Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Public Library As Past Become Space, Greg Nightingale

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

I use Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism in The Arcades Project to critique contemporary notions related to the understanding of the public library as a place. My critical theoretical approach, grounded in historical research and Benjamin’s theories of modernity, highlights contemporary aspects of the public library and broadens and deepens our understanding of the library’s physical role, both within and outside its walls. My research is based on the concurrent yet divergent social and cultural development of modern public libraries and Benjamin’s symbolic shopping arcades. Like Benjamin with the arcade, I believe that the public library contains innovative potentiality, in its …

Gender, Technology And Innovation In Health Care Panel, Melanie Katsivo

Africa-Western Collaborations Day 2020

8 graduate student/recent graduate presentations on gender, technology, and innovation in health care. Moderated by Dr. Melanie Katsivo. Reporting of panel done by current GHS students of the 2021 class. Abstracts can be found under "Africa-Western Collaborations Day 2020 Abstracts". Presenters as follows:

Florence Wullo Anfaara, "To Include or Not to Include: Men and the Liberian Women's Peace Hut Initiatives Towards Transformational Justice"

Uche Ikenyei, "Diversification of Research Methodological Approach During Model Enhancements in Health Information System Research"

Denise Kamyuka, "Female Social Entrepreneurship in Sport, in the African Context: Systemic Review"

Ebenezer Martin-Yeboah, "Through the Lens of Egocentric Design: Do …

Making Sense Of Online Public Health Debates With Visual Analytics Systems, Anton Ninkov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Online debates occur frequently and on a wide variety of topics. Particularly, online debates about various public health topics (e.g., vaccines, statins, cannabis, dieting plans) are prevalent in today’s society. These debates are important because of the real-world implications they can have on public health. Therefore, it is important for public health stakeholders (i.e., those with a vested interest in public health) and the general public to have the ability to make sense of these debates quickly and effectively. This dissertation investigates ways of enabling sense-making of these debates with the use of visual analytics systems (VASes). VASes are computational …

Corporate Annual Reports: Supply & Demand, Alie Visser, Elizabeth Marshall

Western Libraries Presentations

While libraries have been closed during the pandemic, we have had an increase in demand for our Annual Reports collection. Researchers may be spending more time searching the web or expanding the types of materials to explore in the research process. We've had to re-think how to supply reports that are only available in microfiche or in print storage. It has taken a combined effort to supply the reports. The pandemic has reinforced our desire to make digitized reports more accessible to our users and potentially more discoverable to a wider variety of users.

Lessons Learned From Teaching Scholarly Communication Alongside A Student-Run Journal, Melissa Seelye

FIMS Presentations

This presentation describes the development and evolution of the Scholarly Communication and Open Access Publishing course in the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program at Western University. The course has been offered as an online elective once a year since 2018, and its initial impetus was to provide a sustainable peer review model for the MLIS student-run journal Emerging Library & Information Perspectives (ELIP). Students in the class are tasked with peer reviewing submissions and providing additional quality control during the production process, but the journal complements the curriculum, as opposed to driving it. Experiential learning opportunities are …

Rdc Data Alternatives: Conducting Research During Covid-19, Kristi Thompson, Elizabeth Hill

Western Libraries Presentations

Recent physical distancing protocols pertaining to the COVID-19 Pandemic have meant that RDC researchers need to find alternatives ways of carrying out their research. The Real Time Remote Access (RTRA) program offers one alternative way to access confidential Statistics Canada data. Other options include using the Statistics Canada public use files and analyzing data from other sources.

The presenters, data librarians from Western Libraries will discuss the differences between the data that can be accessed through the RTRA the RDC. RTRA data is a very useful option for some types of questions but also has some important limitations. We will …

Information, Employment, And Settlement Of Immigrants: Exploring The Role Of Information Behaviour In The Settlement Of Bangladesh Immigrants In Canada, Nafiz Zaman Shuva

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Immigrants shape Canada’s future in terms of innovation, population, and economic growth. Immigrants need information before and after arrival to make informed decisions about their move and for satisfactory settlement. Although Canada regularly welcomes immigrants with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, very little is known about the settlement information behaviour of immigrants. This doctoral study investigates the transitional information behaviour of Bangladeshi immigrants in Canada. It uses mixed methods to explore the information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants in pre- and post-arrival contexts and features the role information plays in newcomers’ employment. Bangladeshi immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1971 and 2017 were …

Unbundling Practice: The Unbundling Of Big Deal Journal Packages As An Information Practice, Samuel Cassady, Catherine Anne Johnson, Asen O. Ivanov

Western Libraries Publications

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to introduce a theoretical framework and approach for studying the evaluation and decision-making practices through which academic librarians attempt to reduce the cost of electronic journal subscriptions – an organizational practice known as the unbundling of big deal journal packages.

Design/methodology/approach

The article presents a literature-based conceptual analysis of several fields to delineate the elements of the practice of unbundling of big deal journal packages. Beyond analysing the prior literature, the discussion is supported by empirical findings from a pilot study on the topic conducted by two of the article's authors.

