A legal obligation to adopt reasonable information security procedures exists in a variety of laws around the world, such as the EU Data Directive (Directive 95/46), Canada’s…
Abstract
A legal obligation to adopt reasonable information security procedures exists in a variety of laws around the world, such as the EU Data Directive (Directive 95/46), Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and sectoral and state privacy laws in the U.S. The latter include security breach notification laws, and laws establishing a general duty of security. This paper compares and contrasts the privacy and information security landscape inside and outside the U.S. and offers suggestions for corporate “best practices” in data security designed to enhance consumer trust and minimize liability.
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The research explores the emerging specialty of learning space assessment with a focus on how new information professionals represented by graduate students in an academic…
Abstract
Purpose
The research explores the emerging specialty of learning space assessment with a focus on how new information professionals represented by graduate students in an academic libraries course defined quality criteria for library spaces and how they approached designing and conducting a one-shot multi-site space assessment project.
Design/methodology/approach
The instructor-investigator adopted a diachronic collective case study strategy, using documents generated by six cohorts over three academic years. The data included 180 online discussion posts, 97 individual site assessments and 32 group project reports. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively to identify patterns and trends in student behaviour.
Findings
The analysis revealed a strong trend among students for creating their own evaluation frameworks in preference to reusing existing professional tools in their current form; the proportion of students who developed their own criteria or combined existing criteria in new ways shifted from 40 per cent to 80 per cent in three years. Their approaches demonstrated willingness and ability to engage in independent and creative thinking, and readiness to explore interdisciplinary and international perspectives on space. They also displayed a commitment to accessible, flexible and adaptable user-centred design for active, collaborative learning and to bringing a user perspective to their observations.
Originality/value
The focus on student-librarians provides a unique forward-looking perspective on the desirable qualities of next-generation learning spaces in academic libraries. The study documents an unprecedented range of established and novel space evaluation frameworks and tools informed by different professional disciplines. The results should be of interest to library and information science (LIS) educators and practitioners.
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This volume, sponsored by the European Society for the History of Economic Thought, was shaped at the University of Bologna where earlier drafts of the 16 essays it contains were…
Abstract
This volume, sponsored by the European Society for the History of Economic Thought, was shaped at the University of Bologna where earlier drafts of the 16 essays it contains were presented at a Conference on institutions, markets and the division of labor. Like any collection of essays, especially if they come after a conference, the quality of the contributions varies, but it must be said that the average exceeds the usual standard. Moreover, although the title “Knowledge, Social Institutions and the Division of Labour” is broad enough to accommodate a diversity of subjects, there is a degree of congruity among the different contributions. The book is divided in three parts, “Rationality, Communication and Connecting Principles” (comprising four essays), “Social Interaction and Moral Sentiments” (comprising five essays) and “Division of Labour, Patterns of Interdependence and Social Institutions” (comprising seven essays).
Paul L. Dishman and Jonathan L. Calof
The paper seeks to explore competitive intelligence as a complex business construct and as a precedent for marketing strategy formulation.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper seeks to explore competitive intelligence as a complex business construct and as a precedent for marketing strategy formulation.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 1,025 executives were surveyed about their companies' usage of competitive intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination as well as their perception concerning certain organizational characteristics.
Findings
This research develops and tests intelligence as a precedent to marketing strategy formulation, revealing multiple phases and contributing aspects within the process. It also discovers that the practice of competitive intelligence, while strong in the area of information collection, is weak from a process and analytical perspective.
Research limitations/implications
While the sample was indeed a census of Canadian technology firms, care must be taken in generalizing the study beyond this industry, and certainly beyond the Canadian borders. Also, the questionnaire used only dichotomous variables (yes/no answers), which limited the testing that could be done.
Practical implications
Using these results, competitive intelligence departments and professionals can improve efficacy within their approach and execution strategies.
Originality/value
The contribution of this paper is two‐fold. It reveals many of the “state‐of‐the‐art” levels of practice within current competitive intelligence efforts, and it proposes a model of the intelligence process.
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THIS essay has two origins—a habit and a request. It was an Italian friend of mine who asked me to choose for him twenty novels which contained the spirit of Britain to‐day: and…
Abstract
THIS essay has two origins—a habit and a request. It was an Italian friend of mine who asked me to choose for him twenty novels which contained the spirit of Britain to‐day: and it was a very English friend who enquired “Why do you read only American magazines, and so many of those?”
The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains…
Abstract
The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.
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Edwin Fleming, Allan Bunch and Wilfred Ashworth
THE European campaign to catch up with the United States and Japan in the provision of information technology took a major step forward at the end of February when the Council of…
Abstract
THE European campaign to catch up with the United States and Japan in the provision of information technology took a major step forward at the end of February when the Council of Ministers of the European Communities adopted the ESPRIT programme. ESPRIT equates to the ‘European Strategic Programme of Information Technology’ and the main areas of research cover micro electronics, software technology, advanced information processing, office systems, and computer integrated manufacturing. The programme will span the years 1984–88 and will cost 1,500,000,000 European Units of Account (£900,000,000), half of which will be contributed by the European Communities Commission, and half by industry. Although the European Community represents over thirty per cent of the world IT market, European industry provides only ten per cent of this market. For further details of the programme, contact Mr W Colin, IT Task Force, 200 Rue de la Loi, B 1049 Brussels, Belgium, tel 235 4477 or 235 2348, telecopier 230 1203, tx 25946.
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functionality of the particular epistemological schools with regard to the issues of users with visual impairment, to offer a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functionality of the particular epistemological schools with regard to the issues of users with visual impairment, to offer a theoretical answer to the question why these issues are not in the center of the interest of information science, and to try to find an epistemological approach that has ambitions to create the theoretical basis for the analysis of the relationship between information and visually impaired users.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodological basis of the paper is determined by the selection of the epistemological approach. In order to think about the concept of information and to put it in relation to issues associated with users with visual impairment, a conceptual analysis is applied.
Findings
Most of information science theories are based on empiricism and rationalism; this is the reason for their low interest in the questions of visually impaired users. Users with visual disabilities are out of the interest of rationalistic epistemology because it underestimates sensory perception; empiricism is not interested in them paradoxically because it overestimates sensory perception. Realism which fairly reflects such issues is an approach which allows the providing of information to persons with visual disabilities to be dealt with properly.
Research limitations/implications
The paper has a speculative character. Its findings should be supported by empirical research in the future.
Practical implications
Theoretical questions solved in the paper come from the practice of providing information to visually impaired users. Because practice has an influence on theory and vice versa, the author hopes that the findings included in the paper can serve to improve practice in the field.
Social implications
The paper provides theoretical anchoring of the issues which are related to the inclusion of people with disabilities into society and its findings have a potential to support such efforts.
Originality/value
This is first study linking questions of users with visual disabilities to highly abstract issues connected to the concept of information.
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THIS number of THE LIBRARY WORLD closes one of the most distinguished years in the history of libraries. The opening of the National Central Library by the King on November 7th…
Abstract
THIS number of THE LIBRARY WORLD closes one of the most distinguished years in the history of libraries. The opening of the National Central Library by the King on November 7th was undoubtedly the most important public happening in this country, not only of that particular day, but for a very long period. For the first time the highest personage in the land gave his countenance and approval to the work of the public library through the National Central Library which is its natural crown. In describing the Library as “a university which all may join and which none may ever leave,” His Majesty added a memorable phrase to library literature, and gave a new impulse to library activity.