Search results

Digital collection assessment has focused mainly on evaluating systems, metadata and usability. While use evaluation is discussed in the literature, there are no standard criteria and methods for how to perform assessment on use effectively. This paper asserts that use statistics have complexities that prohibit meaningful interpretation and assessment. The authors aim to discover the problems inherent in the assessment of digital collection use statistics and propose solutions to address such issues.

This paper identifies and demonstrates five inherent problems with use statistics that need to be addressed when doing assessment for digital collections using the statistics of assessment tools on local digital repositories. The authors then propose solutions to resolve the problems that present themselves upon such analysis.

The authors identified five problems with digital collection use statistics. Problem one is the difficulty of distinguishing different kinds of internet traffic. Problem two is the lack of direct correlation of a digital item to its multiple URLs, so statistics from external web analytics tools are not ideal. Problem three is the analytics tools’ inherent bias in statistics that are counted only in the positive way. Problem four is the different interaction between digital collections with search engine indexing. Problem five is the evaluator’s bias toward simple growing statistics over time for surmising a positive use assessment. Because of these problems, statistics on digital collections do not properly measure a digital library’s value.

Findings highlight problems with current use measures and offer improvements.

This paper identifies five problems that need to be addressed before a meaningful assessment of digital collection use statistics can take place. The paper ends with a call for evaluators to try to solve or mitigate the stated problems for their digital collections in their own evaluations.

The purpose of this paper is to assist library administration in avoiding cross-functional team pitfalls.

This paper reports the results of years of cross-fucntiional teams at an academic Library. Reports results of years of cross-functional teams at an academic Library.

Through shared trial and errors, readers will be able to avoid pitfalls and formulate questions not previously considered for their pursuit of cross-functional teams.

While this is a case study, the lessons learned can be applied at any library where cross-functional teams are considered.

This study provides an account of teams at an academic library spanning a decade. Trials and tribulations are discussed.

The purpose of this conceptual chapter is to highlight the disadvantages of project management to help the reader put project management work in context.

Different project management methodologies such as waterfall project management, Agile project management, Six Sigma, and Kanban are discussed in terms of overall problems and then specific problems with each methodology. Managing multiple projects and the problems with program and portfolio management are discussed.

The findings are that most formalized project management methods are ill-suited to most library-related situations. However, some aspects of project management are well suited to any project, at any size, and those are discussed.

The value of this paper is that readers will get a strong understanding of project management methodologies in context and a clear idea of the strengths and weaknesses of each.

This chapter draws on both theoretical and empirical literature on trust and discusses the role of trust in strategic communication. It also examines the importance of trust for organizational success, the dimensions of trust and distrust and discusses quantifiable proxies to measure trust and distrust on social media. The theoretically driven dimensions of trust and distrust served as a framework to examine how Boeing and Airbus use Twitter to communicate with their stakeholders and publics. 6,926 Twitter messages were examined in the process of content analysis. The following proxies of stakeholder and publics' trust in an organization were identified for Twitter: number of followers, friends and likes; frequency of online activities; length of messages; use of hashtags, links, exclamation and questions marks; and use of specific words and phrases in messages. Two separate lists of words and phrases were created, one for proxies of trust and one for proxies of distrust. In addition, the following trust building actions that organization can engage in on Twitter were identified: listening and engaging in dialogue by following users, mentioning users in messages, replying to enquiries, providing and encouraging feedback.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

