A Review of: “Going Beyond Google: The Invisible Web in Learning and Teaching. Devine,Jane and Egger-Sider,Francine.”

As technology rapidly changes, libraries remain go-to points for education and technology skill development. In academic health sciences libraries, trends suggest librarians provide more training on technology topics than ever before. While education and training have always been roles for librarians, providing technology training on new mobile devices and emerging systems requires class creation and training capabilities that are new to many librarians. To appeal to their users, many health sciences librarians are interested in developing technology-based classes. This column explores the question: what skills are necessary for developing and teaching technology in an academic health sciences library setting?     

Different Paths,Different Voices: The Historical Contexts of Women’s and Minorities’ Access to Broadcasting

This essay extends Susan Carter’s (2004) models of women’s access to broadcasting to include racial and ethnic minorities. It investigates the different historical contexts of female and minority access to commercial broadcasting, and argues that women and minorities have rooted their media access in different models. The intersection of race and gender, combined with an evolving cultural, political, and regulatory environment, has had a powerful influence on which of the three access models were used by women and people of color.     

Public service broadcasting,children’s television,and market failure: The case of the United Kingdom

Domestically produced children’s television is frequently highlighted as both an area of market failure, and also as an area where children’s changing consumption habits necessitate new and different ways of thinking about funding children’s content across a range of platforms. In the light of a recent U.K. proposal to set up a Public Service Content Fund to support “genres” under threat, including children’s programming, this article considers how you fund diverse high-quality children’s content in a more challenging media environment where children’s content is arguably still a market failure “genre.” The first part of the article provides context by outlining the market failure characteristics of children’s content as a framework for analyzing the validity of market failure arguments across a range of platforms. It then investigates the causes of perceived market failure in the U.K. children’s television production market. The final part examines the implications of recent U.K. policy responses to provision for children that seek to address market failure through (1) the possible introduction of a contestable fund for public service content; (2) more stringent obligations on the British Broadcasting Corporation; and (3) the re-imposition of quotas on commercially funded public service broadcastings (ITV, Channel 4, Five). Drawing on regulatory and stakeholder responses, it concludes that attempts to overcome market failure in U.K. children’s television appear unsuited for funding the longer-term curation, distribution, and discovery of new types of content on platforms other than broadcasting.     

Google Scholar’s Coverage of the Engineering Literature: An Empirical Study

Google Scholar’s coverage of the engineering literature is analyzed by comparing its contents with those of Compendex, the premier engineering database. Records retrieved from Compendex were searched in Google Scholar, and a decade by decade comparison was done from the 1950s through 2007. The results show that the percentage of records appearing in Google Scholar increased over time, approaching a 90 percent matching rate for materials published after 1990.     

Characterization,weathering, and protection of sandstones: The case of ‘Agro d'Ardesia’

Abstract

The conservation of roofing and cladding materials has both environmental and cultural heritage bearing. Our research aimed at comparing the performances of some polymeric products used for the protection of a typical Italian sandstone, the ‘Agro d'Ardesia’, used mostly as cladding, paving, roofing, and building material. These products belong to three different classes: polysiloxanes, acrylics, and fluoropolymers. In addition, an acrylic–silicone mixture was chosen for testing. After the application onto the Agro sandstone by capillary absorption, both efficacy and durability were assessed. Particularly, two types of weathering tests were performed to check the stability over time of the protective products: the exposure to ultraviolet radiation in a climatic chamber and the ageing by exposure to acid rain, expressly designed to represent realistically natural and anthropogenic changes. Detailed information on treatment performances was obtained. The polysiloxane was shown to be the most effective protective material for the Agro sandstone.     

The Replication of Veronese’s Wedding at Cana and of Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel: Two Iconic Works as Their Surrogates

The paper discusses in detail the cases of two different sorts of reproductions: the first, that of the Wedding at Cana, by Veronese. The original work is displayed in the Louvre, while a high-quality replica is displayed in its stead in Venice. The second example is Bicycle Wheel, by Duchamp, the original of which is destroyed. Subsequently, many versions and appropriations of Bicycle Wheel have been fabricated, whose status is examined in this paper. The aesthetic properties of originals and reproductions are investigated in these two examples, with reference to the problems of authenticity and intertextuality. An intertextual approach to their significance is discussed, based on a series of different scenarios, and personal perceptual knowledge, for the observers of each work.     

The Effect of Web Search Result Display on Users’ Perceptual Experience and Information Seeking Performance

ABSTRACT

Adding multiple sources of information in the display of Web search results may negatively affect users’ perceptual experience and information-seeking behavior. This claim was established by investigating the impact of different Web search compositions on users’ ability to extract specific information. In this article, we assumed that the quantity and order of different compositions (areas) in the Web search results page may contribute to individual’s ability to find information relevant to their search queries. An eye-tracking device was used to observe and compare the perceptual behavior of 14 users in an information-seeking task. The results showed that the use of different compositions in the display of Web results page significantly influenced users’ perceptual experience by reducing their attention to the organic results area. The quantity of these compositions was found to greatly increase the cognitive load of users when attempting to retrieve information from the organic area, which negatively affects their information-seeking performance. Our finding provides a rationale for further studies to consider the impact of quantity and order of Web page compositions on individuals’ perceptual attention and cognitive load in information-seeking task settings.     

Amazon’s Day One in China: The Role of Amazon’s Kindle in China

After the long-standing effort and negotiations, Amazon finally released its two Kindle products in China since it entered China 9 years ago. Some say Kindle as it plays as a Catfish would stir up China’s e-book reading market, while the others say Kindle has missed the best timing to enter the market. The article describes the Kindle’s current status in China digital publishing arena, exploring the consistent Amazon strategies in China e-commerce market, and analyzing its threats and opportunities coming from four aspects in the long run, policy, content, willingness-to-pay and competition.     

The Influence of Device Access and Gender on Children’s Reading Frequency

We explore the role that devices currently play in children’s book reading, finding that while children have relatively high access to devices with eReading capability, these devices are underutilised for reading purposes. While ownership of devices was negatively associated with reading frequency for both genders, its negative impact was more significant for girls than boys. We also found that when boys and girls identified themselves as daily readers, and where they had access to devices, they did not use them frequently for book reading, suggesting that paper book reading is still preferable for frequent book readers of both genders.