Perceived outcomes of public libraries

The outcomes of public libraries as perceived by individuals in the major areas of their lives are analyzed and the benefits as outcome types are systematized. The data are based on a representative sample of 1000 Finnish adults, ranging in age from 15 to 79. The results give a systematic account of the benefits in 22 areas of life that adults derive from using public libraries. These 22 benefits were reduced by factor analysis into three major outcome types: benefits in everyday activities, cultural interests, and career. The association of these outcome types with gender, educational levels, and age is also explored.     

Social media monitoring: Responsive governance in the shadow of surveillance?

Social media monitoring is gradually becoming a common practice in public organizations in the Netherlands. The main purposes of social media monitoring are strategic control and responsiveness. Social media monitoring poses normative questions in terms of transparency, accountability and privacy. We investigate practices of social media monitoring in four Dutch public organizations. Policy departments seem to be more strongly orientated towards monitoring, whereas organizations involved in policy implementation seem to be more inclined to progress to webcare. The paper argues for more transparency on social media monitoring.     

Reconstructed visions: The philosophies that shaped part of the Scottish national collections

The shifting location of one institution within a knowledge-space that is itself dynamic is examined through a brief case-study of one of the constituent museums which, in 1985, became a part of the then newly established National Museums of Scotland. Through examination of the declared intentions of successive directors over the 151 year history of the institution successively known as the Industrial Museum of Scotland, the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, the Royal Scottish Museum, and the Royal Museum of Scotland, it attempts to reveal changes in that institution's perception of its own role, its corporate vision, and its sense of place within the social, intellectual and political landscape.     

Fusing research into practice: The role of research methods education

A survey was conducted among library and information science (LIS) practitioners to examine the effect of the research methods course on LIS practitioners' work. Findings suggest the research methods course is a valuable component of the master's in library and information science (MLIS) program. Taking the research methods course increases LIS practitioners' research interest and assists them by helping them critically evaluate published literature and apply it at work, provide better assistance to library patrons, produce valid and reliable data to facilitate decision making, identify problems at work and design and implement studies to solve them, and write grants and for publication. Suggestions are made to improve the research methods curriculum and enhance the educational experience for LIS practitioners.     

“If it is too inconvenient I'm not going after it:” Convenience as a critical factor in information-seeking behaviors

In today's fast-paced world, anecdotal evidence suggests that information tends to inundate people, and users of information systems want to find information quickly and conveniently. Empirical evidence for convenience as a critical factor is explored in the data from two multi-year, user study projects funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The theoretical framework for this understanding is founded in the concepts of bounded rationality and rational choice theory, with Savolainen's (2006) concept of time as a context in information seeking, as well as gratification theory, informing the emphasis on the seekers' time horizons. Convenience is a situational criterion in peoples' choices and actions during all stages of the information-seeking process. The concept of convenience can include their choice of an information source, their satisfaction with the source and its ease of use, and their time horizon in information seeking. The centrality of convenience is especially prevalent among the younger subjects (“millennials”) in both studies, but also holds across all demographic categories—age, gender, academic role, or user or non-user of virtual reference services. These two studies further indicate that convenience is a factor for making choices in a variety of situations, including both academic information seeking and everyday-life information seeking, although it plays different roles in different situations.     

Collaborative knowledge construction in digital environments: Politics, policy, and communities

How individuals share information with respect to politics and policy in networked research environments is an area ripe for interdisciplinary study. In this analysis, I explore some of the more current and salient research findings from several disciplinary literatures (communications, computer science, organizational behavior, information science, and public policy) to examine how current research perceives the influence of technology-aided communications on policy-making conversations. I suggest that a community-centric view, which takes into account online and offline group affiliations and their related power dynamics, is just as important as an individual-based unit of analysis. This understanding points to directions for the thoughtful creation of digital resources that appropriately reflect and support inter- and intra-group knowledge-sharing behavior.     

Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS): A solution to support compliance of Multilateral Environmental Agreements

Given the rising number of international environmental agreements, it is increasingly difficult for many developing countries to meet the basic commitments of compliance to Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs). One major reason for non-compliance is an unforced restriction on enforcement information flow to the national environmental governance repository either due to policy regulations or, technological hindrance. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of a global information technology framework for MEAs that will help in enhancing the flow of information from a grassroot level to a national repository and then serving to various international agencies involved in monitoring of enforcement and compliance to MEAs. The paper defines the current challenges in global and national-level environmental information gathering and analysis and then, explains the technological and policy framework model adopted in the Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS). The paper then argues that the WEMS model will be able to overcome the existing challenges hindering the information flow in a government framework.     

Gracious space: Library programming strategies towards immigrants as tools in the creation of social capital

Recent research on the generation of social trust and social capital gives public institutions prominent roles as instruments for creating social capital, the trust and connections between community members that yield collective action. Less is known about specific institutions and the mechanisms involved in creating social capital. In this paper, public library programs directed towards immigrants are explored as one possible mechanism for generating social capital. The data are unstructured interviews with U.S. library directors on strategies for immigrant programs and the creation of social trust. The interviews are analyzed and discussed, and they contribute to research on social capital formation. The programming activities in the libraries studied, which included classes in English as a second language (ESL), computers, and civics, attracted target immigrant populations. According to the library directors interviewed, these classes, which were carefully designed for these populations, were successful in generating trust and social capital: People “come back” to the library. Public libraries are promising arenas for generating social trust, and follow-up studies looking at the attitudes of immigrants who participate in these programs are important for increasing our knowledge on the mechanisms creating trust and social capital—that is, for theory development and for library practice.     

The value of therapeutic reading groups organized by public libraries

This research examines the benefits of therapeutic reading groups that are run by public libraries, and explores their value from the perspective of the participants. Narrative interviews were conducted with 14 members of one of three therapeutic reading groups in order to gather empirical evidence on their experiences in the groups and to develop an understanding of their perceptions of its benefits. Participants were very positive about the value of the groups and the way that they were facilitated. The 11 benefits they discussed were clustered into two groups associated with reading and access to books, and group interaction. Many of these benefits had a positive impact on participants’ individual assurance and self-esteem; the groups also had positive consequences for social inclusion and involvement in the local community and economic activity. Benefits were shown to stem from the social nature of the groups, the texts read, and from the unique experience of shared reading as a creative, collaborative, and interpretive act. This is the first study to gather evidence from the participants of therapeutic reading groups on their perceptions of benefits. The findings support the value of therapeutic reading groups, and support the case for the further development of these groups, and further studies into their benefits.