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This paper focuses on image-to-text manuscript processing through Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), a Machine Learning (ML) approach enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). With HTR now achieving high levels of accuracy, we consider its potential impact on our near-future information environment and knowledge of the past.

In undertaking a more constructivist analysis, we identified gaps in the current literature through a Grounded Theory Method (GTM). This guided an iterative process of concept mapping through writing sprints in workshop settings. We identified, explored and confirmed themes through group discussion and a further interrogation of relevant literature, until reaching saturation.

Catalogued as part of our GTM, 120 published texts underpin this paper. We found that HTR facilitates accurate transcription and dataset cleaning, while facilitating access to a variety of historical material. HTR contributes to a virtuous cycle of dataset production and can inform the development of online cataloguing. However, current limitations include dependency on digitisation pipelines, potential archival history omission and entrenchment of bias. We also cite near-future HTR considerations. These include encouraging open access, integrating advanced AI processes and metadata extraction; legal and moral issues surrounding copyright and data ethics; crediting individuals’ transcription contributions and HTR’s environmental costs.

Our research produces a set of best practice recommendations for researchers, data providers and memory institutions, surrounding HTR use. This forms an initial, though not comprehensive, blueprint for directing future HTR research. In pursuing this, the narrative that HTR’s speed and efficiency will simply transform scholarship in archives is deconstructed.

The purpose of this study was to examine how two socio-historical contexts within the United States, the Movement for Black Lives and the COVID-19 pandemic, informed approaches to improving racial climate in science, technology, mathematics and engineering (STEM) graduate education.

The authors used a general qualitative inquiry research study design to conduct focus groups (n = 121) with graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty members from across STEM disciplines as well as administrators whose work involves STEM graduate students. Participants were from two US institutions involved in a National Science Foundation networked improvement community seeking to create inclusive environments for STEM graduate students.

This study demonstrates how these socio-historical contexts illuminated and amplified on-going efforts to address racial climate for graduate students in US-based graduate education. In response to these events, STEM faculty devoted time that otherwise might have gone to purely technical or scientific endeavors to addressing racial climate. However, some faculty members remain hesitant to address racial climate and efforts appear to have further waned over time. While diversity, inclusion and equity efforts came to the forefront of the collective consciousness during this time, participants worry that these efforts are not sustainable, particularly without support from faculty and administrators.

The findings from this study will inform efforts to improve racial climate in STEM graduate programs.

This study fills an identified need to capture how socio-historical contexts, like the US Movement for Black Lives and the COVID-19 pandemic, have influenced approaches to improving racial climate in STEM graduate programs.

Research shows that there are mechanisms of information simplification that lead to the danger that first, laypeople rely on their own epistemological skills when assessing scientific claims. Second, laypeople underestimate their dependence on experts when they receive simplified information. This underestimation can be problematic because scientific knowledge, due to its complexity, usually cannot be fully understood without further advice from experts. Compared to laypersons, adult education practitioners can be expected to have a higher level of scientific literacy in relation to knowledge in their professional field because they are familiar with the structure of knowledge through their formal education. The present study examines whether the “easiness effect” also occurs in adult education practitioners when they read simplified and highly simplified texts about research findings.

The sample consisted of 1.267 continuing education institutions. For the survey experiment, particioants were randomly assigned to tree text types at the end of the survey: easy, less scientific and scientific text. We used the difference-in-difference method to analyze the data.

The study examined whether easily presented research findings influenced self-assessment and reliance on experts. The results of our study support the hypothesis that the easiness effect is also present among professional practitioners.

The use of clear and nontechnical language is essential for ensuring that scientific knowledge is accessible and utilizable outside of academic circles. This aspect gains particular significance in educational research, as it enables professional practitioners to comprehend and ideally implement, research findings in their daily routines to address and resolve real-world challenges in their educational environments. Previous studies have demonstrated that the way text is presented influences laypeople's perceived reliance on experts. Building upon the conceptual framework of the easiness effect, this survey experiment took an additional step by focusing specifically on a targeted audience: professional practitioners in adult education.

Women involved in the carceral system (CS) experience several conditions that increase their risk for HIV (e.g. high rates of substance use, psychiatric disorders, histories of victimization). The purpose of this study is to explore perspectives on potential strategies to connect women in the CS to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) services.

