This mixed-method study explored cataloger’s judgment through the presence of text as entered by catalogers for the 11 electronic resource items during the National Libraries test for Resource Description and Access (RDA). Although the literature discusses cataloger’s judgment and suggests that cataloging practice based on new cataloging code RDA will more heavily rely on cataloger’s judgment, the topic of cataloger’s judgment in RDA cataloging was not formally studied. The purpose of this study was to study the differences and similarities in the MARC records created as a part of the RDA National Test and to determine if the theory of bounded rationality could explain cataloger’s judgment based on the constructs of cognitive and temporal limits. This goal was addressed through a content analysis of the MARC records and various statistical tests (Pearson’s Chi-square, Fisher’s Exact, and Cramer’s V). Analysis of 217 MARC records was performed on seven elements of the bibliographic record. This study found that there were both similarities and differences among the various groups of participants, and there are indications that both support and refute the assertion that catalogers make decisions based on the constructs of time and cognitive ability. Future research is needed to be able to …

Terrorist organizations and individuals make use of the Internet for supportive activities such as communication, recruiting, financing, training, and planning operations. However, little is known about the level of computer-based (“cyber”) threat such terrorist organizations and individuals pose. One step in facilitating the examination and assessment of the level of cyber threat posed by terrorist organizations and individuals is development of an assessment tool or methodology. This tool would guide intelligence collection efforts and would support and facilitate comparative assessment of the cyber threat posed by terrorist organizations and individuals through the provision of a consistent method of assessment across time, amongst organizations and individuals, and between analysts. This study leveraged the professional experience of experts to engineer a new functional construct – a structured analytical technique designed to assess the cyber threat posed by terrorist entities and individuals. The resultant instrument was a novel structured analytical construct that uses defined indicators of a terrorist organization/individual’s intent to carry out cyber attacks, and their capability to actually do so as measures of an organization/individual’s overall level of cyber threat.

Automatic language identification has been applied to short texts such as queries in information retrieval, but it has not yet been applied to metadata records. Applying this technology to metadata records, particularly their title elements, would enable creators of metadata records to obtain a value for the language element, which is often left blank due to a lack of linguistic expertise. It would also enable the addition of the language value to existing metadata records that currently lack a language value. Titles lend themselves to the problem of language identification mainly due to their shortness, a factor which increases the difficulty of accurately identifying a language. This study implemented four proven approaches to language identification as well as one open-source approach on a collection of multilingual titles of books and movies. Of the five approaches considered, a reduced N-gram frequency profile and distance measure approach outperformed all others, accurately identifying over 83% of all titles in the collection. Future plans are to offer this technology to curators of digital collections for use.

This research explored the information needs of patient families and hospital staff at a pediatric hospital system in Dallas, Texas. Library statistics recorded in four hospital libraries from 2011 - 2013 were used to analyze the information requests from patient families and hospital staff. Crosstabulations revealed the extent to which patient families and hospital staff used the libraries to satisfy their information needs. The data showed that patient families used the libraries very differently than hospital staff. Chi-square tests for independence were performed to identify the relationships between the Classification (Patient Family, Hospital Staff) and two descriptors of information needs (Request Type, Resources Used). There were a total of 1,406 information requests analyzed. The data showed that patient families and hospital staff information requests differed greatly in the number of information requests, the type of information requested, the resources used and the time the library staff spent on the requests. Chi-square analyses revealed relationships statistically significant at the p < .05 level; however, the strength of the relationships varied.

This study began with an interest in corporate libraries and a genuine curiosity in the information preferences and resources valued by executive leaders at JET Aircraft Co. Executive information preferences and the downward trend in special libraries initiated the investigation of information seeking among executive leaders and yielded the inquiry: What resources do JET Aircraft Co. executives value when they need information? Employing an ethnographic approach, this study investigated what JET Aircraft Co. executives know about information resources, what they believe about information resources, and how they act when they require information. While JET Aircraft Co. maintained a special corporate library called the Company Research Library (CRL), the purpose of this study was to determine what resources were of value to executives at JET Aircraft Co., understanding that the CRL may or may not be a resource executives’ value. As a byproduct, this study also sought to establish executive information preferences and perceptions of the CRL. Information seeking at the executive level, studied through an ethnographic lens, provided insight into how executives at JET Aircraft Co. work and what they prefer, and it established a baseline for the Company Research Library’s position among the resources valued by executives.

