Learning how to teach unfamiliar subjects: developing training on writing for publication and presentation of research for health libraries

Academic librarians with teaching responsibility have traditionally delivered training in discovering and organising information. However, in recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on supporting researchers through all stages of the research lifecycle. While librarians are ideally placed to provide training in writing for publication and presentation of research, very few in the United Kingdom appear to be doing so. However, there are clear benefits to teaching these subjects. Based on feedback from faculty on user needs, the University of Cambridge Medical Library’s training programme was expanded to include training and support in the publication and presentation of research outputs. This article recounts the process by which the new courses were developed, and the techniques used by the library’s teaching staff to gain understanding of conventions and requirements of forms of written communication with which they were unfamiliar. It also evaluates the impact of the new courses, discusses next steps and provides advice for other librarians wishing to develop similar courses. D.I.     

An information behaviour investigation of the community pharmacists in Greece for developing library and information services

Background and objectives: Community pharmacists require a constant provision of high quality information for updating their knowledge and improving their practices and skills. The development of library and information services for the pharmacists in a meaningful way should take into consideration their information behaviour and needs. This study is an investigation of the information behaviour of community pharmacists in Greece, as well as their perceptions regarding the contribution of library and information services in their future professional development. This is the only empirical investigation which has been made available regarding the information behaviour of the community pharmacists in Greece. Methods: An empirical investigation has been conducted between March and April of 2008 through the development and the distribution of a semi‐structured questionnaire. The sample of the respondents consists of 92 community pharmacists from 22 pharmacy associations in Greece. Results: The community pharmacists have access to the Internet, with limited access to specialized information resources, and they are increasingly utilizing information services in their everyday practices. The pharmaceutical associations (national and local) could play a significant role as information providers and specialized hybrid libraries and information services are required in order to satisfy the current information needs of the community pharmacists. Conclusions: Meaningful library and information services depend on setting specifications relevant to the community pharmacists’ information behaviour. Indeed, in the near future, structured information services may come to rescue the role of the community pharmacists and empower their irreplaceable position in serving the local communities.     

Parents' Communication Skills and Adolescents' Salivary α-Amylase and Cortisol Response Patterns

The primary goal of this study was to examine patterns or groupings of adolescents’ hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) (measured through cortisol) and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) (measured through salivary alpha amylase or sAA) responses as a function of their parents’ communication skills. A related goal was to decipher whether adolescents who demonstrate different patterns of physiological reactivity vary in their personal and relational health. The sample consisted of 118 parent–adolescent dyads who were asked to talk about something stressful related to the parents’ relationship. The results revealed that adolescents’ perceptions of their parent's communication skills predicted the likelihood that the adolescents would overreact, show no reaction, or down regulate in response to such a discussion, but only for sAA. All of the communication skills in question—social support, communication competence, feeling caught between the parents’ conflict, and inappropriate disclosures—supported the hypothesis that adolescents with parents who they think are more communicatively skilled are better able to recover from a stressful interaction than adolescents whose parents are less skilled. Adolescents who were considered “overreactors” in sAA also had more negative health indices, somewhat lower psychological well-being, and poorer quality relationships with their parents.     

Information behaviour paradox: Understanding perceptions of risk and online behaviour

Human behaviour is complex and demographics are insufficient to understand information behaviour. More nuanced analyses are required to understand the factors that drive action. Focusing on digital archiving and online protection strategies as manifestations of information behaviour, factors that influence perceptions of online risk were investigated. The relationship between perception and behaviour was analyzed by focusing on people’s risk responses and their archival habits. Using Bates’ theory of Information Behaviour, information behaviour paradoxes, what people do versus what they say they would do in online situations, were analyzed. By applying a mixed-method approach to 101 semi-structured interviews, individuals’ self-perceived internet skills and having a third-party negative experience are two key factors that influence perceptions of risk online. A three-part typology of internet users (cautiously optimistic offliners, confident onliners, and utopic onliners) is introduced. Perceptions of online risk have consequences for information behaviour and informs a theoretical modification.     