This study conducted in-depth interviews with 27 women involved in the CS eligible for PrEP. Using vignettes, interviews explored attitudes, barriers and facilitators toward PrEP screening, referral and linkage facilitated via a CS stakeholder, an mHealth application or providing PrEP service referrals during detention via a navigator.

Most women were, on average, 41.3 years, from racial and ethnic minority groups (56% black/African American; 19% Latinx). Inductive thematic analysis revealed CS involved women expressed mostly positive attitudes toward CS-based PrEP implementation. Younger women were more accepting of and interested in mHealth interventions. Implementation facilitators included leveraging relationships with trusted allies (e.g. “peers”) and existing systems collaborations. Recommended implementation strategies included providing HIV and PrEP-specific education and training for system stakeholders and addressing issues related to privacy, system mistrust and stigma.

Results provide a critical foundation for the implementation of interventions to improve PrEP access for women involved in the CS and have important implications for implementation strategies for all adults involved in the CS. Improving access to PrEP among this population may also support progress toward addressing national disparities in PrEP uptake, where women, black and Latinx populations have substantial unmet need.

This study aims to describe the current conceptualisation of self-management of dementia by family carers in the literature and from the views of dementia professionals and family carers, and to establish a more comprehensive concept of self-management of dementia by family carers.

A hybrid concept analysis included three phases: the theoretical phase reviewed the literature on self-management of dementia by family carers; the fieldwork phase interviewed professionals and family carers; and the analytical phase synthesised and discussed the findings from the previous two phases.

The findings revealed that self-management of dementia by family carers encompasses four domains: supporting care recipients, self-care, sustaining a positive relationship with care recipients, and personal characteristics and skills.

The findings highlighted the essential elements of the construct of self-management of dementia by family carers. The findings can be used as a conceptual framework of self-management and are useful in designing and evaluating self-management support interventions for family carers.

Despite a large volume of theoretical and empirical research, defining the ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ within the cultural and creative sector, a sector with high heterogeneity in organisational and other aspects across its various segments remains challenging. In this regard, there should be a wide variety of differences in the characteristics and challenges of cultural entrepreneurs across industries, countries and regions. Nonetheless, the key role of the arts and cultural sector has increasingly piqued the interest of policymakers and the private sector, and it has been recognised for its importance within the South African economic landscape; as a result, the government has prioritised arts and culture as a pillar in their development strategies. Furthermore, while there has been some consensus over the past decade on what constitutes a creative industry, many questions about defining arts and cultural entrepreneurship still need to be answered, necessitating further definitional and policy coherence. As a result, some efforts at definitions are required to advance the sector and develop useful knowledge in policy formulation.

This chapter proposes an understanding of arts and cultural entrepreneurship as an exploration of a person, a community or a network's artistic resources (arts, creative and cultural) in value creation. It utilises meta-analysis, a non-empirical method, to review and analyse the existing literature. Further research is needed to investigate and evaluate the efficacy of established arts incubators, and the extent to which perceived entrepreneurial competencies affect organisational performance. Moreover, additional research is required to examine the entrepreneurial factors inhibiting or stimulating the influence on start-up financing (capital acquisition) in the South African arts and cultural industry.

Managers must make numerous strategic decisions in order to initiate and implement a business model innovation (BMI). This paper examines how managers perceive the management team interacts when making BMI decisions. The paper also investigates how group biases and board members’ risk willingness affect this process.

Empirical data were collected through 26 in-depth interviews with German managing directors from 13 companies in four industries (mobility, manufacturing, healthcare and energy) to explore three research questions: (1) What group effects are prevalent in BMI group decision-making? (2) What are the key characteristics of BMI group decisions? And (3) what are the potential relationships between BMI group decision-making and managers' risk willingness? A thematic analysis based on Gioia's guidelines was conducted to identify themes in the comprehensive dataset.

First, the results show four typical group biases in BMI group decisions: Groupthink, social influence, hidden profile and group polarization. Findings show that the hidden profile paradigm and groupthink theory are essential in the context of BMI decisions. Second, we developed a BMI decision matrix, including the following key characteristics of BMI group decision-making managerial cohesion, conflict readiness and information- and emotion-based decision behavior. Third, in contrast to previous literature, we found that individual risk aversion can improve the quality of BMI decisions.

This paper provides managers with an opportunity to become aware of group biases that may impede their strategic BMI decisions. Specifically, it points out that managers should consider the key cognitive constraints due to their interactions when making BMI decisions. This work also highlights the importance of risk-averse decision-makers on boards.

