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The paper presents an overview of the National Library of Medicine's 1988 field test and evaluation project, including the participation of 21 user sites, on the use of MEDLINE products on CD‐ROM, and reports on the subsequent evaluation forum held at the NLM on 23 September 1988.

Word truncation is a familiar technique employed by online searchers in order to increase recall in free text retrieval. The use of truncation, however, can be a mixed blessing since many words starting with the same root are not semantically or logically related. Consequently, online searchers often select words to be OR‐ed together from an alphabetic display of neighbouring terms in the inverted file in order to assure precision in the search. Automatic stemming algorithms typically function in a manner analogous to word truncation, with the added risk of the word roots being incorrectly identified by the algorithm. This paper describes a two‐phase stemming algorithm that consists of the identification of the word root and the automatic selection of ‘well‐formed’ morphological word variants from the actual inverted file entries that start with the same word root. The algorithm has been successfully used in an end‐user interface to NLM's Catline book catalog file.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detail review of the social selling literature and to offer future research needs. Social selling has gained the attention of sales researchers. Rather than merely a new tool, social selling redefines the traditional sales process. However, the literature is spread across topics of social media and sales, social customer relationship management, salesforce automation and social selling, and does not provide an agreed-upon definition or tested construct for implementation.

The paper presents a comprehensive literature review of social selling and all related terminology.

The authors propose a social selling framework that includes personal branding, information exchange, networking and social listening to define and outline the construct while suggesting the antecedents and outcomes to guide future research. Findings from a literature review include outlining key theories used in social selling research.

This review offers a conceptual framework of social selling, including both antecedents and outcomes, to inform future research and guide academics and practitioners.

The issues raised by bioethics have been discussed broadly within medical sociology. Scholars such as Bosk (2002), Rothman (1986), DeVries (2004), DeVries and Subedi (1998), and others have discussed the social origins, organization, and consequences of various aspects of bioethics, while many authors have discussed the ways in which bioethics may be blind to social context. Fox and DeVries note that all contributors to the DeVries and Subedi (1998) text fault bioethicists for their failure to recognize the multiple social, cultural, and historical influences on their ethical thinking and the failure to recognize the broader implications of their work for society. The collection of essays in DeVries and Subedi is an exceptionally rich source of sociological reflection about bioethics, its origin, social organization, and implications. This text stands in contrast to previous work by sociologists who served within bioethics as consultants or advisors to bioethics committees. Since its publication, relatively fewer works have sought to understand the world of bioethics through a sociological lens, although the number of books and journals on bioethics has proliferated.

A problem in many public schools is the implementation of improper inclusion. This creates an environment where the number of students with different abilities is almost equal to the number of general education students. As an aspiring school leader learning about social justice issues in public schools, I wanted to create an art piece that stood for an area of inequality that I often see in schools. Inclusion is a controversial issue because there is research to show that both inclusion and pull out models for students on an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) can be effective. I took the issue of inclusion in the classroom as my social justice issue for an artmaking project I was completing for a social justice course. We were encouraged to pick a social justice issue that we felt strongly about and incorporate it into our artmaking project. My artist mentor and I decided weaving would be a great way to show the issues of inclusion in schools.

LibraryThing is a Web 2.0 tool allowing users to catalogue books using data drawn from sources such as Amazon and the Library of Congress and has facilities such as tagging and interest groups. This study seeks to evaluate whether LibraryThing is a valuable tool for libraries to use for promotional and user engagement purposes.

This study used a sequential mixed methods three-phase design: the identification of LibraryThing features for user engagement or promotional purposes, exploratory semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire.

Several uses of LibraryThing for promotional and user engagement purposes were identified. The most popular reason libraries used LibraryThing was to promote the library or library stock, with most respondents using it specifically to highlight collections of books. Monitoring of patron usage was low and many respondents had not received any feedback. LibraryThing was commonly reported as being easy to use, remotely accessible, and having low cost, whilst its main drawbacks were the 200 book limit for free accounts, and it being a third-party site. The majority of respondents felt LibraryThing was a useful tool for libraries.

LibraryThing has most value as a promotional tool for libraries. Libraries should actively monitor patron usage of their LibraryThing account or request user feedback to ensure that LibraryThing provides a truly valuable service for their library.

There is little research on the value of LibraryThing for libraries, or librarians' perceptions of LibraryThing as a Web 2.0 tool.

The chapter introduces the reader to select language of human sexuality and the definitions and characteristics of some key terms related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning/queer (LGBTQ+), identifies different theoretical perspectives of human sexuality and sexual orientation, and discusses select LGBTQ+ theories and concepts in a historical context that library and information science (LIS) professionals should consider while performing their roles related to information creation–organization–management–dissemination–research processes. It helps better understand the scope of what is LGBTQ+ information and traces its interdisciplinary connections to reflect on its place within the LIS professions. The chapter discusses these implications with the expectation of the LIS professional to take concrete actions in changing the conditions that lack fairness, equality/equity, justice, and/or human rights for LGBTQ+ people via the use of information. Important considerations in this regard include the need for an integrative interdisciplinary LGBTQ+ information model, growth of a diversified LGBTQ+ knowledge base and experiences, holistic LGBTQ+ information representations, LGBTQ+ activism, and participatory engagement and inclusion of LGBTQ+ users.

As environmental health scientists increasingly take up genetic/genomic modes of knowledge production and translate their work for applications in biomedicine, risk assessment, and regulation, they “bring the human in” to environmental health issues in novel ways. This paper describes the efforts of environmental health scientists to use molecular technologies to focus their research inside the human body, ascertain human genetic variations in susceptibility to adverse outcomes following environmental exposures, and identify individuals who have sustained DNA damage as a consequence of exposure to chemicals in the environment. In addition to transforming laboratory research, they see in these such practices the opportunity to advance public health, through innovations in biomedical practice and refinement of environmental health risk assessment and regulation. As environmental health scientists produce and translate these new forms of knowledge, they simultaneously assume and instantiate specific notions of the human subject and its agency, possibilities, and responsibilities vis-à-vis health and illness. Because dimensions of human subjectivity remain under-theorized in bioethics, sociological approaches to understanding and situating the human subject offer an important means of elucidating the consequences of genetics/genomics in the environmental health sciences and highlighting the social structures and processes through which they are produced.We are responsible for the world in which we live not because it is an arbitrary construction of our choosing, but because it is sedimented out of particular practices that we have a role in shaping. –Barad, 1998

This study aims to examine in which circumstances consumer’s self-congruity moderates the indirect influence of consumer-based brand equity (mediating role) in the relationship between firm-created and user-generated social media content and intention to purchase fashion products.

In this study, the authors carried out an online survey with social media users of fashion brands and collected data from 622 participants across two samples to investigate whether consumers’ perceptions of equity of fashion brands mediate the relationship between social media brand-related communication created by both firms and users and the intention to buy the fashion brands. The indirect relationship is further moderated by self-congruity.

The results indicate that brand equity mediates the relationship between social media communication and purchase intentions of fashion products, and self-congruity moderates the relationship between social media communication types and purchase intentions, such that higher/lower levels of self-congruity strengthen/weaken the impact of social media communication on purchase intentions.

This study contributes to the business and marketing literature by exploring how social media communication, branding and fashion align with the individual’s self-concept and buying behaviour.