Applying Research in Special Library Settings

ABSTRACT

Special librarians encourage their users to base decisions on vetted research results and quality information, yet when faced with a problem in their own work, they are more likely to turn to their network of colleagues than to published research. While learning from the experience of colleagues is valuable, greater application of research and evidence-based practice in the special library sector could benefit these libraries in making good, strategic decisions. A few studies have examined whether practitioners use library and information science research and what barriers keep them from doing so. Engaging practitioners and scholars in productive collaboration and communication can help practitioners find and apply lessons learned from research in their work and encourage more participation in research by special librarians. In turn, increased diversity in research settings can benefit all libraries as they evolve and learn from each other's experiences.     

Interpersonal coordination in interactions: Evaluations and social skills

Interactional synchrony and behavior matching is a fundamental, and often taken for granted, aspect of communicative situations. The level of interpersonal coordination exhibited during an interaction can vary depending on who is talking to whom. However, little empirical attention has been devoted to determining how people interpret the degree of coordination during interactions and what skills are associated with interactants who are more or less “in‐sync”; with their interaction partners. Using a sample of conversations between members of the same and different cultures, this preliminary study examined how interpersonal coordination is evaluated and the relationship between interpersonal coordination and social skills. The findings suggest that interpersonal coordination is a desirable and positively evaluated characteristic of interactions. The results further indicate that more socially skilled communicators can help facilitate interpersonal coordination in interactions.     

Visitor Meaning‐Making at Grand Canyon's Tusayan Museum and Ruin

Abstract Meaning‐making describes a process by which visitors transform museum experiences into new knowledge and memories. Meaning‐making is influenced by visitors' leisure motivations, prior knowledge, socio‐cultural context brought to the experience, personally‐guided interpretation, and events since the visit. In this study, visitors' long‐term recollections included contextual references to how and why they remembered what they experienced. Forty visitors were interviewed by telephone six months after attending a Native American interpretive program at Grand Canyon National Park's Tusayan Museum. Two patterns associated with a constructivist view of meaning‐making were discerned: a) visitors' integration of indoor and outdoor exhibits and b) visitors' comparisons of modern family and community with a more ancient culture. The presence of contextual indicators within visitor recall suggests that new knowledge may be constructed from factors carried forth from the meaning‐making process. Evidence within the data suggests that exhibits made more relevant to visitors' socio‐cultural identity may enhance on‐site experiences.     

Exploring visual perception and children's interpretations of picture books

Visual perception is an ability to process and organize visual information; it plays a role in identifying and classifying information. Many physiological and psychological factors can have an impact on the depth of visual perception in terms of categorization and interpretation of meaning. Picture books tell stories to children with a combination of texts and images. Children's interaction with picture books shows relationships with visual perception; visual perception has an impact on children's categorization and narratives and illustrations of picture books are works of art that can provide sources for children to appreciate art and enhance their visual perception. Three to five-year-old children are characterized by a reliance on their perception because they see what appears to them. At public libraries, schools, and homes children often read picture books for learning and recreation. Thirty-one three- to five-year-old children from one public library, one preschool, and home schools were recruited to interpret images of two picture books in short interviews. Factors that contributed to their interpretation were explored through surveys, content analysis, and case studies.     

Public Radio Talk Show Hosts and Social Conflict: An Analysis of Self-Reported Roles During Debates and Discussion

By interviewing and thus gathering data from 10 prominent public radio talk show hosts as to how they perceive their tasks and actions during conflict-related debates and discussions, the authors were able to categorize these self-reflections in terms of the hosts' overall communicative, directive, and procedural strategies. This article reflects on the degree to which these activities define the overall roles of public radio talk show hosts and especially on whether these social actors perceive their moderating roles as a form of third party intervention similar to the work of facilitators or mediators of social conflict.     

