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This paper aims to understand how a special library helped firefighters in Illinois navigate the digital revolution by evidencing the elements and forms of work that made its innovative services possible.

The authors examine the history of a special library through a community informatics lens, drawing from sociomaterial perspectives to highlight forms of work often invisible in digital innovation. Data was collected through documentary revision, oral histories and semi-structured interviews. Deductive-inductive coding and constant comparative analysis was used in the analysis.

A historical narrative of the library between 1990 and 2021 highlights three sociotechnical innovations that assisted firefighters through the digital revolution: the facilitated collection, the co-created collection and the inside-out library. To develop these innovations the library drew from institutional relations, personal relations, grants, labor, knowledge of firefighters and technology. Various forms of articulation work brought these elements together to create innovative services.

The role of special libraries in addressing the digital divide has not been sufficiently detailed so far; this paper is a contribution in that direction. It also has practical value for professionals working in specialized libraries and information centers.

Digital Humanities is a robust area of research and practice at universities and their libraries across the world. This case study investigates the unique DH practices of seven US academic libraries to provide insights into how varied academic libraries operate their DH programs.

Semi-structured interviews with nine library staff in DH or DH-adjacent positions at seven US academic libraries were used to investigate library DH practices.

This case study highlighted key areas of academic library DH practices including Space, Technology, Staff, Instruction and Collaboration. Practices in these areas were compared against each other and literature to comment on the current state of DH library practices and offer some recommendations for select areas.

This case study interviewed staff in a limited number of US libraries and is not generalizable to or a reflection of the many academic libraries in the US or across the world.

The juxtaposition of multiple libraries’ DH activities provides a unique perspective on academic library DH practice, as many studies investigate only a single library as their subject.

Preventing and tackling bullying effectively are important agenda for schools to safeguard all children’s well-being, engagement and sense of belongingness. Children perceived to be different from their peers tend to have a higher risk of being bullied at school, in particular, children with disabilities. It can be challenging for teachers to stop bullying that targets children with disabilities. This chapter considers bullying as a barrier to ensuring inclusive and quality education for everyone. It draws on findings from an ethnographic study concerning the status of inclusion of children identified as having learning difficulties in mainstream schools in China, by listening to what children and teachers have to say (Wang, 2016). The study found that the child participants were subject to forms of bullying. They found it useful to gain support from others when bullying happened, and they showed empathy towards peers’ well-being. The teacher participants reflected on the dilemmas and challenges of dealing with bullying and were keen to share experiences about what they found helpful in addressing the issue. The chapter discusses how insights about bullying learned from children and teachers can be used to inform the enactment of inclusive pedagogy. It is concluded that an inclusive pedagogical response that recognizes every child’s voice is necessary for tackling bullying and co-creating an inclusive environment.

The purpose of this paper is numerical calculation of total electric field in oil-paper insulation. Now, there is no effective method to consider the influence of space charges when calculating the total electric field distribution in the main insulation system of the valve-side winding of an ultra-high-voltage direct current converter transformer.

To calculate the total electric field in an oil-paper insulation system, a new simulation method in single-layer oil-paper insulation based on the transient upstream finite element method (TUFEM) is proposed, in which the time variable is considered. The TUFEM is used to calculate the total electric field in an oil-paper insulation system by considering the move law of space charges. The simulation method is verified by comparing the simulation results to the test data. The move law of space charges and distribution characteristics of the electric field under difference voltage values in single-layer oil-paper insulation were presented.

The results show that the TUFEM has an excellent accuracy compared with the test data. When carrier mobility is a constant, the time to reach the steady state is inversely correlated with the initial electric field intensity, and the distortion rate of the internal total electric field is positively correlated with the initial electric field intensity.

This paper provides an exploratory research on the simulation of space charge transport phenomenon in oil-paper and has guiding significance to the design of oil-paper insulation.

This article explores the scientific construction of library olfactory space, based on the case of the olfactory space in the Jiangsu University library. It specifically focuses on understanding the interaction between the physical architectural space of the library and users’ olfactory perception and behavioral activities, with the ultimate goal of creating a deeply integrated olfactory experience in the Jiangsu University Library.

In this article, an empirical research method was used to gather perceptions from 30 university student users regarding the library olfactory space and to understand their olfactory preferences and requirements for its construction. Through qualitative analysis of the interview texts, the study identified correlations between user perceptions and elements of the library olfactory space.

The qualitative analysis of user interview texts and results from the library olfactory space design experiment contributed to the design proposal for the Jiangsu University Library olfactory space. The design proposal for the Jiangsu University Library olfactory space is provided and includes library architecture, activity context, functional services, olfactory experience design and technological applications.

This case study takes the environment, development strategy and user needs of the Jiangsu University Library as its unique research background and as such is not universal or generalizable to other libraries.

This article differs from others by advocating for the innovative architectural spatial design of libraries through olfactory experience, breaking the traditional perception of libraries as solely through visual and auditory senses.

Wayfinding efficiency is an extremely influential factor to improve users' library interior experience. However, few research has studied the different functions of various wayfinding signages for university library users through mobile visual experiment. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between university library signage system design and patrons' wayfinding behavior features.