Information privacy is a major concern for consumers adopting emerging technologies dependent on location-based services. This study sought to determine whether a relationship exists among factors of personalization, locatability, perceived playfulness, privacy concern and behavioral intention to disclose personal information for individuals using location-based, geosocial networking applications. Questionnaire responses from undergraduate students at a 4-year university provide insight into these relationships. Multiple regression results indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between the four significant predictor variables and the dependent variable. Analysis of beta weights, structure coefficients, and commonality analysis shed light on the variance attributable to the predictor variables of the study. Findings provide understanding of the specific factors examined in the study and have implications for consumers, businesses, application designers, and policymakers. The results from this study contribute to an understanding of technology acceptance theory and offer insight into competing beliefs that may affect an individual’s behavioral intention to disclose personal information. Knowledge gained form the study may be useful for overcoming challenges related to consumer adoption of location-based services that require disclosure of personal information.

The user perspective of image search remains poorly understood. the purpose of this study is to identify and investigate the key issues relevant to a user’s interaction with images and the user’s approach to image search. a deeper understanding of these issues will serve to inform the design of image retrieval systems and in turn better serve the user. Previous research explores areas of information seeking behavior, representation in information science, query formulation, and image retrieval. the theoretical framework for this study includes an articulation of image search scenarios as adapted from Yoon and O’Connor’s taxonomy of image query types, Copeland’s Engineering Design Approach for rigorous qualitative research, and Anderson’s Functional Ontology Construction Model for building robust models of human behavior. a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with expert-level image users. Interviewees discussed their motivations for image search, types of image searches they pursue, and varied approaches to image search, as well as how they decide that an information need has been met and which factors influence their experience of search. a content analysis revealed themes repeated across responses, including a collection of 23 emergent concepts and 6 emergent categories. a functional analysis revealed further insight into these themes. …

The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships between types of health information tasks and the Internet information search processes of Chinese graduate students at the University of North Texas. the participants' Internet information search processes were examined by looking at the source used to start the search, language selection, use of online translation tools, and time spent. in a computer classroom, 45 Chinese graduate students searched the Internet and completed three health information search tasks: factual task, interpretative task, and exploratory task. Data of the Chinese graduate students’ health information search processes were gathered from Web browser history files, answer sheets, and questionnaires. Parametric and non-parametric statistical analyses were conducted to test the relationships between the types of tasks and variables identified in the search process. Results showed that task types only had a statistically significant impact on the time spent. for the three tasks, the majority of Chinese graduate students used search engines as major sources for the search starting point, utilized English as the primary language, and did not use online translation tools. the participants also reported difficulties in locating relevant answers and recommended ways to be assisted in the future when searching the Internet …

The purpose of this study was to identify the professional and personal competencies that entry-level academic health sciences librarians should possess from the perspectives of academic health sciences library directors, library and information sciences (LIS) educators who specialize in educating health sciences librarians, and individuals who serve as both LIS adjunct faculty and practitioners in the field of health sciences librarianship. the first six research questions focused on the identification of professional and personal competencies, and the last two research questions focused on comparing and contrasting the three perspectives on the professional and personal competencies. the eight research questions were addressed through four rounds of the Delphi method. Three panels of experts, initially composed of 13 academic health sciences library directors, 8 LIS educators, and 8 LIS adjunct faculty adjunct faculty/health sciences librarianship practitioners, participated in the study, and most participants were female, white, in the age range of 45-64, had less than 20 years of experience in their respective careers, and were members of the Medical Library Association. the data collected from the rounds of the Delphi method were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including measures of central tendency, and non-parametric statistics, including the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. Two …

This study explores the concept of "quality" in library cataloging and examines the perception of quality cataloging among catalogers who work in academic libraries. An examination of the concept of "quality cataloging" in library science literature revealed that even though there is some general agreement on how this concept is defined, the level of detail and focus of these definitions often vary. These various perceptions were dissected in order to develop a framework for evaluating quality cataloging definitions; this framework was used to evaluate study participants' definitions of quality cataloging. Studying cataloger perceptions of quality cataloging is important because it is catalogers (particularly original catalogers) who are largely responsible for what is included in bibliographic records. Survey participants (n = 296) provided their personal definition of quality cataloging as well as their opinions on their department's cataloging, their influence upon their department's policies and procedures, and the specific data that should be included in a quality bibliographic record. Interview participants (n = 20) provided insight on how their opinions of quality cataloging were formed and the influences that shaped these opinions.