数字环境下图书馆员信息素质培养策略研究

通过对212所高校图书馆网站的馆员信息素质学习栏目建设情况进行调查,从栏目设置、培训内容、培训方式等方面进行了分析。在此基础上,提出要从职业道德、业务素质和学术素质三方面培养高校图书馆馆员的信息素质,并强调高校图书馆馆员信息素质培养网上平台的建设策略：一是注重平台的互动性;二是提供课程资源共享;三是提供网上模拟考试系统。     

Communication practices of the Karen in Sheffield: seeking to navigate their three zones of displacement

This study investigates communication practices of a newly arrived Karen refugee community in the UK who, as well as establishing themselves in a strange country, seek to keep in touch, campaign politically and maintain identity collectively through communication and contact with their global diaspora. We look at the technologies, motivations and inhibiting factors applying to the communication by adult members of this community and construct the idea of three zones of displacement which help to model the particular contexts, challenges and methods of their communication. We find that, overall, they are using a wide range of internet-based technologies, with the aim to ‘keep-in-touch’ (personal contacts) and to ‘spread the word’ (political communication). This also includes archaic, traditional and hybrid methods to achieve extended communication with contacts in other ‘zones’. We also identify the importance of the notion of ‘village’ as metaphor and entity in their conceptualisation of diasporic and local community cohesion. We identify the key inhibitors to their communication as cost, education, literacy and age. Finally, we speculate on the uncertain outcomes of their approach to digital media in achieving their political aims.     

Stigma in the line of face: Self‐disclosure of patients' HIV status to health care providers

Patients who are HIV+ are often faced with the choice of whether or not they should tell their health care providers that they are HIV+. Although appropriate health care and safety require the communication of such information, the stigmatization associated with HIV puts at risk the patients’ pride, dignity, and ultimately the quality of their health. Using Goffman's (1963, 1967) notions of face and stigma, the present study described the major influential factors prompting the act of disclosure of HIV, the act itself, and the effect that act appears to have had on the patient/provider relationship. Phase I of the study gathered pilot data through in‐depth interviews, leading to a quantitative questionnaire used in Phase II. A sample was obtained through AIDS organizations around the U.S. and via electronic mail addresses for AIDS/HIV electronic discussion groups. The interviews and surveys asked respondents to recall a time when they had to make the decision to disclose or not disclose their HIV+ status to a care provider. The results indicated that patients typically did disclose their HIV+ status despite their strong feelings of stigmatization. Three key factors were related to their decisions: 1) perceived necessity of disclosure; 2) subjective feelings of comfort about the disclosure; and 3) perceptions of stigmatization. Patient satisfaction levels were also related to these factors. Implications for face maintenance and health care management as well as the determinants of subjective comfort are discussed.     

Information Needs: Developing Personas of Humanities Scholars

A persona represents a group of target users that share common behavioural characteristics. The personas method, an approach to systems design, has been receiving significant attention from practitioners. However, only anecdotal evidence currently exists for the effectiveness of personas and there have been criticisms about its validity as a scientific approach to research. This paper attempts to demonstrate how incorporating personas may lead to better understand the information needs of humanities scholars. Humanities scholars in an advanced ICT environment in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan are sampled as a case. Previous studies show that the humanities scholars have a significant negative relation with ICT use; they are using it less than scientists and social scientists, and they demonstrate a significantly higher use of library facilities than other academics. There is also a lack of up-to-date international research on the humanities scholars' information needs that takes into account recent rapid increases in the availability of ICT infrastructure, especially the Internet. As such, the objective of this study is to understand the information needs of humanities scholars and the effect of the electronic environment on their information seeking behaviour using personas. This study is conducted within a conceptual framework based on an integration of existing models of information-seeking behaviour, along with additional new elements representing the information context environment, such as languages, decision to seek and format of information resources. The four personas that were uncovered in this study may be able to effectively communicate the actual information needs of the humanities scholars through the personal narrative, name, and face, which continuously will remind the academic library of what their users really want and need from their services. This study also lays the foundation for future research by identifying variables of interest, and building construct validity through the themes of information needs that emerged.     

In Their Own Little Corner: The Gendered Sidelining of NBC’s Information Department

Despite their low pay and clerical status, the women who staffed the National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) Information Department played an integral role in shaping the national network’s program and public relations policies. As the network’s first line of contact with its audience, Information Department workers influenced public opinion by shaping the networks’ responses to individual audience members’ written complaints. They also processed and molded the information NBC executives used to sell programming to advertisers. Still, as women, they were routinely devalued and their labor dismissed as simultaneously rote, irrelevant, and hyperemotional. This paper brings together internal documents from across NBC’s corporate structure to recover the careers of Anita Barnard and Kathryn Cole, two women who managed the Information Department through the 1940s and 1950s. During this period, the network underwent enormous transitions, including the shift from radio to television and renewed threats of federal regulation. The Information Department’s status waxed and waned along with NBC’s need to appease its audience and recruit and retain sponsors. Barnard and Cole’s status rose when audience information was at a premium, but it fell as soon as network dominance over television was established and financial returns assured.     