In this article, an eye movement tracking method was introduced to record eye movement data during the wayfinding process of participants in the library interior, targeting the cognition and psychology of library users in the wayfinding signage system. The visual guiding usability of landmarks, informational signages and directional signages were quantitatively tested, and the fixation on the signage system between orientation strategy users and route strategy users was compared. This study also investigated the effects of library users' spatial anxiety and environmental familiarity on their fixation on the area of interest of the wayfinding signage system using the differential test and regression.

This paper observed that informational signage had the best visual navigating competence. The difference of fixation duration and searching duration between patrons used various wayfinding strategies was significant. The informational signage was most attended by the route strategy users, and the orientation strategy users rarely focused on the directional signage. And participants with high anxiety tended to ignore the visually auxiliary function of the landmarks but paid attention to the directional signage. The participants with low anxiety could capture the landmarks that could not be easily found by the route strategy users. And participants less familiar with the environment were more sensitive to the landmarks. Furthermore, this paper offers optimization measures for university library wayfinding signage system, from the perspectives of informational signage understandability improvement, directional signage physical specification design and wayfinding assistant system with automatic landmark technology.

This article adds to the relatively sparse literature on university library user wayfinding experimental study in China. The experimental findings of this paper also have important practical implications for academic libraries' wayfinding system evaluation. The whole process could be seen as a repeatable and standard framework and methodology to inspect university library's wayfinding signage system usability and user wayfinding behavior performance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical historical analysis of the business (mis)behaviors and influencing factors that discourage enduring cooperation between principals and agents, to introduce strategies that embrace the social values, economic motivation and institutional designs historically adopted to curtail dishonest acts in international business and to inform an improved principal–agent theory that reflects principal–agent reciprocity as shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, strategic and ideological forces

The critical historical research method is used to analyze Chinese compradors and the foreign companies they served in pre-1949 China.

Business practitioners can extend orthodox principal–agent theory by scrutinizing the complex interactions between local agents and foreign companies. Instead of agents pursuing their economic interests exclusively, as posited by principal–agent theory, they also may pursue principal-shared interests (as suggested by stewardship theory) because of social norms and cultural values that can affect business-related choices and the social bonds built between principals and agents.

The behaviors of compradors and foreign companies in pre-1949 China suggest international business practices for shaping social bonds between principals and agents and foreign principals’ creative efforts to enhance shared interests with local agents.

Understanding principal–agent theory’s limitations can help international management scholars and practitioners mitigate transaction partners’ dishonest acts.

A critical historical analysis of intermediary businesspeople’s (mis)behavior in pre-1949 (1840–1949) China can inform the generalizability of principal–agent theory and contemporary business strategies for minimizing agents’ dishonest acts.

This paper takes the Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect as a quasi-natural experiment and investigates the impact of capital market liberalization on the corporate debt maturity structure. It also aims to provide some policy implications for corporate debt financing and further liberalization of the capital market in China.

Employing the exogenous event of Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect and using the data of Chinese A-share firms from 2010 to 2020, this study constructs a difference-in-differences model to examine the relationship between capital market liberalization and corporate debt maturity structure. To validate the results, this study performed several robustness tests, including the parallel test, the placebo test, the Heckman two-stage regression and the propensity score matching.

This paper finds that capital market liberalization has significantly increased the proportion of long-term debt of target firms. Further analyses suggest that the impact of capital market liberalization on the debt maturity structure is more pronounced for firms with lower management ownership and non-Big 4 audit. Channel tests show that capital market liberalization improves firms’ information environment and curbs self-interested management behavior.

This research provides empirical evidence for the consequences of capital market liberalization and enriches the literature on the determinants of corporate debt maturity structure. Further this study makes a reference for regulators and financial institutions to improve corporate financing through the governance role of capital market liberalization.

Implementing green innovation is crucial for firms to build or sustain competitive advantages within the context of the sustainable development goals. Academic research has broadly explored how firms can induce green innovation behavior (GIB), examining external factors, but few studies in the current literature have deeply investigated unabsorbed slack as an internal antecedent of GIB. Drawing upon the behavioral theory of the firm and integrating it with dynamic capabilities theory, this study aims to address this deficiency by investigating the impact of unabsorbed slack on GIB and the mediating roles of two dimensions of capability reconfiguration: capability evolution and capability substitution in the relationship between unabsorbed slack and GIB. Furthermore, this study also discusses the moderating effects of consumer green pressure on the relationship between unabsorbed slack and capability evolution/substitution.

Survey data were collected from 286 Chinese technology-intensive manufacturing firms to empirically test the relationships among the variables.

The results reveal that unabsorbed slack has a positive influence on GIB. Furthermore, capability evolution and substitution both play mediating roles in the relationship between unabsorbed slack and GIB. Comparative analysis showed that the mediating effect of capability substitution is stronger than that of capability evolution. Moreover, consumer green pressure strengthens the positive relationship between unabsorbed slack and capability evolution/substitution.

This study enriches the research on the driving forces of GIB and contributes to providing managerial implications for firms to launch green innovation activities.