Stutterers' perceptions of more satisfying communication: Interaction strategies for fluent speakers

Persons who stutter must conduct their daily lives by interacting with fluent speakers. A majority of fluent speakers, however, are unaware of the communicative behaviors that can increase the frequency and severity of stutterers' dysfluencies. Moreover, extant research is scant regarding the strategies used by fluent speakers to increase interactive satisfaction with persons who stutter. This investigation addresses this void by sharing an empirical study in which stutterers offer the behaviors and strategies which they suggest result in more satisfying communicative interactions among fluent persons and stutterers.     

Goal Variability and Message Content During Relational Discussions

Discussions about relationship issues are rarely easy, and as in any important conversation, the actions of a relational partner may encourage one to change initial message intentions and behaviors during the course of an interaction. The interrelationship of communication goals and message content was examined through a sequential analysis of 10-minute conversations between 100 dating partners about a relationship problem. After completing survey measures, respondents engaged in a discussion about one partner's problematic behavior. Respondents then reviewed discussions to rate the importance of their communication goals (self-oriented, other-oriented, relational, or task) at 1-minute intervals. Objective coders assessed the grammatical focus of respondents' messages (self, relationship, partner, or task) at the same or adjoining interval. Lag sequential analyses indicated that goal importance defined self-interested or more prorelational content, providing evidence that goals are fluid and communicative behavior is influenced by dyadic interaction.     

Market uncertainty and mimetic isomorphism in the newspaper industry: a study of Taiwan's mainstream newspapers from 1992 to 2003

Mimetic isomorphic theory explains the process through which organizations in the same environment imitate each other's actions to become more similar to each other. Adopting the theory, this study examined the content of Taiwan's three major newspapers from 1992 to 2003 to investigate the relationship between market uncertainty and mimetic isomorphism. The data analysis shows that the uncertainty in Taiwan's newspaper industry created an environment of mimetic isomorphism, and the findings are congruent with the predictions of mimetic isomorphic theory.     

Managing Patient-centered Communication across the Type 2 Diabetes Illness Trajectory: A Grounded Practical Theory of Interactional Sensitivity

This article uses the theoretical and methodological framework of Grounded Practical Theory (GPT) to provide a lens for analyzing and interpreting discourse as a situated form of social action in routine Type 2 diabetes visits. Drawing on a total data-set of 400 audio-recorded routine visits, we randomly selected 55 visits for qualitative analysis. In this article, we use Conversation Analysis to document communication techniques, which we in turn use as evidence to ground our claims within the GPT framework. We use two single cases of interaction to analyze communication techniques physicians use when recommending a change from oral medication to insulin. We argue treatment intensification is a key moment in health communication to reflect about patient centeredness because physicians can find themselves in an interactional dilemma: while insulin may effectively help control unstable disease, an insulin recommendation may simultaneously counter patient values and treatment preferences. Our analysis suggests that physicians use what we call interactional sensitivity to balance medical need and patient preferences when making medical decisions by tailoring their communication according to the local situation and the patient's larger illness trajectory. We propose that interactional sensitivity is a type of communication work and a quality of patient-centered communication characterized by the theoretical relationship between tailoring communication to the contingencies of the local interaction and the global illness trajectory. Overall, this article contributes to health communication scholarship by proposing a normative model for reflecting on how physicians negotiate challenging interactions with patients during routine chronic illness visits.     

The orders of documents, the orders of activity, and the orders of information

The invention of literacy was also the invention of written information. Humanly usable information has been (and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future) tied to human documents. Any order we impose on or find in information is closely tied to human uses that give rise to it or for which it is repurposed, and those orders are expressed in the documentary genres that mediate human communicative action within social activity systems. These social forms of genres and activity systems shape our consciousnesses, cognitive capacities, social identities, and potentials for action. Making sense of a single claim, sentence, or even datum requires an understanding of what kind of text it appears in, engaged in what sort of inquiry using what methods, and where it stands within the evolving intertextual discussion of the field. Sense making requires integrity of the text and visibility of the provenance and socio-historic dynamic from which it arises. Even as the processes of communication have been less tied to immediate social circumstances, they have fostered new kinds of social relations and communicative circumstances that maintain their social character and functionality. As we convert older technologies of information storage based on the physical texts, to digital technologies that can readily draw together heterogeneous pieces from more heterogeneous circumstances, the user ultimately must make sense of the information, and the technologies will need to find ways to support that sense making.     

