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1 – 10 of 73Luis Quesada Baena, Alice Binder, Ariadne Neureiter, Melanie Saumer and Jörg Matthes
Celebrities communicating about environmental sustainability on social media have the power to inspire young adults to engage in pro-environmental behavior, such as reducing their…
Abstract
Purpose
Celebrities communicating about environmental sustainability on social media have the power to inspire young adults to engage in pro-environmental behavior, such as reducing their consumption behavior or only buying local and organic food. However, at the same time, celebrities’ carbon-rich and luxurious lifestyles might generate skepticism when they preach about environmental action. Thus, this study aims to shed light on the effects of celebrity pro-environmental messages on young adults’ perceived authenticity and greenwashing and, subsequently, on young adults’ pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, this study examined the moderation effect of congruent (vs incongruent) messages in the celebrity’s social media profile depicting an environmentally friendly (vs unfriendly) lifestyle.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a 3 (celebrity pro-environmental messages: with concrete action claim vs without vs control group) x 2 (celebrity message-lifestyle congruence: congruent vs incongruent) between-subjects experimental study (N = 400) with young adults (16–26 years old).
Findings
Results showed a significant positive effect of celebrity pro-environmental messages with concrete green action claims on authenticity perceptions only when the social media profile depicted a congruent environmentally friendly lifestyle. Moreover, higher perceived authenticity of the celebrity by social media audiences led to a higher likelihood of young adults’ engagement in pro-environmental behavior.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to consider celebrity message characteristics and young adults’ perceptions of authenticity and greenwashing when investigating the effects of celebrity pro-environmental messages on young adults’ pro-environmental behavior.
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This paper seeks to position ready reference technologies as cultural artifacts that have meaning and value beyond pure functionality as a reference tool. The case study aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to position ready reference technologies as cultural artifacts that have meaning and value beyond pure functionality as a reference tool. The case study aims to assert that locally created reference tools and technologies have much to offer as artifacts that encode cultural knowledge about the community, institution and profession.
Design/methodology approach
This case study consists of semi‐structural interviews with six library reference staff members about their experiences and interpretations of a collaboratively created ready reference technology that is used in their reference practice at a public library.
Findings
The results demonstrate there is value is exploring technologies as cultural artifacts in that they reveal otherwise hidden or obscured institutional values, labor practices, tensions associated with changing times in the profession, and the community culture throughout time.
Practical implications
There is benefit in exploring locally created ready reference tools as cultural artifacts to uncover hidden cultural knowledge about institutions, communities, and professional practices.
Originality/value
While there are studies of ready reference tools, they largely focus on the transition of these materials from print‐to‐digital. There was a gap in the literature about the meaning of the ready reference tools to their librarian creators/users. This study is a contribution to ready reference literature and starts to address this gap.
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Denise Kaplan, Lare Mischo, Linda Bills, Joe Matthews, Victor Rosenberg, Barbara E. Anderson, Brian Alley and James LaRue
Good system documentation is the backbone to the success of any automated system, for only through complete and thorough documentation can the user fully understand and utilize a…
Abstract
Good system documentation is the backbone to the success of any automated system, for only through complete and thorough documentation can the user fully understand and utilize a system's capability. This symposium focuses on printed documentation and the many related applications that affect the daily lives of computer users. Printed documentation takes different forms, including user and reference manuals, tutorials, reference cards, and “cheat sheets.” The various forms are produced by both system vendors and system users, the latter frequently adapting and modifying vendor‐prepared documentation to reflect local practice and meet specialized training needs.
Alice Huguet, Caitlin C. Farrell and Julie A. Marsh
The use of data for instructional improvement is prevalent in today’s educational landscape, yet policies calling for data use may result in significant variation at the school…
Abstract
Purpose
The use of data for instructional improvement is prevalent in today’s educational landscape, yet policies calling for data use may result in significant variation at the school level. The purpose of this paper is to focus on tools and routines as mechanisms of principal influence on data-use professional learning communities (PLCs).
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected through a comparative case study of two low-income, low-performing schools in one district. The data set included interview and focus group transcripts, observation field notes and documents, and was iteratively coded.
Findings
The two principals in the study employed tools and routines differently to influence ways that teachers interacted with data in their PLCs. Teachers who were given leeway to co-construct data-use tools found them to be more beneficial to their work. Findings also suggest that teachers’ data use may benefit from more flexibility in their day-to-day PLC routines.
Research limitations/implications
Closer examination of how tools are designed and time is spent in data-use PLCs may help the authors further understand the influence of the principal’s role.