This qualitative study contributes to the literature on decision-making by revealing key cognitive group biases in strategic decision-making. This study also enriches the behavioral science research stream of the BMI literature by attributing a critical influence on the quality of BMI decisions to managers' group interactions. In addition, this article provides new perspectives on managers' risk aversion in strategic decision-making.

This study aims to assess the extent to which Uganda university libraries have implemented digital transformation technologies and to determine the facilitators and barriers affecting the implementation of digital transformation in selected university libraries in Uganda.

This study used a convergent parallel mixed methods design. It was conducted in six selected university libraries in Uganda, which were in three private and three public universities. The study sample included 103 librarians with a minimum qualification of a bachelor’s degree and six library directors.

The findings indicated that there was an average (n = 37, 48.7%) implementation of digital transformation in the selected university libraries in Uganda. Some of the barriers hindering digital transformation included inadequate funding, lack of awareness of digital technologies, inadequate ICT skills, insufficient ICT infrastructure and limited staff among others. There is a need for library management to provide support in the form of funds, policies and human resources to implement such digital transformation.

The criteria for choosing universities were those that have been around for at least 10 years. The reason for this was that it was assumed that these universities would have well-established staff development programmes and procedures as well as be likely to have incorporated technology into their services, including libraries. This study’s limitations stem from the fact that this criterion for selection might not apply to all Ugandan university libraries, particularly those that are less than 10 years old and may not have been well represented in this study.

The magnitude of the problem of digital transformation in university libraries in Uganda is unclear because of the limited research available in the Uganda library and information science field. This study presents the status of digital transformation in Uganda university libraries.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderation effects of religiosity in the relationship between service quality (SQ), customer satisfaction (CS), relationship quality (RQ) and Islamic banking (IB) loyalty in a non-Islamic country.

This study used a quantitative approach and a cross-sectional research design. The data was collected by a closed-ended questionnaire from a systematic sample of 267 customers of full-fledged Islamic banks in Tanzania. Structural equation modeling and regression analysis techniques were used to analyze the data.

Results indicate that religiosity is a significant (p < 0.05) moderator of the relationship between SQ and loyalty (β = 0.176), and between CS and loyalty (β = 0.263). However, religiosity sharpens the impact of CS on loyalty (β increases from 0.170 to 0.263, p < 0.05) and does not sharpen the impact of SQ on loyalty (β decreases from 0.338 to 0.176, p < 0.05). The results further indicate that religiosity is not a significant moderator (p > 0.05) in the link between RQ and loyalty (β = −0.112).

This study used only full-fledged Islamic banks in Tanzania. Therefore, future research could be undertaken by including conventional banks that have introduced an IB window.

To build and maintain a loyal customer base, Islamic banks should take advantage of religiosity by providing a wide range of Sharia-based products and services that truly distinguish them from conventional banks. Accordingly, policymakers should establish an appropriate legal framework to enable Islamic banks to leverage religiosity to sharpen the impact of CS on loyalty and hence maintain loyalty in non-Islamic countries like Tanzania.

This study proposes and validates the theoretical model of loyalty in IB by showing the role of religiosity as a moderator in a non-Islamic country. This knowledge strengthens the overall understanding of loyalty in IB. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the moderation effects of religiosity in the link between RQ and loyalty, and thus between SQ, CS, RQ and loyalty in a single study.

This paper investigates the meaning of spirituality and empowerment from the perspective of women of color (WOC) in Fortune 500 companies how it impacts their leadership.

Detailed data were collected through in depth semi-structured interviews documenting their experience as lived in the context of their daily work environments. Twelve WOC in leadership positions were interviewed, and transcripts analyzed using thematic analysis. Their narratives provide insight into the experiences of discrimination and bias and the stress and disenfranchisement that result from these experiences.

Analysis shows that for these women, spirituality was more than a philosophical orientation but comprised a core facet of their identity, empowering them to cope with adversity and uplift others through a leadership style defined by compassion, trust, strong interpersonal relationships and purpose.

Implications for creating more compassionate and inclusive environments that draw on principles of empowerment and spiritual leadership are provided.

This study contributes uniquely to the literature by exploring the perspectives of understudied women leaders who identify as African American, South-Asian and Latina on spirituality and empowerment and their impact on their leadership.