Health Care Providers' Confidentiality Practices and Perceptions: Expanding a Typology of Confidentiality Breaches in Health Care Communication

Confidentiality breaches of health information can affect every person who seeks medical care. To better understand this phenomenon, breaches of confidentiality by employees in a health care organization were examined and compared to the perceived confidentiality maintenance actions of the organization's health care providers. The study, using observation and interviews of a health promotion department, supported Brann and Mattson's (2004) typology of confidentiality breaches, provided evidence for another type of communicative breach, and revealed inconsistencies between health care providers' actions and their perceptions of those actions. Future research should address the prevalence of such discrepancies in other health contexts and its impact on patient care.     

Crafting policies about controversial values: How wording disputes manage a group dilemma

Over a six-month time period a school board and its community discussed their district's strategic plan goals about diversity. This article analyzes that discussion within the practical theory frame articulated by Craig. Meeting talk and documents were analyzed to determine how the group's policy deliberation became an argument over what words to have (or avoid) in the strategic plan document. Proposals about document language were framed as technical editing, as inadvertent changing of a policy, and as wordsmithing. In addition to each frame being used, each was also challenged as to its being used to advance some group members' interests at the expense of others. Moving back and forth between using and resisting wording proposal frames, we suggest, is a reasonable way for groups to manage a dilemma they face in crafting policies about controversial, abstract issues. The paper concludes by identifying implications for dilemma theorizing and future study of groups.     

A note on “Clozentropy: A procedure for testing English language proficiency of foreign students”

This study investigates whether attributions made while observing compliance‐gaining interactions always are a matter of perspective. We propose that Construct Differentiation moderates the effects of perspective on causal judgments, such that highly differentiated individuals are more responsive than less differentiated persons to information from interaction that their psychological perspective makes salient. Participants viewed three videotaped compliance‐gaining interactions, one each while taking the perspective of the message source, the message target, and a third‐party observer. Then they rated causes for the target's actions and the target's intent. As predicted, Construct Differentiation was positively associated with intrapersonal variability in ratings of causal judgments across the three perspectives, and positively associated with actor/observer differences when taking the perspective of message source versus target. Implications for interpersonal communication, constructivism, and attribution theories are discussed.     

Connecting,Coordinating, Cataloguing: Communicative Practices on Mobile Social Networks

This article draws on Georg Simmel's sociological framework for social interaction in public space to situate socially mediated interactions within a historical and theoretical context. Based on 5 case studies of mobile interactions with social networks, this article explores how these mobile interactions with social networks are practiced and experienced in everyday life. Together these case studies suggest 3 kinds of communicative practices associated with mobile social networks: connecting, coordinating, and cataloguing. These practices are associated with the social, physical, and informational aspects of public social interaction respectively. The article concludes with implications of these practices for socially mediated interaction in public space.     

Internet's impact on expert–citizen interactions in public policymaking—A meta analysis

This article studies the internet's impact on expert–citizen interactions in the process of public policymaking. It examines a possible solution to a classical democratic dilemma of citizens' right to participate versus citizens' ability to participate. Through a meta-analysis of the past studies on internet's impact on citizen participation in public policy making, the authors find that the internet has successfully reduced resource difference between policy experts and the citizens as promised. However, the technology itself does not provide all the answers. Exogenous factors such as personal characteristics, decision environment, and institutional factors all play a role in enhancing the impact of the internet. Continued education and institutional innovations are necessary to encourage citizen–expert collaboration and reduce resource difference between the citizens and policy experts. Also, more clearly defined and systematic theoretical and empirical studies are needed to help facilitate our understanding of efficient citizen–expert interactions in public policy making by way of the internet technology. ¹     