Originality/value
Previous research has demonstrated that data use can improve teacher instruction, yet the varied implementation of data-use PLCs in this district illustrates that not all students have an equal opportunity to learn from teachers who meaningfully engage with data.
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Professional careers have become more precarious in recent decades. Corporations today engage in downsizing even during profitable times, a practice that impacts workers…
Abstract
Professional careers have become more precarious in recent decades. Corporations today engage in downsizing even during profitable times, a practice that impacts workers throughout the labor force, including those with advanced degrees. Using a case study of women geoscientists in the oil and gas industry, I investigate how the increasing precariousness of professional careers reinforces gender inequality. The compressed cycle of booms and busts in the oil and gas industry permits an investigation into how women fare in precarious professional jobs. Extending gendered organization theory, I argue that three mechanisms are built into professional careers today that enhance women’s vulnerability to layoffs: teamwork, career maps, and networking. I illustrate how these mechanisms disadvantage women with in-depth portraits of three geoscientists who lost their jobs during the recent downturn in oil prices. Their personal narratives, collected over a 3-year period of boom and bust, reveal how a particular multinational corporation is structured in ways that favor the white men who dominate their industry. The rhetoric of diversity obscures the workings of gendered organizations during good times, but when times get tough, management’s decisions about whom to lay off belies the routine practices the reproduce men’s advantages within the industry.
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CATS provides most of the needed acquisitions operations for a typical library. It is easily mastered and straightforward, even for the most unsophisticated user. CATS is…
Abstract
CATS provides most of the needed acquisitions operations for a typical library. It is easily mastered and straightforward, even for the most unsophisticated user. CATS is versatile, flexible and essentially free of awkward demands and hidden traps. For those who already own the dBase III database package, on which CATS depends for its operation, the price of CATS is certainly an attractive one. Libraries needing instant acquisitions automation should give it serious consideration. CATS runs on IBM/PCs and compatible computers. It requires the use of the dBase III database package. CATS sells for $100 from David Morse or Alice Karasick, USC Norris Medical Library, 2003 Zonal Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA. (213) 224–7413.
Alice Kawakami and Pauline Swartz
This article describes the first of a series of assessments examining discrete areas of the service, needed to evaluate a digital reference program. The University of California…
Abstract
This article describes the first of a series of assessments examining discrete areas of the service, needed to evaluate a digital reference program. The University of California, Los Angeles, began the first stage of a planned comprehensive evaluation with an assessment of competencies designed to reveal gaps in training that would be the starting point for a revised training program. The objectives of the first assessment were to isolate librarian‐error from user‐error, software‐error and network‐error. This assessment is the first piece of wide‐ranging evaluation that will involve all staff in the process of crafting best practices for digital reference service.
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Amanda S. Hovious and Brian C. O'Connor
The purpose of this study was to explore the viability of transinformation analysis as a multimodal readability metric. A novel approach was called for, considering that existing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to explore the viability of transinformation analysis as a multimodal readability metric. A novel approach was called for, considering that existing and established readability metrics are strictly used to measure linguistic complexity. Yet, the corpus of multimodal literature continues to grow, along with the need to understand how non-linguistic modalities contribute to the complexity of the reading experience.
Design/methodology/approach
In this exploratory study, think aloud screen recordings of eighth-grade readers of the born-digital novel Inanimate Alice were analyzed for complexity, along with transcripts of post-oral retellings. Pixel-level entropy analysis served as both an objective measure of the document and a subjective measure of the amount of reader information attention. Post-oral retelling entropy was calculated at the unit level of the word, serving as an indication of complexity in recall.
Findings
Findings confirmed that transinformation analysis is a viable multimodal readability metric. Inanimate Alice is an objectively complex document, creating a subjectively complex reading experience for the participants. Readers largely attended to the linguistic mode of the story, effectively reducing the amount of information they processed. This was also evident in the brevity and below average complexity of their post-oral retellings, which relied on recall of the linguistic mode. There were no significant group differences among the readers.
Originality/value
This is the first study that uses entropy to analyze multimodal readability.
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Describes a research project to identify, record and analyse bookadvertisements in eighteenth‐century English provincial books. Discussesthe conduct of the research and examines…
Abstract
Describes a research project to identify, record and analyse book advertisements in eighteenth‐century English provincial books. Discusses the conduct of the research and examines examples. Describes the significance of the research for English book trade history of the period, and illustrates it with a specific example of David Senior of Sittingbourne, Kent.
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