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The purpose of this paper is to report on the development of a flexible and robust academic library structure that meets the demands of an ever changing user community and remains relevant and fit for purpose in a technology-driven age. The new structure makes provision for the delivery of new and innovative services responding to the need for a paradigm shift in twenty-first century academic librarianship. The move away from subject librarianship, which has been the bastion of South African academic librarianship, is significant.

This paper used the exploratory method to gain new insights into library structures that have restructured for the twenty-first century. The exploratory study was used to gain new insights into functional librarianship. Despite the short comings of the exploratory method, the method was deemed most appropriate as UCT Libraries was not seeking definitive answers but a process that would provide opportunities to explore possibilities for subsequent processes.

The move from subject librarianship to functional librarianship has given the library the opportunity to restructure. The restructured library can now offer new and/or radically expanded services to meet the demands of a twenty-first century academic library.

The development of new and future roles and responsibilities commensurate with a robust and “future-driven” structure will consolidate the library’s role as a collaborator in the teaching and learning, and research agendas of a higher education institution.

This paper will be of interest and value to library managers and staff wanting to develop a library structure that responds positively to the redefinition of the professional roles and functions of the library and to strategically position the academic library for the future. It will also be of interest to library and information science academics who may want to re-examine their curricula for the incorporation of new trends.

Digitalisation has become closely related to various economic sectors in terms of economic impact and discovery of new technologies. In this regard, this study aims to examine the relationship between the digital economy, as measured by four proxies (infrastructure, empowerment of society, technological economic growth and digitalisation development), and the productivity and monetary system of Oman from 1985 to 2019.

The autoregressive distributed lag methodology and diagnostic tests were used to increase the robustness of findings.

The analysis showed significant positive long-run relationships between infrastructure (measured as the number of fixed telephone subscriptions), technological economic growth (measured as medium- and high-tech exports as a percentage of manufactured exports) and the monetary system. There was also a significant negative short-run relationship between digitalisation development, measured as the number of individuals (percentage of the population) using the internet, and the monetary system. Furthermore, there were significant positive short- and long-run relationships between digitalisation development and productivity. Only short-run relationships were identified between empowerment of society, measured as the number of mobile cellular subscriptions, and productivity.

The conclusions support the paradigm of diffusion of innovation theory, which aims to understand the use of modern technologies to obtain the maximum economic benefit, and show both the dark and bright sides of technology. Furthermore, the effect of the digitalisation economy paradigm on productivity should be determined by increasing logistical services. This will support the growth of foreign and domestic investments and promote cooperation between the public and private sectors, thereby achieving digitalisation in Oman and enabling reflection on the country’s monetary policy development and economic growth.

This chapter reviews different definitions of firm's sustainability then clarifies own definition. The definition consists of three dimensions of firm sustainability other than the economic – namely, environmental, social and governance which have been discussed and analysed separately in this chapter. In the last section of this chapter, the combination of the three dimensions of firm sustainability (environmental, social and governance) are jointly considered and analysed.

This conceptual paper aims to explore the possibility of human beings reaching a virtual form of immortality.

The paper is an investigation of the path from an early example of human knowledge to the birth of artificial intelligence (AI) and robots. A critical analysis of different point of views, from philosophers to scientists, is presented.

From ancient rock art paintings to the moon landing, human knowledge has made a huge progress to the point of creating robots resembling human features. While these humanoid robots can successfully undertake risky tasks, they also generate ethical issues for the society they interact with.

The paper is conceptual, and it does attempt to provide one theory by which human beings can achieve the dream of immortality. It is part of a work in progress on the use of AI and the issues related to the creation/use of humanoid robots in society.

This paper provides an overview of some of the key issues and themes impacting our modern society. Its originality resides in the linking of human knowledge to collective knowledge and then of collective mind to the hyper-collective mind. The idea of humans reaching immortality is burdened by the imperative need to define ethical guidelines for the field of AI and its uses.

Ensemble methods have been widely used in the field of pattern recognition due to the difficulty of finding a single classifier that performs well on a wide variety of problems. Despite the effectiveness of these techniques, studies have shown that ensemble methods generate a large number of hypotheses and that contain redundant classifiers in most cases. Several works proposed in the state of the art attempt to reduce all hypotheses without affecting performance.

In this work, the authors are proposing a pruning method that takes into consideration the correlation between classifiers/classes and each classifier with the rest of the set. The authors have used the random forest algorithm as trees-based ensemble classifiers and the pruning was made by a technique inspired by the CFS (correlation feature selection) algorithm.

The proposed method CES (correlation-based Ensemble Selection) was evaluated on ten datasets from the UCI machine learning repository, and the performances were compared to six ensemble pruning techniques. The results showed that our proposed pruning method selects a small ensemble in a smaller amount of time while improving classification rates compared to the state-of-the-art methods.

CES is a new ordering-based method that uses the CFS algorithm. CES selects, in a short time, a small sub-ensemble that outperforms results obtained from the whole forest and the other state-of-the-art techniques used in this study.

Drawing on a qualitative study of youth microfranchising in the Tanzanian computer sales, service, and training sector, the purpose of this study is to identify the challenges and advantages of a team-based approach to owning and operating a microfranchise business in the context of a least developed country. However, disadvantaged entrepreneurs typically still lack a critical mass of specialized technical skills and general managerial skills to manage a differentiated and competitive microenterprise business. A team-based approach to microfranchising can allow for combining specialized skills among more than one business owner; however, the potential risks and opportunities of team-microfranchising have not been studied. This study makes a contribution toward filling this gap by identifying five challenges and five advantages of team microfranchising which provide guidance for future research and practice.

