遗产的思考

从参与非物质文化遗产抢救、保护及其功能特征入手,比较详细地阐述图书馆如何参与非物质文化遗产抢救保护,促进图书馆文献信息资源建设、开发;图书馆利用现代化的信息技术手段进行非物质文化遗产保护与开发,为图书馆开展理论探索与研究注入新的内涵,为图书馆未来传承文明、开展人文化信息服务等方面增强新的活力,进行理念创新.     

The Changed Role of the Elementary Library Media Teacher

The fundamental value of the library media program is its involvement with the shcool wide instructional program and the development of informatino literacy skills. While some improvements can be made by either administrator or library media teacher working alone, when there is learning the results are multiplied. Specific actions to help intitiate change are described. The need to balance sufficient structure with elements of choice and creativitiy, to insure young students are successful not frustrated by search assignemnts, is adressed. Current trends encourage classroom teachers to provide students with interdisciplinary, cooperative, and authentic learning experiences. When the library media teacher plans cooperatively with the classroom teacher these needs can be met. Examples of learning activities which illustrate this philosphy are provided for grades 1-6. By introducing elementary grade students to research through appropriate assignemnts matched to their abilities and interests, they remain eager to explore.     

An Interlibrary Loan Network Among Academic Libraries of Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT

Global information explosion, escalating prices of books and periodicals, fiscal constraints, and above all, demand for faster supply of information through electronic means has forced the academic libraries, world-wide, to share their resources through local, national, and regional cooperative networks to fulfill requirements of their patrons. The article presents a model plan of an interlibrary loan network (ILLN) among academic libraries of Saudi Arabia and discusses its organizational structure, governance, operational requirements, finances, etc. The proposed ILLN will be formal, regular, and systematic to provide greater cooperation, coordination, efficiency, cost effectiveness, and will ensure comprehensive sharing of available resources.     

Summary of National Research Council report on database protection

Legislative efforts are currently underway in the United States, the European Union, and the World Intellectual Property Organization to enhance greatly the legal protection of proprietary databases. At the request of several federal science agencies, the National Research Council produced a study, in 1999, that identified and evaluated several existing and proposed policy approaches for protecting the proprietary rights of private-sector database rights holders, while promoting and enhancing access to scientific and technical data for public-interest uses. This article reprints the Summary from that report and provides an introduction to the report and to the issues it addresses.