The relationship between student communication motives and information seeking

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between college students’ communication motives (i.e., relational, functional, participatory, excuse making, sycophantic) and their use of information‐seeking strategies (i.e., overt, indirect, third party, testing, observing). Participants were 149 students enrolled in an introductory communication course at a Mid‐Atlantic university. Results indicated that (a) students who communicate for the sycophantic, relational, and participatory motives use the indirect and observing information‐seeking strategies and (b) students who communicate for the functional communication motive use the overt information‐seeking strategy, but do not use the testing information‐seeking strategy. Future research should examine whether college students use information‐seeking strategies with their classmates and the impact of the use of these strategies on their learning experience.     

Resource Sharing and Social Justice: An MLIS Student Intern’s Perspective of the 2018 Great Lakes Resource Sharing Conference

This paper presents a library student intern’s experience at the Great Lakes Resource Sharing Conference 2018 (GLRSC) in Perrysburg, Ohio on June 7–8. GLRSC is a regional conference aimed at training resource sharing (RS) professionals and creating a collaborative environment for peers to discuss new ideas, best practices, and partnership opportunities, among other related topics. This paper focuses on GLRSC 2018 presenters who emphasized the inherent value of librarianship, and RS specifically, as a tool for social justice. George Needham’s discussion of the intense and unique value of RS to shape our community’s information access is presented, as well as Anna Bendo and Stephen Kaufman’s session about affordable learning options for students of higher education. The inherent relationship between RS and intellectual freedom is also discussed. These concepts of unconditional information access resonate with Myers due to her interest in outreach librarianship and commitment to her position serving marginalized patrons in her community who have severely limited access to the public library’s resources and materials.     

A computer literacy skills profile of pharmacists residing in two counties of England

Background: Pharmacy is an information intensive profession and a pharmacist has to be proficient in health care information management. The advance in information technology and the use of computers to access, retrieve and analyse this information is increasingly important. Yet little is known about pharmacists’ computer literacy or information technology skills. Objectives: To gain a better understanding of pharmacists’ basic computer skills and their ability to use standard software. Methods: Self‐administered postal survey to 747 registered pharmacists residing in two counties of England. Results: A total of 386 (52%) pharmacists responded after two mailings. Most responding pharmacists used computers at work and at home. They believed their basic computing skills to be high, although acknowledged that they were skill deficient in using certain software packages. Internet use at work was low (43%) as too was awareness and use of online medical databases; this was reflected in online medical database training being identified as of greatest need. Conclusions: Pharmacists were confident in operating computer systems but identified a training need for particular software applications. Of concern is the limited knowledge they possessed and access they had on medical databases.     

Reclaiming erased lives: archives,records and memories in post-war Bosnia and the Bosnian diaspora

In this paper, based on conventional and digital ethnography, I first identify three dominant research areas relating to the issues of destruction, use and abuse of archives and records in post-war Bosnia, and discuss their legal, political and ethical dimensions. I then go on to present two ethnographies describing how survivors of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and genocide in Bosnia and in the Bosnian refugee diaspora perceive, experience and deal with missing personal records and material evidence of their histories, as well as how they (re)create their own archives and memories, and in the process reassert their ‘erased’ identities in both real and cyber space. This paper also describes how contemporary technologies—including biomedical technology and information and communication technology—impact the reconstruction of individual and collective identities in shattered Bosnian families and communities in the aftermath of genocide. The ethnographies described point to the novel contribution that these technologies have made to re-humanising both those who perished and the survivors of the war in Bosnia.     

Accountability for governance of liquid communication generated through the use of social media in Botswana: whose duty is it?

The continued use of social media by governments requires that the resultant records, currently termed liquid communication, be governed for accountability purposes. However, some governments worldwide and many in Africa do not have information governance policies to ensure accountability for social media generated records. Therefore, this study examines the roles and responsibilities for the governance of liquid communication generated through social media use by the Botswana government. The study adopts a qualitative approach to collect data from purposively selected participants. This study reveals that public relations officers administered the Botswana government’s social media pages. Furthermore, the Botswana National Archives and Records Services was not involved in the country’s liquid communication governance. Therefore, the study recommends a cross-functional approach to the governance of liquid communication in Botswana. All stakeholders' roles and responsibilities in government information management should be clearly spelled out and documented, which is currently not the case.

