The Information Nature of Culture

This paper explores the information nature of culture. It is represented as an extragenetic and nonorganizational information process and system. Information is regarded as a universal property of matter that is essentially associated with development processes and realizes various forms and ways of storage and circulation at various development stages of global evolution. The socio-cultural principle of exogenous accumulation, transmission, and transformation of information is analyzed in the context of the continuing growth of the information content of material systems on the superhighway of global-universal evolution. It is noted that the information concept of culture evolves into a new area of cultural studies, that is information and cultural studies, advancing our understanding of the nature of culture and cultural genesis.     

Scientometric Instruments of Research Funding

The issues related to funding of public research organizations are explored. The history of scientometric information systems is outlined. The advantages and disadvantages of a bibliometric approach to financing of research organizations are analyzed. The link between the assessment of the scientific and technological potential of an institution and the optimal allocation of funds is investigated. Recommendations on how to improve the efficiency of public resources allocated for scientific research are presented.     

Assessing information literacy instruction in interdisciplinary first year project-based courses with STEM students

Broad and discipline-specific information literacy competencies must be mastered by science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students. This study assessed changes in student perceptions of their competency in information literacy after continuous efforts in course curriculum. Data were gathered in 2015–2016 from first year interdisciplinary project-based courses with STEM students to assess changes in information literacy competencies. Analyses suggested there was a significant increase in students' perception of their familiarity with library resources, search strategies, citation use, and ability to evaluate source quality. There was no change in their perception of their ability to evaluate the variety of source and source relevance and a decrease in their perception of the ethical use of information. With faculty-librarian partnership and integrated instruction in a first year course, students showed the largest perceived increases in foundational information literacy skills but struggled with information literacy abilities. This study provides a baseline of information literacy competencies of first year students and provides recommendations for continuing education.     

Factors influencing undergraduate use of e-books: A mixed methods study

Academic libraries invest millions of dollars to make electronic resources such as e-books available to students for free. However, free access might not necessarily result in students' sustained interest in and use of e-books. This interdisciplinary, mixed methods research investigates the factors influencing the intention of 279 undergraduate students to use e-books at a land-grant university in the southern US. Structural equation modeling of the survey responses suggests that organizational environment for information technology, external locus of control, subjective norm, perceived enjoyment (i.e., joyfulness), and information technology features play a significant role in influencing the intention of students to use e-books. Based on a combination of quantitative results and qualitative findings, this study identifies eight activities that libraries need to undertake in order to increase the use of e-books by undergraduate students.     

Interdisciplinary scholarly collaboration in data-intensive,public-funded,international digital humanities project work

The information practices of collaborative interdisciplinary researchers, especially in distributed environments, remain understudied. Embracing the naturalistic paradigm, this qualitative case study relies upon semi-structured interviews, snowball sampling, and grounded analysis. Based on interviews with 53 participants from 11 Digging Into Data 3 (DID3, 2014-2016) projects, this study examines the working practices of scholars (library and information science professionals, humanists, and computer scientists) engaging in collaborative, international, data-intensive, publicly-funded interdisciplinary research. Benefits of such work include avoiding redundancy, exploding disciplinary silos, and more ambitious, larger-scale outputs. Challenges and lessons learned center on innovation, flexibility, and failure, translation, intermediaries, divisions of labor and delegation of responsibilities and tasks, conflict resolution, technology, outputs and publication, and timeframe, sustainability, and infrastructure.     

Social Comparisons and Need Fulfillment: Interpreting Video Game Enjoyment in the Context of Leaderboards

This study examines how social comparison information provided by video game leaderboards may influence players’ retrospective judgments of autonomy, competence, and relatedness need fulfillment. Participants played a video game and were randomly assigned to receive no postgame feedback or were shown a leaderboard that placed them in the top or bottom quartile of players. Results indicate downward social comparisons increase enjoyment by increasing competence and relatedness perceptions. However, upward comparisons did not have an opposite effect, nor did either type of social comparison influence players’ autonomy perceptions. Implications for applying Self-Determination Theory to video game enjoyment in the context of social comparison feedback is discussed.     

Investigating married adults’ communal coping with genetic health risk and perceived discrimination

Increased genetic testing in personalized medicine presents unique challenges for couples, including managing disease risk and potential discrimination as a couple. This study investigated couples’ conflicts and support gaps as they coped with perceived genetic discrimination. We also explored the degree to which communal coping was beneficial in reducing support gaps and ultimately stress. Dyadic analysis of married adults (N?=?266, 133 couples), in which one person had the genetic risk for serious illness, showed that perceived discrimination predicted more frequent conflicts about alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency-related treatment, privacy boundaries, and finances, which, in turn, predicted wider gaps in emotion and esteem support, and greater stress for both spouses. Communal coping predicted lower support gaps for both partners and marginally lower stress.     

Genetics Home Reference: A Review

Genetics Home Reference is a free, online resource created and maintained by the National Library of Medicine. It is designed to provide genetic information to a wide variety of audiences, particularly the general public. The site consists of original information and links to other curated resources.     

Spaces of emergent memory: Detroit’s 8 Mile wall and public memories of civil rights injustice

This article introduces emergent memory, a conceptual extension to rhetorics of public memory, to describe memory’s genesis in sites built without commemorative commitments. Examining Detroit’s “8 Mile Wall,” a site built to reinforce segregated housing, this project argues the rhetorical tenets of emergent memory present in this space. As a relic of segregated history, the wall symbolically recalls the city’s controversial past, but has recently been the subject of a local mural project to redefine the wall’s purpose. Some consider this a step toward reclamation, as it visually repositions the disturbing remnant. For others, the murals simply cannot overwrite troubling memories of the city’s discriminatory history. This essay uses emergent memory to describe how the wall’s complicated mnemonic legacy simultaneously harkens to a difficult history and how the mural additions use that same legacy to convey an optimistic future for Detroit and those marked by this urban space.