Elizabeth McDonald, Marina Rosenfield, Tim Furlow, Tara Kron and Irene Lopatovska
The purpose of this paper is to understand patterns in information behavior of academic librarians, individuals who influence information technology adoption in academic libraries…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand patterns in information behavior of academic librarians, individuals who influence information technology adoption in academic libraries and parent institutions. Librarians’ perception of their student patrons’ information behavior was also investigated.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory study investigated professional and personal information behavior of eight librarians employed by various academic institutions in the Greater New York City area. The data were collected in face-to-face interviews and analyzed using the content analysis technique.
Findings
The study found that librarians’ institutional affiliations had no effect on their information behavior. The patterns in librarians’ information behavior at work and leisure suggest that those behaviors are influenced by contextual variables, personal preferences and tasks, and are no different from the general population. Overall, librarians had accurate, evidence-driven understanding of their student patrons’ information behavior.
Research limitations/implications
The study findings have limited generalizability due to the small sample size and limited geographical pool of participants.
Practical implications
Academic library is often seen as the hub of the adoption of information technologies as librarians introduce new digital content and resources to the rest of academia. Understanding information behavior of academic librarians contributes to understanding factors that are affecting technology adoption in academia overall, and can potentially inform recommendations for optimizing academic library offerings.
Originality/value
The study is an original investigation of the relationships between institutional characteristics and librarian demographics, librarian information behavior at work and leisure, and librarians’ perception of students’ information behavior and information preferences.
Details
Keywords
Arkadiy Lukjanov, Marina Pushkareva, Zugura Rakhmatullina, Leisian Itkulova and Rufina Khanova
This paper aims to deal with the social ontology of ethnos with regard to the problem of “neutralization” of consciousness and the method of intuition.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to deal with the social ontology of ethnos with regard to the problem of “neutralization” of consciousness and the method of intuition.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper relies on the observation that the epoch we live in has originated the ontology of ethnos as a “cracked subject” connected with the dissolution of “self”.
Findings
The results show that the ontology of ethnos by itself as the synthesis of natural, social and universal forces is undergoing the asymmetric synthesis of sensual individuation and the act of thinking. However, thinking as some “fold” of the existence correlates with the extended understanding of subjectivity as the dissolution of the historical consciousness.
Originality/value
This paper proposes that the new ontology of ethnos is eventually connected with the “flickering” subject, with the “flickering” of the historical thinking and with the “masks” of the historical subject itself.