     

A user-centric approach to identifying best deployment strategies for language tools: the impact of content and access language on Web user behaviour and attitudes

The number of Web users whose first language is not English continues to grow, as does the amount of content provided in languages other than English. This poses new challenges for actors on the Web, such as in which language(s) content should be offered, how search tools should deal with mono- and multilingual content, and how users can make the best use of navigation and search options, suited to their individual linguistic skills. How should these challenges be dealt with? Technological approaches to non-English (or in general, cross-language) Web search have made large progress; however, translation remains a hard problem. This precludes a low-cost but high-quality blanket all-language coverage of the whole Web. In this paper, we propose a user-centric approach to answering questions of where to best concentrate efforts and investments. Drawing on linguistic research, we describe data on the availability of content and access to it in first and second languages across the Web. We then present three studies that investigated the impact of the availability (or not) of first-language content and access forms on user behaviour and attitudes. The results indicate that non-English languages are under-represented on the Web and that this is partly due to content-creation, link-setting and link-following behaviour. They also show that user satisfaction is influenced both by the cognitive effort of searching and the availability of alternative information in that language. These findings suggest that more cross-language tools are desirable. However, they also indicate that context (such as user groups’ domain expertise or site type) should be considered when tradeoffs between information quality and multilinguality need to be taken into account.     

Information-seeking Behaviour by Academics: A Preliminary Study

Information-seeking behaviour by university academics at Moi University, Kenya, is analysed. A survey, in the form of a pilot study, was conducted and data collected through questionnaires and interviews among 27 academics randomly sampled from four faculties: Health Sciences, Information Sciences, Environmental Studies and Education. The results obtained established that a great number of academics depend on libraries and colleagues for information and that although the academics heavily depend on textbooks for information, they display great interest in, and use, current and research-oriented information sources. It was also established that the nature of discipline and level of programme influence the information-seeking behaviour of academics and that lack of awareness of information services, and non-use of current awareness services and sources available at the university contribute to limited access and use of the information resources. In addition, academics indicated that they need information mainly for career development to circumvent the “publish or perish syndrome”, but also for their professional and occupational needs. It is concluded that despite insufficient relevant information resources at the university library due to budget cuts, academics still depend on the library for their information needs. Work colleagues are also an important source of intra-university information. It is suggested that the library would benefit the academics if equal attention were paid to current awareness services as well as publicity and promotion of information products and services. Similarly, methods should be devised by the university to strengthen the academics' overall accessibility to information. In this way, the circulation of information between academic colleagues can be maintained.     

“I thought I’d have more trouble with white people!”: Exploring racial microaggressions between West African immigrants and African Americans

Racial tensions continue in 21st-century United States through the communication of racial microaggressions. We are interested in the communication of racial microaggressions directed towards West African immigrants by people with whom they expected to be allied, African Americans. Sixteen people who identified as West African immigrants were interviewed about communication struggles with African Americans in this qualitative, interpretive analysis. Owen’s thematic analysis was employed to analyze interview data. Results suggest the communicative impact of racial microaggressions on recipients is far-reaching and consequential. Narratives illustrate microaggressive communication occurs daily through invalidating, dismissive lines of questioning as well as targeted name calling and pejorative dialogue.     

中国参与全球档案治理:历程、挑战与策略

中国参与全球档案治理,既是中国参与全球治理的需要,也是建设档案强国的需要。中国加入以国际档案理事会为核心的全球档案治理体系,历经若干发展时期,目前正迎来新的时代机遇。但是,中国在全球档案治理方面也存在浅层参与活动较多、深层决策行为较少,引进学习的理论多,对外传播的思想少,交流对象单一、缺乏对多元档案文化的吸纳,缺乏深谙专业、外语和国际规则的复合型人才等问题。为此,我国档案行政管理部门应制定参与全球档案治理政策,档案研究机构应积极参与国际档案标准制定,档案实践部门应主动加入国际档案合作项目,档案工作者应努力提升参与全球治理的能力。     

Known-item searches and search tactics in library search systems: Results from four transaction log analysis studies

A better understanding of users' search interactions in library search systems is key to improving the result ranking. By focusing on known-item searches (searches for an item already known) and search tactics, vast improvement can be made. To better understand user behaviour, we conducted four transaction-log studies, comprising more than 4.2 million search sessions from two German library search systems. Results show that most sessions are rather short; users tend to issue short queries and usually do not go beyond the first search engine result page (SERP). The most frequently used search tactic was the extension of a query (‘Exhaust’). Looking at the known-item searches, it becomes clear that this query type is of great importance. Between 38%–57% of all queries are known-item queries. Titles or title parts were the most frequent elements of these queries, either alone or in combination with the author's name. Unsuccessful known-item searches were often caused by items not available in the system. Results can be applied by libraries and library system vendors to improve their systems, as well as when designing new systems. Future research, in addition to log data, should also include background information on the usage, for example, through user surveys.