A pæan of joy and triumph which speaks for itself, and which is a very true indication of how the question of poisonous adulteration is viewed by certain sections of “the trade,” and by certain of the smaller and irresponsible trade organs, has appeared in print. It would seem that the thanks of “the trade” are due to the defendants in the case heard at the Liverpool Police Court for having obtained an official acknowledgment that the use of salicylic acid and of other preservatives, even in large amounts, in wines and suchlike articles, is not only allowable, but is really necessary for the proper keeping of the product. It must have been a charming change in the general proceedings at the Liverpool Court to listen to a “preservatives” case conducted before a magistrate who evidently realises that manufacturers, in these days, in order to make a “decent” profit, have to use the cheapest materials they can buy, and cannot afford to pick and choose; and that they have therefore “been compelled” to put preservatives into their articles so as to prevent their going bad. He was evidently not to be misled by the usual statement that such substances should not be used because they are injurious to health— as though that could be thought to have anything to do with the much more important fact that the public “really want” to have an article supplied to them which is cheap, and yet keeps well. Besides, many doctors and professors were brought forward to prove that they had never known a case of fatal poisoning due to the use of salicylic acid as a preservative. Unfortunately, it is only the big firms that can manage to bring forward such admirable and learned witnesses, and the smaller firms have to suffer persecution by faddists and others who attempt to obtain the public notice by pretending to be solicitous about the public health. Altogether the prosecution did not have a pleasant time, for the magistrate showed his appreciation of the evidence of one of the witnesses by humorously rallying him about his experiments with kittens, as though any‐one could presume to judge from experiments on brute beasts what would be the effect on human beings—the “lords of creation.” Everyone reading the evidence will be struck by the fact that the defendant stated that he had once tried to brew without preservatives, but with the only result that the entire lot “went bad.” All manufacturers of his own type will sympathise with him, since, of course, there is no practicable way of getting over this trouble except by the use of preservatives; although the above‐mentioned faddists are so unkind as to state that if everything is clean the article will keep. But this must surely be sheer theory, for it cannot be supposed that there can be any manufacturer of this class of article who would be foolish enough to think he could run his business at a profit, and yet go to all the expense of having the returned empties washed out before refilling, and of paying the heavy price asked for the best crude materials, when he has to compete with rival firms, who can use practically anything, and yet turn out an article equal in every way from a selling point of view, and one that will keep sufficiently, by the simple (and cheap) expedient of throwing theory on one side, and by pinning their faith to a preservative which has now received the approval of a magistrate. Manufacturers who use preservatives, whether they are makers of wines or are dairymen, and all similar tradesmen, should join together to protect their interests, for, as they must all admit, “the welfare of the trade” is the chief thing they have to consider, and any other interest must come second, if it is to come in at all. Now is the time for action, for the Commission appointed to inquire into the use of preservatives in foods has not yet given its decision, and there is still time for a properly‐conducted campaign, backed up by those “influential members of the trade” of whom we hear so much, and aided by such far‐reaching and brilliant magisterial decisions, to force these opinions prominently forward, in spite of the prejudice of the public; and to insure to the trades interested the unfettered use of preservatives,—which save “the trade” hundreds of thousands of pounds every year, by enabling the manufacturers to dispense with heavily‐priced apparatus, with extra workmen and with the use of expensive materials,—and which are urgently asked for by the public,—since we all prefer to have our foods drugged than to have them pure.

COVID-19’s influence on the teaching profession will be felt for many years as teachers faced experiences that they have never encountered. The pandemic forced already taxed teachers to assume additional responsibilities, many of which they were not prepared to deal with. The result was an exodus of teachers from the profession, and those who remained reported challenges that impacted their personal and professional lives. The authors describe the effects on teachers and the impact that this had on them, including reasons why many departed from teaching. In closing, the authors offer recommendations to teacher preparation programs, districts, and schools.

The emergence of consumerism has led to regulatory measures being integrated into business practices, but the influence of consumers in developing countries remains limited, resulting in businesses being less responsive. The digital retail landscape is undergoing a transformative revolution, driven by Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0 technological advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI), wearables, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and blockchain technology. This development focuses on convenience, personalisation, and emotional connections. Companies are adapting to modern consumer behaviour through various strategies, including online shopping, mobile commerce, data analytics, technology integration, user reviews, and contactless payments. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this seismic shift in the retail industry, and online retail is expected to continue to grow post-pandemic, driven by these technologies. AI enhances the customer experience, wearables provide interactive engagement, VR offers immersive shopping, AR merges online and physical shopping, and blockchain ensures secure transactions in the emerging metaverse. As retail converges with the metaverse, the potential for borderless and personalised shopping experiences is enormous. Advances in VR technology could lead to interconnected virtual spaces that seamlessly connect physical and digital retail, providing immersive and personalised shopping experiences. However, challenges such as cost, learning curves, digital security, legal ambiguity, data privacy, financial risk, and ethical considerations need to be addressed through vigilant and informed consumer engagement in this evolving digital landscape.