The Turkish National Police (TNP) peacekeeping officers experience poor knowledge-sharing practices before, during, and after their tours of duty at the United Nations (UN) field missions, thus causing knowledge loss. The study aims to reveal the current knowledge-sharing practices of the TNP peacekeeping officers and proposes a knowledge-sharing system to share knowledge effectively. It also examines how applicable the knowledge management models are for their knowledge-sharing practices. In order to gain a better understanding about the knowledge-sharing practices of TNP officers, the researcher used a qualitative research method in this study. The researcher used semi-structured interviews in data collection. The participants were selected based on the non-probability and purposive sampling method. Content analysis and constant comparison was performed in the data analysis process. The most important knowledge sources of the peacekeeping officers are their colleagues, the Internet, and email groups. The peacekeepers recommend writing reports, organizing training programs, conducting exit interviews, adopting best practices, and creating a knowledge depository. The study uncovers that organizational culture, hierarchy, and physical proximity are significant factors that have a vital impact on knowledge sharing. Knowledge Conversion Model is substantially applicable for the knowledge-sharing practices of the TNP peacekeeping officer.

Enterprise content management (ECM) is an emerging research area that is beginning to find attention in academia. While the private sector has a growing industry and community for ECM, academia is starting to address this with direct links to the better-established areas of information systems and enterprise resource planning systems. ECM has been viewed as a higher-level concept of methods and strategies pertaining to content management in the context of the enterprise. Like many other organizational wide systems, ECM systems are complex, difficult to implement and risk failing to meet expected success measures. Definitions for what exactly constitutes an ECM system are still evolving. The major issues with ECM systems are that they are increasingly being implemented by organizations in an attempt to address the unmanageable amount of unstructured content over its lifecycle, compliance pressures, collaboration needs, content integrity and continuity, and controlling costs. However, the implementation problems are many and diverse, such as determining content and business processes to be included, determining technologies to fit the organizational needs, how to integrate with existing systems, and managing organizational culture and change for acceptance. There is currently little academic research in the area of ECM, and research determining the key factors …

eHealth is commonly defined as health services and information provided through the Internet and related technologies. Health educators have taken advantage of Internet and social media venues to disseminate health information essential to health risk management, disease prevention, and disease management and did not have a validated theoretical model to explain their experiences. The goal of this study was to create and test an integrated model of eHealth communication specific to 18-30 year old college students based on five research questions that identified and confirmed the factors most highly correlated with the presentation of health information on Internet or social media venues that improve eHealth literacy and provoke eHealth behavioral intention among college students. A sample of over 1400 18-30 year old college students was surveyed about their general and health information related use of the Internet and social media. As a result of exploratory factor analysis and subsequent structural equation modeling, the proposed theoretical model was revised and tested for statistical power. Two revised integrative models of eHealth communication, one for Internet and one for social media, were developed and validated. The model for social media shows statistically significant paths throughout the model; however, the model for the Internet …

Instructional communication research clearly indicates that instructor immediacy contributes significantly to effective instruction. However, the majority of immediacy studies have been conducted in traditional (face-to-face) classroom environments. More recently, instructional communication research has focused on assessing the impact of immediacy in online classroom environments. Again, immediacy appears to significantly contribute to effective instruction. The challenge is that most recent immediacy studies use immediacy measurements developed to test immediacy behaviors in face-to-face settings. Considering the lack of nonverbal communication and limited or absent synchronous or verbal communication in online instructional settings, the behaviors contributing most significantly to perceived immediacy, researchers need to reassess the immediacy construct in online environments. The present research explores and identifies behaviors reported by instructors to establish psychological closeness (i.e., immediacy) in online learning environments and assesses to what extent these behaviors are similar to or different from face-to-face immediacy-producing behaviors.

As non-institutional digital image collections expand into social media, independent non-professional image curators are emerging, actively constructing alternative naming conventions to suit their needs in a social collecting environment. This project considers how independent user-curators are developing particular sense-making behaviors as they actively contribute names to large, unstructured social image collections. In order to capture and explore this evolving language adaptation, Pinterest names are analyzed using a matrix composed of Panofsky’s three strata of subject matter, Rosch’s levels of categorical abstraction, Shatford Layne’s image attributes and Wittgenstein’s language game constructions. Analyzing Pinterest image names illuminates previously unnoticed behaviors by independent user-curators as they create shared collections. Exploring the various language choices which user-curators select as they apply this new curating vocabulary helps identify underlying user needs not apparent in traditionally curated collections restricted to traditional naming conventions.

