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The University of Leicester Library’s Distance Learning Unit identified Internet Chat software as an exciting new option to support their enquiry service for distance learning students based all over the world. A trial service began in October 2000, using ‘HumanClick’software. Chat Icons were displayed on appropriate web pages, which offer a direct link to a librarian, or the opportunity to send an email message if the service is not staffed at that time. Students do not have to download any software to access the service and the librarian can deal with several chat requests at the same time. The ‘HumanClick’software allows the librarian to track where the enquirer is on the web site and allows them to ‘push’ relevant web pages to them. The trial revealed that chat has great potential for providing an alternative method of communication with students as a distance, but does require experience and patience to make the students feel comfortable with this new method. Library staff training and practice was vital to the success of interactions and it became evident that certain types of enquiry were more suited to this method than others.

This study aims to investigate the challenges of developing information literacy (IL) competencies and approaches to overcome the challenges among library and information science (LIS) students in Iran.

Taking an exploratory approach, the study used semi-structured interviews to gather the data. Using the 2000 ACRL standards as a framework, the fieldwork questions were designed around the five areas of IL competencies. A total of 15 academics teaching 18 different LIS courses from six universities were interviewed. They were asked the challenges they faced in teaching these competencies and the approaches they took or suggested in overcoming the challenge(s). A thematic approach was used to analyze the data.

Some of the challenges for students mentioned by the interviewees were ambiguity about the discipline, inability to match subject relevance with appropriate sources of information and lack of familiarity with databases.

This study is limited to LIS academics; studying students’ reflections can bring broader perspectives to IL education in LIS programs. Owing to the nature of the design of this study, which is a single case study, the teaching experiences of IL are limited to the ones which emerged and were addressed in the context of the case. Although the case selection was made in a way that can be representative of the “general” in the “particular” bounded system of the case (Stake, 1998), studying more cases could certainly have brought broader perspectives to IL which could have been to wider contexts.

The results of this study contribute to our understanding of challenges in teaching IL in the LIS discipline, an area that has not been researched directly. This contributes to IL teaching in disciplinary areas and it brings new perspectives to the elements of IL teaching which emerged from the experiences of people who are directly experienced in the context of the discipline.

Libraries must actively support humanities text files, but we must remember that to focus exclusively on texts tied to specific systems is to put ourselves in opposition to the needs of the researchers we intend to serve. A working model of the sort of system and resource provision that is appropriate is described. The system, one put in place at the University of Michigan, is the result of several years of discussions and investigation. While by no means the only model upon which to base such a service, it incorporates several features that are essential to the support of these materials: standardized, generalized data; the reliance on standards for the delivery of information; and remote use. Sidebars discuss ARTFL, a textual database; the Oxford Text Archive; InteLex; the Open Text Corporation; the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI); the machine‐readable version of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d edition; and the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities.

Perceived brand entitativity, or the extent to which a collection of brands signifies a group to consumers, differentiates luxury vs non-luxury brands such that luxury brands are perceived to be more entitative than non-luxury brands. Framed by the concept of brand entitativity and the implicit theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether this difference in the perceived brand entitativity of luxury and non-luxury brands impacts how consumers respond to sweatshop allegations in context to these brands.

Two separate experimental studies employing between-subjects designs were conducted among a total of 162 and 276 student consumers from a Southern university of the USA. The authors operationalized sweatshop allegations at two levels, brand-specific allegations (the stimulus brand itself is accused) and industry-specific allegations (other brands of the same industry are accused) to examine the role that brand entitativity plays in these two types of allegations.

Experiment 1 demonstrated that industry-specific allegations hurt consumer attitudes for luxury brands to a greater extent than non-luxury brands, whereas brand-specific allegations hurt non-luxury brands more so than luxury ones. In experiment 2, the authors find that the above results hold true only for consumers who are more prone to social perceptions of entitativity (entity theorists), but not those who represent an incremental mindset (incremental theorists).

The results can help brand managers understand the negative downstream consequences of brand- and industry-specific allegations for their brand type (luxury vs non-luxury).

This study fills an important gap in understanding consumer reaction to brands’ sweatshop allegations by addressing the role of consumers’ perceived brand entitativity and how it differs for consumers holding different implicit beliefs.

THE continuance of war into the New Year proves again the fatuousness of prophecy which had assured us of peace, or at least the cessation of hostilities, by Christmas. We have to face now what must be another year of conflict, unless miracles occur as they sometimes do in war, and thus the postponement of many of the plans that the Library Association and a great many other bodies and persons have been making; but we must not offend by prophesying. At this time a glance back on the record of 1944 is justifiable and may be salutary.

This paper aims to examine the relationships between anthropomorphic cues (i.e. degrees of the humanized profile picture and naming) in artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and business types (utilitarian-centered business vs hedonic-centered business) on consumers’ attitudes toward the AI chatbot and intentions to use the AI chatbot app and to accept the AI chatbot’s recommendation.

An online experiment with a 2 (humanized profile pictures: low [semihumanoid] vs high [full-humanoid]) × 2 (naming: Mary vs virtual assistant) × 2 (business types: utilitarian-centered business [bank] vs hedonic-centered business [café]) between-subjects design (N = 520 Mturk samples) was used.

The results of this study show significant main effects of anthropomorphic cues (i.e. degrees of profile picture and naming) in AI chatbots and three-way interactions among humanized profile pictures, naming and business types (utilitarian-centered business vs hedonic-centered business) on consumers’ attitudes toward the AI chatbot, intentions to use the AI chatbot app and intentions to accept the AI chatbot’s recommendation. This indicates that the high level of anthropomorphism generates more positive attitudes toward the AI chatbot and intentions to use the AI chatbot app and to accept the AI chatbot’s recommendation in the hedonic-centered business condition. Moreover, the mediated role of parasocial interaction occurs in this relationship.

This study is the original endeavor to examine the moderating role of business types influencing the effect of anthropomorphism on consumers’ responses, while existing literature overweighted the value of anthropomorphism in AI chatbots without considering the variation of businesses.

In influencer advertising, followers engage in more frequent and timely interactions compared to nonfollowers, making them the primary audience for these advertisements. Building on this premise, this study aims to examine the impact of different influencer types, categorized by follower count, on the advertised brands.

The authors tested the hypotheses in four studies, including one secondary data analysis and three experiments.

Combining real-world data with a series of experiments, the authors show that the followers of mega-influencers (vs micro influencers) have a more positive response to the advertised brands, with more positive brand attitudes, greater purchase intentions and higher engagement. The authors call this the “mega-influencer follower effect.” It is driven by the sense of control. This effect only occurs among the followers and not nonfollowers. Moreover, the mega-influencer follower effect only existed in human influencers, not virtual influencers.

This study takes influencer followers as influencer advertising audiences and investigates the effect of influencer types (based on the number of followers) on the advertised brands; however, future research may investigate how consumers respond to brands in different categories endorsed by influencers.

The authors argue that influencer advertising audiences are more likely to be followers of the influencer. From this perspective, the results suggest that marketers should cooperate with mega-influencers.

Through emphasizing the value of followers rather than nonfollowers as audiences, this study expands the literature on influencer marketing and the explanatory mechanisms regarding which types of influencers are more effective.