Search results

This paper has two purposes. The first purpose is to study how groups and members of an organization use collaborative technology in accomplishing their everyday work. The second purpose is to study how interpretive researchers can use an ethnographic research approach, called the strip resolution process (SRP), to make explicit the process by which they achieve their interpretation, rather than provide just their interpretation leaving the process as a black box.

Interpretive case study using interviews, observation, participant‐observation, and study of documents.

For IS researchers, a key finding is that the SRP facilitates both an understanding of research phenomena from the members’ perspective and a means of explaining how that understanding was achieved. For IS practitioners, a key finding is that organizational work practices and reward structures should be “co‐designed” with the collaborative technology's functionalities to accomplish organizational objectives.

This study used ethnographically informed approaches, including the SRP, to collect and interpret data. However, the duration spent at the organizational site, 25 days spread over eight months, would not qualify this study as an ethnography based on the recommended duration of 12 months of sustained fieldwork.

This study's findings have two implications for IS practice. The first implication is that practitioners planning to deploy collaborative technology in an organization should not focus primarily, or even mainly, on the technology's functionalities. Instead, they should pay most attention to the organization's work practices and reward structures. Work practices and reward structures should be “co‐designed” with the technology's functionalities to accomplish organizational objectives. The second implication is that the SRP could help close the “understanding gap” between IS practitioners and system stakeholders. Hence, a practitioner can use the SRP as a supplement to any systems development methodology for analyzing system requirements.

The value of this paper for IS interpretive researchers is that it explains and illustrates how an ethnographic research approach called the SRP can be used by a researcher to understand research phenomena from the members’ perspective, test and validate his interpretation, and reveal how he reached his interpretation and not just provide his interpretation leaving the process of achieving it a black box. The value of this paper for IS practitioners is that it emphasizes the importance of “co‐designing” work practices and reward structures with a collaborative system's functionalities and provides them specific questions to ask, and reflect upon, before designing and deploying a collaborative system. In addition, practitioners can use the SRP as a tool to supplement any systems development methodology to help reduce the understanding gap between themselves and the system stakeholders.

IN making the suggestion, as some of my friendly critics have done, that the classes Fine and Useful Arts should be restored, as in Dewey, they rather miss the humour of the situation. The Subject Classification is not an amended Dewey or Cutter, but a humble attempt at an entirely new system, designed to meet the needs of popular libraries. It is not even a classification of knowledge, but, as experience has proved, a very practical and simple rearrangement of the factors of knowledge as set forth and preserved in books. The scheme is not indebted to any other system for aught but suggestions of main classes; all the details of the tables having been worked out independently, without reference to any classification save the Adjustable. It will be manifest, on reflection, that it would be fatal for the compiler of a new system to allow himself to be fettered or influenced by the schedules of other authors. I am one of those who decline to believe in the value of standardization of ideas or practice, save to a small degree in certain mechanical matters, and it would therefore be foolish to follow in the same rut as certain predecessors, simply because a longer existence has to some extent established their findings as settled conventions.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Because of an increasing number of demands on reference librarians' time, knowledge and skills, the use of relatively new types of cordless and cellular telephone systems may allow reference services to become more accessible, effective and productive.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

IT is fitting that now and again stock should be taken of the present state of the Library Profession as compared with its past, and such an occasion as the commencement of the tenth year of the Library World is as appropriate as any other.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.

THIS scheme of exact classification has now been long enough upon trial to justify the publication of a few explanatory notes, adjustments, and revisions which may be useful to present and future users of the system. For an entirely new scheme, which to some extent broke fresh ground, its reception has been extremely kind and flattering, and although it has not escaped criticism, nothing has appeared which has been anything but reasonable and helpful. A surprising circumstance has been that, notwithstanding the very controversial nature of much of the subject, so few points of difference have appeared. These are all more or less directed against the mere placing of certain topics and do not to any extent reflect upon the theory or structure of the system as a whole. One mistake has been made, however, of a more important nature, but this must have arisen either through misapprehension or carelessness. It has been assumed that the Subject Classification claims to be thoroughly scientific, and that each class is arranged in a logical and evolutionary order, so as to modulate or merge naturally into its successor. Any modest claim which may have been made to an attempted logical order is invariably qualified by a statement in the “Introduction” to the effect that such perfect order is only to be expected to a very limited extent. On page eight it is stated that—“The departments of human knowledge are so numerous, their intersections so great, their changes so frequent, and their variety so confusing, that it is impossible to show that they proceed from one source or germ, or that they can be arranged so that each enquirer will find the complete literature of his special subject at one fixed place.” All through the tables and the introduction the same kind of limitation is insisted upon, and it can only be due to misunderstanding to say that I have made such a preposterous claim to sequential perfection. No librarian who has attempted to compile a system of exact classification would ever dream of claiming that he did more than get as near as possible to an ideal arrangement in accordance with his basal plan.