Historical Inquiry in an Informal Fan Community: Online Source Usage and the TV Show The Tudors

This article examines an informal online community dedicated to The Tudors, a historical television show, and the ways in which its members engaged with a variety of sources in their discussions of the drama’s real-life past. Data were collected over a 5-month period. The analysis included the types of sources used in conversation; members’ purpose for invoking and reaction to sources; as well as topic, participation, and response patterns in the discussion forum. The community is a space in which popular culture and the discipline of history meet. Members come together because of a fictional depiction of the past, yet a desire to corroborate, clarify, contextualize, or uncover what really happened leads users to participate in detective-like inquiry work and the learning of new topics they had not previously considered. Members also challenge and critique one another’s positions and the sources other members invoke in multiple ways, including by using more formal disciplinary heuristics in this informal setting. Key differences emerge in members’ purpose for invoking sources, with popular media used more frequently for illustrating a point or asking a question and nonfiction works most invoked to support and argue historical claims.     

A collaborative network for first responders: Lessons from the CapWIN case

It is increasingly important for government agencies to collaborate across jurisdictional and functional boundaries. Interorganizational systems supporting interagency collaboration must accommodate a wide range of factors from the external environment and participating organizations as part of their design and operation. This paper presents the findings from a case study of CapWIN, a collaborative network created to enable first responders to share information across jurisdictional and functional boundaries as they work together during emergencies and other critical events. The study examines how aspects of the external environment and the agency context impeded or facilitated the CapWIN collaborative network and the interorganizational system (IOS) that supports it. We identify factors affecting information sharing and collaborative processes, and describe how these factors interact to enable and constrain an IOS. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research on the interplay of environmental, organizational, and technical aspects of interagency collaboration networks as they evolve over time.     

Book Reviews

Serial Publications: Guidelines for Good Practice in Publishing Printed and Electronic Journals, 2nd edition, by Diane Brown, Elaine Stott and Anthony Watkinson Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers 2003, £27 (members), £30 (non‐members), 108 pp., paperback. ISBN 0‐907341‐22‐5. Available from http://www.alpsp.org/pub3.htm The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper prepared by Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Washington DC. Release 1.0, 2002. Available at: www.arl.org/sparc The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper prepared by Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Washington, DC. Release 1.0, 2002. Available at: www.arl.org/sparc Internet Law: Text and Materials by Chris Reed Butterworths Tolley, 2000, £24.95, paperback. ISBN 0406981418 Intellectual Property Law by Lionel Bently and Brad Sherman Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, £32.99 (paperback), 1136 pp. ISBN 0‐19‐876343‐3 Clearing the Way: Copyright Clearance in UK Libraries by Elizabeth Gadd LISU Occasional Paper no. 31, Library & Information Statistics Unit (LISU), Department of Information Science, Loughborough University. ISBN 1 901786 51 X Electronic Journals and User Behaviour: Learning for the Future from the SuperJournal Project by David Pullinger and Christine Baldwin Deedot Press, 2002, £14.95. ISBN 0‐954‐2924‐0‐5 Electronic Ecology: A Case Study of Electronic Journals in Context by Karla L. Hahn Association of Research Libraries, 79 pp., 2001, $45. ISBN 0‐918006‐46‐1 The Transition from Paper: Where Are We Going and How Will We Get There edited by R. Stephen Berry and Anne Simon Moffat American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published online (2001): www.amacad.org/publications/trans.htm The Transition from Paper: Where Are We Going and How Will We Get There edited by R. Stephen Berry and Anne Simon Moffat American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published online (2001): www.amacad.org/publications/trans.htm E‐Serials, Publishers, Libraries, Users and Standards, 2nd edn, edited by Wayne Jones The Haworth Press Inc., 2003, 294 pp. paperback ISBN 0789012294     

Who determines teacher work: The teacher,the organization,or both?

This paper examines how teachers responded when some organizational constraints on their work were loosened and why they responded as they did. It first reviews the sociological literature on teacher work to identify the main determinants studied. It then presents results of an ethnographic study of teachers in an urban school. The literature tends to portray teacher work as overly determined and may remove more responsibility from teachers for determining their own work than is warranted.     

RESOLV: Development of a telephone-based program designed to increase socialization in older veterans

We describe the development of a telephone-based program, Recreation, Education, and Socialization for Older Learning Veterans (RESOLV) that aims to connect Veterans with one another by phone and thereby reduce loneliness. The program was developed through a collaboration between VA and a community-based organization, Episcopal Senior Communities Senior Center Without Walls (SCWW). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 rural and non-rural dwelling older Veterans to identify leisure interests and potential barriers to participating in leisure activities. Program feasibility was examined with questions about telephone use and interest in and perceived benefits of a telephone community. We conducted content analysis to quantify Veterans’ leisure interests and thematic analysis to characterize barriers to participation. Veterans expressed interest most frequently in groups focused on conversation, support, gratitude, and technology. Rural and non-rural participants did not differ significantly in interests. Barriers to current activity participation included limited access to activities, limitations due to physical conditions, and transportation difficulties, which were consistent themes for both rural and non-rural participants. Themes related to perceived benefits of socialization that emerged include connectedness, learning from others, being active despite limitations, and distraction from limitations. Our findings demonstrate how a telephone-based socialization program could be developed and tailored for older Veterans. It seems that such a program is feasible and may be of benefit for older Veterans in rural and non-rural areas. Further evaluation is needed to ascertain the direct benefit of such a program to older Veterans.     

The value of innovation: The interaction of competition, R&D and IP

This paper analyses market valuations of UK companies using a new data set of their R&D and IP activities (1989-2002). In contrast to previous studies, the analysis is conducted at the sectoral-level, where the sectors are based on the technological classification originating from Pavitt [Pavitt, K., 1984. Sectoral patterns of technical change. Research Policy 13, 343-373]. The first main result is that the valuation of R&D varies substantially across these sectors. Another important result is that, on average, firms that receive only UK patents tend to have no significant market premium. In direct contrast, patenting through the European Patent Office does raise market value, as does the registration of trade marks in the UK for most sectors. To explore these variations the paper links competitive conditions with the market valuation of innovation. Using profit persistence as a measure of competitive pressure, we find that the sectors that are the most competitive have the lowest market valuation of R&D. Furthermore, within the most competitive sector (‘science based’ manufacturing), firms with larger market shares (an inverse indicator of competitive pressure) also have higher R&D valuations, as well as some positive return to UK patents. We conclude that this evidence supports Schumpeter by finding higher returns to innovation in less than fully competitive markets and contradicts Arrow [Arrow, K., 1962. Economic welfare and the allocation of resources for invention. In: Nelson, R. (Ed.), The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity. Princeton University Press, Princeton], who argued that, with the existence of IP rights, competitive market structure provides higher incentives to innovate.