Qualitative data (interviews, observation and archival documents) were analyzed from an in-depth case study of youth microfranchising in the Tanzanian computer sales, service and training sector.

Results revealed that microfranchise businesses in sectors that require multiple complementary higher-level skills are suited to a team microfranchise approach. Findings suggest that the greater the limitations on franchisee skills and the more pronounced the lack of public goods and institutions, the greater the potential for team microfranchising to overcome the entrepreneurial capacity constraints and institutional voids in low-income market contexts. Further, team-based microfranchises may be able to compete more effectively in sectors where economies of scale are not a significant factor, such as service industries and small-scale niche manufacturing. Also identified are five potential challenges and five areas of opportunity for practitioners seeking to implement a team-microfranchise approach.

The current study examined microfranchising among teams of youth in the Tanzanian computer sales and service sector. Further research could examine team microfranchising among other demographic groups in different sectors and the different regulatory, institutional and cultural contexts of other regions and countries.

If developed effectively in the right contexts, the team-based approach to microfranchising can potentially double the job-creation impacts of microfranchising ventures.

This study is the first to assess the viability and boundary conditions of a team-based approach to microfranchising.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on assessing individuals’ problems in learning groups/teams and should lead to the assessment of the group/team itself as a learning entity.

In this paper, an extension of the IMS-Learning Design (IMS-LD) meta-model is proposed in order to support the assessment of collaborative activities in e-learning. Besides, the software architecture which consists of a set of components forming a web wizard to create, track and assess the collaborative assessment processes is described as to support that extension of the IMS-LD meta-model.

With the proposed solution we can: make assessment fairer using individual and collective assessment indicators to assign final scores to learners; make an assessment step by step for better individual and collective monitoring activities; and divide the assessment into lighter phases for the correctors. Consequently, the evaluator will have more detailed information about his/her students and the quality of judgment will be better. This could also be useful for the evaluator in order to plan further examinations.

Further experimentations are necessary to test the effectiveness of the proposed system in order to analyze its performances under a massive usage. In addition, the authors plan to use a survey to collect learners’ opinions to know the effectiveness of the proposal in terms of fairness in the assessment of collaborative activities in an online community.

This paper addresses important issues in the educational area, especially assessment of collaborative activities. In fact, to reduce subjectivity and increase fairness in assessing learners in collaborative work, for example, using the peer assessment, in order to try reducing subjectivity and fairly assessing learners. However, while assessing group work, the same mark is attributed for all group members and authors have concluded that it is not the right approach to make a fair and more objective assessment.

Although healthcare and healthy living are integral to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, the coronavirus epidemic has dealt a devastating blow to these efforts. As governments and policymakers were compelled to shift their focus to lockdowns, sustenance, procurement, and distribution of vaccines, the momentum for health initiatives slowed, and the already fragile health systems of emerging markets were subjected to additional shocks. However, in many underserved regions of the globe, the introduction of technology has greatly facilitated the distribution and adoption of healthcare services.

This chapter highlights mini-cases from four emerging nations: Bangladesh, Nigeria, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Although the countries are emerging, each one of them are in a distinct stage of development and face a unique set of healthcare-related challenges. The chapter showcases how four different organizations based in these countries leveraged the use of technology to take healthcare services to underserved populations. In doing so, they addressed the key challenges of imparting healthcare: geographic accessibility, availability, financial accessibility, and acceptability.

This chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of expanding healthcare industries leading to increased healthcare waste. To prevent mass population exposure to hazardous substances, the emergence of intelligent healthcare waste collection and disposal systems will be an absolute necessity. Hence, with the development of healthcare services, governments and policymakers need to mechanize smart waste management systems to safeguard humans, animals, and the environment.

Amidst the COVID-19 outbreak, service organizations rushed to deploy robots to serve people in quarantine, again igniting the ongoing dispute regarding robots in tourism. This study aims to investigate tourists’ perceptions regarding the use of robots and, more specifically, anthropomorphic robots in the tourism domain.

A qualitative inquiry was used to delve deep into the issue of tourists’ perceptions regarding the usage of anthropomorphic robots in tourism, with a total number of 78 interviews with tourists being retained in the study.

The findings reveal that tourists favor the use of anthropomorphic robots over any other type of robot. The use of anthropomorphic robots in tourism may result in an overall enhanced experiential value. Even so, informants also expressed frustration, sadness and disappointment vis-à-vis the use of robots in a human-driven industry.

A conceptual continuum of tourists’ perceptions and concerns over the use of robots is presented that can guide future studies. Tourism stakeholders may look at the possibility of incorporating carefully designed anthropomorphic robots in key service positions, but should not give the impression that robots are replacing the human face of the organization.

Tourism stakeholders may look at the possibility of incorporating carefully designed anthropomorphic robots in key service positions, but should not give the impression that robots are replacing the human face of the organization.

Tourism organizations that make use of robots run the risk of being perceived as nonanthropocentric. This leads to the conclusion that anthropomorphism could be used but should not replace the sector’s anthropocentrism. The study conveys tourists’ concerns over technological (robot) determinism.