Betsaida M. Reyes and Frances A. Devlin
The purpose of this paper is to describe the collection development practices regarding e-books among librarians who manage French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish (Romance…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the collection development practices regarding e-books among librarians who manage French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish (Romance) materials. The authors aim to describe factors that influence acquisition of e-books for Romance language collections to confirm librarians’ perception that humanities researchers prefer print and library administrators’ attitudes toward e-books.
Design/methodology/approach
This study collected data using a mixed-method approach of a survey and focus groups.
Findings
This study confirms that user preference is the primary consideration of Romance librarians in selecting e-books. Contrary to librarians’ perceptions, this study found that humanities faculty and students are not averse to using e-books for specific purposes such as searching, targeted reading and course materials. While restrictions on lending e-books are a concern, Romance librarians are focused primarily on serving the needs of their core constituencies.
Research limitations/implications
The practice of adding call numbers to individual e-books varies among institutions. Individual e-book titles in large packages do not necessarily get added to the catalog, thus making it very difficult to compare e-book collections between institutions.
Originality/value
This study endeavors to unify the anecdotal narratives and factors that influence the acquisition of e-books by Romance librarians.
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Keywords
A year ago Devlin warned that Britain could be left behind in the EEC food lobbying stakes
Betsaida M. Reyes, Jon Giullian and Frances Devlin
This paper describes the creation and work of a collaborative learning community, consisting of library staff from a variety of library departments. The purpose of this paper is…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper describes the creation and work of a collaborative learning community, consisting of library staff from a variety of library departments. The purpose of this paper is to build proficiency in using tablet devices and to explore the potential application of tablets to various types of library work.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from discussion sessions, journals, and a survey, which documented participants’ experiences in learning how to use tablets and how they applied them to work-related tasks.
Findings
The project helped increase participants’ awareness of different types of work across the library, encouraged inter-departmental communication, and provided an open environment for asking questions, trouble-shooting, and sharing tips about using tablets. Participants mastered basic functions and navigation and explored ways to use tablets in their work. Portability was the top advantage of the tablet.
Originality/value
Although participants found tablets to be convenient and portable for some tasks, they are not ready to entirely replace office computers for library work. Laptops remain a more flexible and powerful option at this time.
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Melissa Jane Hardie and Kieryn McKay
In 2012, the Department of English at the University of Sydney, Australia, established The LINK Project, a faculty-driven outreach program that builds sustainable partnerships…
Abstract
In 2012, the Department of English at the University of Sydney, Australia, established The LINK Project, a faculty-driven outreach program that builds sustainable partnerships with low socioeconomic status (SES) secondary schools across the state of New South Wales. Focused on discipline-centered engagement, LINK positions pedagogic work as a vital site for the advancement of a social inclusion agenda. However, the operative logic of such programs present a distinct set of pedagogical challenges if they are to negotiate the established scholarly frameworks that resist principles of inclusion and threaten to displace and exclude the cultural knowledges, skills, and capitals of students of low SES backgrounds.
This chapter postulates a framework for productive disciplinary engagement that generates new spaces for “relational equity” (Boaler, 2008) between post-secondary institutions and outreach high schools and within diverse tertiary classrooms. It draws on three LINK learning modules designed to foster new ways of forming attachments and enhancing achievement in outreach contexts. In doing so, it describes an approach that seeks to open higher education institutions to multiple knowledges and ways of knowing (Gale & Mills, 2013) in the pursuit of what Jacques Rancière (1987, p. 2) calls “the minimal link of a thing in common.”
Details
Keywords
- Equity and diversity
- English studies
- widening participation
- social inclusion
- university-school partnerships
- low socioeconomic status (low SES) students
- first-in-family/first-generation students
- socioeducational disadvantage
- discipline-centered outreach
- sociocultural incongruence
- inclusive learning activities
- universal teaching
Oussama Ayoub, Christophe Rodrigues and Nicolas Travers
This paper aims to manage the word gap in information retrieval (IR) especially for long documents belonging to specific domains. In fact, with the continuous growth of text data…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to manage the word gap in information retrieval (IR) especially for long documents belonging to specific domains. In fact, with the continuous growth of text data that modern IR systems have to manage, existing solutions are needed to efficiently find the best set of documents for a given request. The words used to describe a query can differ from those used in related documents. Despite meaning closeness, nonoverlapping words are challenging for IR systems. This word gap becomes significant for long documents from specific domains.
Design/methodology/approach
To generate new words for a document, a deep learning (DL) masked language model is used to infer related words. Used DL models are pretrained on massive text data and carry common or specific domain knowledge to propose a better document representation.
Findings
The authors evaluate the approach of this study on specific IR domains with long documents to show the genericity of the proposed model and achieve encouraging results.
Originality/value
In this paper, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, an original unsupervised and modular IR system based on recent DL methods is introduced.
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Nancy D. Albers‐Miller and Robert D. Straughan
Although services, in general, have increased in significance worldwide, financial services face a less encouraging future. Market saturation has led to a search for growth…
Abstract
Although services, in general, have increased in significance worldwide, financial services face a less encouraging future. Market saturation has led to a search for growth opportunities. One approach has been to utilize traditional marketing techniques such as advertising. Another approach has been to expand into international markets. Managing the international advertising efforts of financial service firms is incredibly complex. This nine country study looks at consistency between advertising content and points of emphasis from financial strategy research. The comparison yields similarities and differences between critical managerial dimensions and themes in international financial service advertisements. Discussion of these findings and implications are provided.
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Frances Devlin, Lea Currie and John Stratton
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether librarians at the University of Kansas are providing instruction through chat in order to develop best practices for training…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether librarians at the University of Kansas are providing instruction through chat in order to develop best practices for training purposes.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analyzed a sample of chat transcripts using the “ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” to determine whether librarians were utilizing opportunities for instruction in the chat medium. Using this analysis, they selected the best examples of instructional techniques.
Findings
Students were open to receiving instruction through chat. Librarians who were most successful in providing assistance to students demonstrated persistency and approachability in their interactions.
Practical implications
The authors developed a list of top ten practices for instruction through chat which can be used for training purposes.
Originality/value
Librarians need to continue to develop instructional techniques to create more opportunities for teaching moments in chat. The paper raises awareness of the impact of librarians' demeanor in the online environment.