The purpose of the study was to explore faculty attitudes towards institutional repositories in order to better understand their research habits and preferences. A better understanding of faculty needs and attitudes will enable academic libraries to improve institutional repository services and policies. A phenomenological approach was used to interview fourteen participants and conduct eight observations to determine how tenure-track faculty want to disseminate their research as well as their attitudes towards sharing research data. Interviews were transcribed and coded into emerging themes. Participants reported that they want their research to be read, used, and to have an impact. While almost all faculty see institutional repositories as something that would be useful for increasing the impact and accessibility of their research, they would consider publishers’ rights before depositing work in a repository. Researchers with quantitative data, and researchers in the humanities are more likely to share data than with qualitative or mixed data, which is more open to interpretation and inference. Senior faculty members are more likely than junior faculty members to be concerned about the context of their research data. Junior faculty members’ perception’ of requirements for tenure will inhibit their inclination to publish in open access journals, or share …

Early research on just why it might be the case that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” suggested that denial of relevance was a significant factor. Asking why denial of relevance would be significant and how it might be resolved began to raise issues of the very nature of questions. Pursuing the nature of questions, in light of denial of relevance and Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” provoked a journey of modeling questions and constructing a biography of the initial question of this research and its evolution. Engaging literature from philosophy, neuroscience, and retrieval then combined with deep interviews of successful lawyers to render a thick, biographical model of questioning.

The concept of the invisible college is a key focus of scientific communication research with many studies on this topic in the literature. However, while such studies have contributed to an understanding of the invisible college, they have not adequately explained the interaction of social and structural processes in this phenomenon. As a consequence, past research has described the invisible college differently based on researchers’ perspectives, resulting in misinterpretations or inconsistent definitions of the relevant social and structural processes. Information science and related disciplines have focused on the structural processes that lead to scholarly products or works while placing less emphasis on the social processes. To advance understanding of the invisible college and its dimensions (including both social processes and structural processes), a proposed model (Modern Invisible College Model, MICM) has been built based on the history of the invisible college and Lievrouw’s (1989) distinction between social and structural processes. The present study focuses on the social processes of informal communication between scholars via social media, rather than on the structural processes that lead to scholarly products or works. A developed survey and an employed quantitative research method were applied for data collection. The research population involved 77 scholars from …

This exploratory research examined an information policy formation process for the adoption of open source software (OSS) in Uganda. Grounded in a pragmatist tradition, this theoretical and empirical study pursued a qualitative research approach with a triangulation of theoretical concepts, data collection, and analysis techniques in an iterative and interactive process. The design provided a powerful context to develop and conduct field activities in Kampala with a purposeful sample of 22 participants, 20 in interviews and 5 in a focus group discussion. The research design enhanced consistency in the evidence from the data, increased robustness in the results, and confidence in the findings. The results highlighted a vibrant ICT sector in Uganda, underlined the multiple stakeholders and their competing interests in the policy, revealed a lack of consensus between the government and OSS promoters on the meaning of OSS, and illuminated the benefits in the OSS model over proprietary software. The stakeholders' conflicting perceptions appear to be too far apart to allow meaningful progress and are derailing the policy. Unless their conflicting perceptions are resolved, the OSS policy will continue stagnating. The study fills critical information gaps in Uganda’s policy formation processes, provides timely and relevant information to holistically understand …

Social media offers numerous opportunities to companies, organizations and government agencies to communicate with people outside their organization, to promote their interests and to better serve their customers, or as in the case with government agencies, to better serve their citizens. However, little is known about how police departments in particular use social media. This research study explores why police departments use social media, how they manage their social media tools, and the problems and challenges experienced as they use social media. This qualitative study is largely guided by grounded theory. The data were collected from a study population using local police departments in the Dallas-Fort worth (DFW) area principal cities using both individual interviews with police departments’ social media officers and observations of these departments’ online social media tools (in particular, Facebook and Twitter). This study has shown that the DFW area city police departments are using social media quite extensively to keep the public informed and often for investigative purposes. There are some success factors to adopting and using these tools, such as the motivation of department staff and their benefits, successful implementation of the tools, the simplicity of using tools and that it is absolutely free.

The author explores the current state of information exchange and access in the procurement process for mobility assistive equipment. While the idealized model is of a linear process starting with a need and ending with the purchase, in practice the procedures for acquiring a device such as a wheelchair or electric scooter can be a time consuming task that involves client, family, medical care specialists, vendors, manufacturers, insurance companies and possibly alternate sources of funding. This study utilized Participatory Action Research (PAR) to collect both qualitative and quantitative data about information sources such as the Internet, the medical community, and vendors. The findings of this study suggest that in spite of the presence of the Internet, overall primary sources are similar to the traditional model and that for most there is no one source that could be easily accessed for information. A brief examination is made of the “Information landscape” utilized in the process and a brief discussion of two relatively unmentioned information sources: expos and the wheelchair sports community.