The usefulness of algorithmic models in policy making

Governments increasingly use algorithmic models to inform their policy making process. Many suggest that employing such quantifications will lead to more efficient, more effective or otherwise better quality policy making. Yet, it remains unclear to what extent these benefits materialize and if so, how they are brought about. This paper draws on the sociology and policy science literature to study how algorithmic models, a particular type of quantification, are used in policy analysis. It presents the outcomes of 38 unstructured interviews with data scientists, policy analysts, and policy makers that work with algorithmic models in government. Based on an in-depth analysis of these interviews, I conclude that the usefulness of algorithmic models in policy analysis is best understood in terms of the commensurability of these quantifications. However, these broad communicative and organizational benefits can only be brought about if algorithmic models are handled with care. Otherwise, they may propagate bias, exclude particular social groups, and will entrench existing worldviews.     

Recipients' criteria for evaluating the skillfulness of comforting communication and the outcomes of comforting interactions

This paper reports on a two-part investigation of people's criteria for evaluating (a) how skillful comforting behavior is, and (b) the outcomes of comforting interactions for distressed persons. In Study 1, individuals were interviewed regarding their experiences in comforting interactions. These interviews, along with previous comforting message research, were used to generate items representing "skillful" comforting behavior and possible outcomes from comforting interactions. These items comprised the questionnaire used in the second study. In Study 2, participants reported on an interaction in which they had been comforted by a friend. Participants rated the comforting behaviors of their friends and the outcomes they experienced following the interaction. In terms of skillfulness of the comfort providers' behavior, five factors emerged: Other Orientation, Problem Solving, Relating, Refraining from General Negativity, and Different Perspective. Three distinct criteria emerged in evaluations of the outcomes of comforting interactions: the recipients' Positive Mood following the comforting, the Empowerment they experienced, and the degree to which they had Stopped Rumination about their problem. Multiple regression analyses revealed the utility of the skillfulness criteria in predicting the outcomes experienced by distressed persons. The results are discussed in terms of theories and research on coping, social support, and comforting messages.     

Domineeringness and dominance: Replication and expansion

This paper continues the effort to define a dyadic system's relational structure on the basis of communicative behaviors. Domineeringness, an individual measure based on one‐up messages, and dominance, a joint measure based on the dyad's transactional patterns, are the central variables of concern. The findings offer additional support for the conceptual distinction between domineeringness and dominance. Further, these major variables are associated with differential levels of dyadic satisfaction, degree of interspousal understanding, and interaction styles.     

Pathways for Communicating about Objects on Guided Tours

Abstract Guided tours offer special opportunities for lively and varied presentations that match the methods of interpretation to the characteristics of the participating visitors. Most tour guides rely on rather limited, unidirectional (guide‐to‐visitor) communication. Instead, this paper outlines six different pathways of communication that are possible among guide, visitors, and object. Each pathway offers several specific types of communicative acts. In addition, 35 guided tours in several different kinds of venue were examined to identify the pathways and types of acts that were used. The professional literature describes other types of acts, and more have been developed at the writer's home museum. All in all, the 58 different types of communicative acts described here present a wide range of opportunities for guides to communicate with visitors.     

Crisis negotiations: A Preliminary investigation of facework in naturalistic conflict discourse

This article views crisis negotiations from an interaction goal perspective, with facework constituting a significant and heretofore unexplored dimension of interaction. We present a three‐dimensional model of facework used in coding perpetrator and negotiator discourse for face behaviors within three authentic negotiation interactions. Results indicate that Restore Other's Face and Restore Self's Face were the two predominant facework behaviors. While negotiators were the primary users of Restore Other's Face acts, perpetrators used mostly Restore Self's Face behaviors. No Attack Other's Face acts were observed. However, of five Attack Self's Face behaviors enacted, four occurred in a negotiation which ended in the suicide of the perpetrator. Lag sequential analysis revealed a general cycle of perpetrator use of Restore Self's Face and negotiator use of Restore Other's Face. Implications of these findings for future research and for training crisis negotiators are discussed.