Findings

The …

The Networked Question In The Digital Era: How Do Networked, Bounded, And Limited Individuals Connect At Different Stages In The Life Course?, Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria R. Harper

FIMS Publications

We used in-depth interviews with 101 participants in the East York section of Toronto, Canada to understand how digital media affects social connectivity in general--and networked individualism in particular--for people at different stages of the life course. Although people of all ages intertwined their use of digital media with their face-to-face interactions, younger adults used more types of digital media and more diversified personal networks. People in different age-groups conserved media, tending to stick with the digital media they learned to use in earlier life stages. Approximately one-third of the participants were Networked Individuals: In each age-group, they were the …

Harold Innis And The Greek Tradition: An Essay Concerning His Ontological Transformation, Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

The transition of Harold Innis’ work from staples research to communications studies commonly is understood to have been an extension of his earlier research rather than a dramatic break from it. While in agreement, we argue that a significant transformation in Innis’s ontology (but not his epistemology) also took place. This can be understood by referencing his concerns about the fate of civilization and his views on the prospectively strategic role of what he called the Greek tradition. To explain this, herein we concentrate on Innis’ largely forgotten book Political Economy in the Modern State, initiated in 1943 and …

Older Adults And Information And Communication Technologies In The Global North, Molly-Gloria R. Harper, Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

At all ages, people are incorporating information and communication technologies (ICTs) into their lives. It is not that they have stopped talking with each other in-person, it is that ICTs complement their interactions when they cannot be together face-to-face. Since the 1990s, email has provided a routine way to stay in touch and sustain meaningful contact over distance. But not all age groups have adopted ICTs with the same enthusiasm. Research in the Global North has consistently reported that age plays an important role in ICT adoption and use (Anderson and Perrin 2017). For example, older adults have been the …

Situating Wikipedia As A Health Information Resource In Various Contexts: A Scoping Review, Denise Smith

FIMS Publications

Background

Wikipedia’s health content is the most frequently visited resource for health information on the internet. While the literature provides strong evidence for its high usage, a comprehensive literature review of Wikipedia’s role within the health context has not yet been reported.

Objective

To conduct a comprehensive review of peer-reviewed, published literature to learn what the existing body of literature says about Wikipedia as a health information resource and what publication trends exist, if any.

Methods

A comprehensive literature search in OVID Medline, OVID Embase, CINAHL, LISTA, Wilson’s Web, AMED, and Web of Science was performed. Through a two-stage screening …

The General Artificial Intellect, Ramon S. Diab

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In passages of Marx’s Grundrisse known as the Fragment on Machines, Marx suggested that advanced capitalist development leads to the production of autonomous machines that replace labour-power in the direct production process. Autonomist Marxist interpretations of this text have emphasized that the proliferation of immaterial labour is the historical condition that is leading to a crisis in the measure of value based on labour-time and that will lead to a future communist mode of production. Further, Mario Tronti posited that as capitalist development unfolds, it subsumes both the state and society, a concept known as the ‘social factory thesis’. …

Appendix A: Interview Guide With Privacy-Related Questions (Full Version), Anabel Quan-Haase, Dennis Ho

FIMS Publications

Interview Guide: Networked individualism, East York Project

Data Rescue & Curation Best Practices Guide, Ocul Data Community (Odc) Data Rescue Group

Western Libraries Publications

he aim of the Data Rescue & Curation Best Practices Guide is to provide an accessible and hands-on approach to handling data rescue and digital curation of at-risk data for use in secondary research. We provide a set of examples and workflows for addressing common challenges with social science survey data that can be applied to other social and behavioural research data. The goal of this guide and set of workflows presented is to improve librarians’ and data curators’ skills in providing access to high-quality, well-documented, and reusable research data. The aspects of data curation that are addressed throughout this …

Keep@Downsview: An Evolving Shared Print Project, Harriet Rykse

Western Libraries Publications

Keep@Downsview is a shared print partnership between six Canadian academic institutions. This article describes the evolution of the partnership from what began as simply an operationally focused collaboration for shared preservation space, in order to release collections space in on-campus libraries, to a partnership that is involved in the larger shared print discussions in North America and which has refocused its strategic directions enabling a more intentional evolution of the partnership.

Four strategic directions were identified prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. Since the onset of Covid-19 it has become apparent that several influencing factors related to the pandemic …

The Sociological Imagination In Studies Of Communication, Information Technologies, And Media: Citams As An Invisible College, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria Harper, Shelley Boulianne

FIMS Publications

In this 2020 CITAMS special issue of Information, Communication & Society, we bring together an important body of work that draws on the sociological imagination to ask critical questions of our times. We selected nine papers that represent both the breadth of sociological work taking place within CITAMS as well as the diversity of its members. CITAMS is welcoming of a range of perspectives in more than one way. We welcome studies of a range of tools and practices. For example, Kadylak and Cotten (this volume) study the willingness of older adults to use six different emerging technologies in …

Politics And Porn: How News Media Characterizes Problems Presented By Deepfakes, Critical Studies In Media Communication, Chandell E. Gosse, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

“Deepfake” is a form of machine learning that creates fake videos by superimposing the face of one person on to the body of another in a new video. The technology has been used to create non-consensual fake pornography and sexual imagery, but there is concern that it will soon be used for politically nefarious ends. This study seeks to understand how the news media has characterized the problem(s) presented by deepfakes. We used discourse analysis to examine news articles about deepfakes, finding that news media discuss the problems of deepfakes in four ways: as (too) easily produced and distributed; as …

Survey Research: Useful, Valuable Findings Require Hard Work, Kristin Hoffmann, Selinda Berg

Western Libraries Publications

Gathering data using a survey is often perceived by practitioner-researchers as one of the easiest ways to carry out research; however, a well-constructed survey can be difficult to develop. Librarian practitioner-researchers often use surveys as an economical and easy way to capture information from a wide swath of people. Once the information is gathered, however, the application and usability of the data is often limited and can fall short of the standards of scholarship. Librarian practitioner-researchers may also default to a survey when it is not the most effective tool for data gathering. But when surveys are designed well and …