Twitter is an increasingly popular social networking tool for libraries to use to reach out to their patrons, but very little research has been done to determine who is following…
Abstract
Purpose
Twitter is an increasingly popular social networking tool for libraries to use to reach out to their patrons, but very little research has been done to determine who is following library tweets. The aim of the paper is to use the existing Twitter follower information for the Sterling Evans Library at Texas A&M as a test bed to determine the composition of Evans Twitter followers. The Medical Sciences Library's primary user groups are made up largely of graduate and professional students, making the difference in the number of graduate and undergraduate followers of particular interest.
Design/methodology/approach
Follower data were gathered from the Evans Twitter page and each user was identified and categorized. Additional data were collected on the number of tweets, and the state of the account, active or inactive.
Findings
A total of 432 follower accounts were examined. A total of 54.37 percent were identified as affiliated with Texas A&M University. The largest group of followers were students (23.61 percent), made up primarily of undergraduates (81.05 percent). Faculty/staff (7.64 percent) showed very little participation. Unaffiliated followers included corporations (19.68 percent), alumni (11.57 percent), and other libraries or librarians (7.64 percent).
Originality/value
Very little can be found in the library literature on Twitter follower analysis. This is the first large and detailed analysis of library Twitter followers.
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Anamarija Rozic‐Hristovski, Ljupco Todorovski and Dimitar Hristovski
This article describes the development of the Central Medical Library website at the Medical Faculty of Ljubljana, Slovenia. The aim of the website is to serve as a guide to the…
Abstract
This article describes the development of the Central Medical Library website at the Medical Faculty of Ljubljana, Slovenia. The aim of the website is to serve as a guide to the library resources and services. The website is built with a uniform graphic design and a menu driven structure. The structure partitions information space by providing meaningful subject categories that enable efficient exploring by browsing. Because the categories are limited in their granularity a search engine based on the Harvest system is included. An evaluation of website access was carried out by analysing and exploring the web server log files using data warehousing and OLAP (On‐Line Analytical Processing) technology. Finally some possibilities for future development of the website are suggested.
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Alessandro Lomi, Stefano Tasselli and Paola Zappa
We study organizational vocabularies as complex social structures emerging from the association between organizational participants and words they use to describe and make sense…
Abstract
We study organizational vocabularies as complex social structures emerging from the association between organizational participants and words they use to describe and make sense of their experiences at work. Using data that we have collected on the association between managers in a multi-unit international company and words they use to describe their organizational units and the overall company, we examine the relational micro-mechanisms underlying the observed network structure of organizational vocabularies. We find that members of the same subsidiary tend to become more similar in terms of the words they use to describe their units. Members of the same subsidiary, however, do not use the same words to describe the corporate group. Consequently, the structure of organizational vocabularies tends to support consistent local interpretations, but reveals the presence of divergent meanings that organizational participants associate with the superordinate corporate group.
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Chris Rowell, Robin Gustafsson and Marco Clemente
We argue that our understanding of how institutions matter has been undermined by a piecemeal approach to temporality in institutional analyses. This paper addresses this…
Abstract
We argue that our understanding of how institutions matter has been undermined by a piecemeal approach to temporality in institutional analyses. This paper addresses this shortcoming in the literature. We bring temporality to the fore by conceptualizing practices, which constitute institutions, as understood, situated, and coordinated in time by temporal structures. We elaborate an integrated framework of temporal structures that consist of three types: temporal patterns, temporal conceptions, and temporal orientations – and outline how each type contributes to the reproduction of practices. We discuss the implications of this framework for sustainability initiatives and conclude by suggesting future avenues of research on the temporal foundations of institutions.
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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are…
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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.
Seeks to explore the analytical rectitude of comparative culturalist approaches to the explanation of differences in the implementation of technologies in different settings…
Abstract
Seeks to explore the analytical rectitude of comparative culturalist approaches to the explanation of differences in the implementation of technologies in different settings. Takes theory and empirical observation from a well‐established case study of the use of information technology in the workplace as a form of worker surveillance (Kay Electronics) and examines a hitherto neglected feature of the company’s reconfiguration of the industrial labour process. Focuses on the realization that the quality monitoring system implemented to support manufacturing in the UK plant was not, as it was initially thought, a direct emulation of a system used in its Japanese sister plant, but was described by the company as a unique approach developed in response to the challenges of a UK manufacturing context.
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The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the history and development of transaction log analysis (TLA) in library and information science research. Organizing a…
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The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the history and development of transaction log analysis (TLA) in library and information science research. Organizing a literature review of the first twenty‐five years of TLA poses some challenges and requires some decisions. The primary organizing principle could be a strict chronology of the published research, the research questions addressed, the automated information retrieval (IR) systems that generated the data, the results gained, or even the researchers themselves. The group of active transaction log analyzers remains fairly small in number, and researchers who use transaction logs tend to use this method more than once, so tracing the development and refinement of individuals' uses of the methodology could provide insight into the progress of the method as a whole. For example, if we examine how researchers like W. David Penniman, John Tolle, Christine Borgman, Ray Larson, and Micheline Hancock‐Beaulieu have modified their own understandings and applications of the method over time, we may get an accurate sense of the development of all applications.