Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Towards A Critical Turn In Library Ux, Alison Hicks, Karen P. Nicholson, Maura Seale

FIMS Publications

In the past decade, cataloguing and classification and information literacy have experienced a critical turn, acknowledging the political, economic, and social forces that shape complex information environments. Library user experience (UX) has yet to undergo such a transformation, however; instead, it continues to be seen as a toolkit of value-neutral approaches for evaluating and improving library services and spaces to enhance user satisfaction and engagement. Library UX draws upon ethnography but is also informed by the principles and values of usability and design. Little attention has been paid to the origins or epistemological underpinnings of UX as a construct, the …

Reading Times: Exploring The Temporalities Of Reading, Paulette Rothbauer, Lucia Cederia Serantes

FIMS Publications

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore various concepts of time and temporal dimensions in the context of everyday reading experiences.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses theoretical bricolage that puts existing reading research into conversation with theories of time and temporalities.

Findings

Three registers of time in reading are put forward: (1) libraries and books as places that readers return to again and again over time, (2) temporalized reading bodies and (3) everyday reading as a temporalized practice.

Research limitations/implications

Using lenses of time and temporalities, everyday reading is shown to be central to ways of being in time. …

Documenting Multiple Temporalities, Pam Mckenzie, Elisabeth Davies

FIMS Publications

Purpose: This article explores the varied ways that individuals create and use calendars, planners, and other cognitive artifacts to document the multiple temporalities that make up their everyday lives. It reveals the hidden documentary time work required to synchronize, coordinate, or entrain their activities to those of others.

Design/methodology/approach: We interviewed 47 Canadian participants in their homes, workplaces, or other locations, and photographed their documents. We analyzed qualitatively; first thematically to identify mentions of times, and then relationally to reveal how documentary time work was situated within participants’ broader contexts.

Findings: Participants’ documents revealed a wide variety of temporalities, some …

"Being In Time": New Public Management, Academic Librarians, And The Temporal Labor Of Pink-Collar Public Service Work, Karen P. Nicholson

FIMS Publications

Time is a site of power, one that enacts particular subjectivities and relationships. In the workplace, time enables and constrains performance, attitudes, and behaviors. In this qualitative research study, I examine the impact of the values and practices of new public management on academic librarians’ experiences of time when engaged in pink-collar public service (reference and information literacy) work. Data gathered during semi-structured interviews with twenty-four public service librarians in Canadian public research-intensive universities, members of the U15 Group, serve as a site of analysis for this study. Interview data were first analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) …

Just-In-Time Or Just-In-Case? Time, Learning Analytics, And The Library, Karen P. Nicholson, Nicole Pagowsky, Maura Seale

FIMS Publications

In this essay, we explore the timescapes of library learning analytics. We contend that just-in-time strategies, a feature of late capital modes of production, New Public Management, and future-oriented risk-management strategies inform the adoption of learning analytics. Learning analytics function as a form of temporal governmentality: current performance is scrutinized in order to anticipate future performance and prescribe just-in-time interventions to mitigate risk—not only for the student but also for the institution. Ultimately, we argue that using time as a lens to examine discourses surrounding library learning analytics reveals the temporalities reproduced in this discourse, which obscures questions of power, …

Academic Librarians And The Space/Time Of Information Literacy, The Neoliberal University, And The Global Knowledge Economy, Karen P. Nicholson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This qualitative research study explores how academic librarians working in Canadian public research-intensive universities experience the space/time of information literacy, the neoliberal university, and the knowledge economy. Information literacy lies at the intersection of higher education and the knowledge economy: it became a priority for librarians in Anglo-American countries in the 1980s in the context of neoliberal educational reforms intended to better prepare skilled workers for the “information society” (Behrens, 1994; Birdsall, 1994).

The shift from Fordist modes of production to flexible accumulation, characterized by the expansion of capital into new markets, flexible workers, and just-in-time inventories, made possible by …