Debbie L. Rabina

Does place affect user engagement and understanding?: Mobile learner perceptions on the streets of New York

Purpose – The aim of this research project is to uncover if place‐based learning can increase learner engagement and understanding of historical topics.Design/methodology/approach – To study this, learners will use GeoStoryteller to learn about a historical topic on the places where significant events occurred, and then be interviewed by the researchers. GeoStoryteller is a tool developed by the researchers that runs on smartphones, such as an iPhone or Android. It provides the user multimedia stories about the historical sites, delivered via the mobile web or through Layar, an augmented reality web browser. The initial application of this technology focuses on German immigration to New York City between 1840 and 1945 through a partnership with the Goethe‐Institut, the Federal Republic of Germanys cultural institution. After using GeoStoryteller to learn about this content, n=31 participants were interviewed by the researchers, and transcripts were subjected to a quantitative content analysis.Findings – ...

Does the use of place affect learner engagement?: the case of GeoStoryteller on the streets of New York

This paper details the research and development on GeoStoryteller, a project where learners engage with archival photos and multimedia narratives in historically relevant places. Using a combination of augmented reality technology and web-based delivery, the ultimate aim of the project is to uncover if place-based learning can increase learner engagement in historical topics. Currently, the researchers have completed system design and development and are in the process of collecting user feedback data. The initial application of this technology will focus on German immigration to New York City (1840--1945) through a partnership with the Goethe-Institut, the Federal Republic of Germanys cultural institution operational worldwide.

Social Media Use by the US Federal Government at the End of the 2012 Presidential Term

The purpose of this study is to describe in quantitative and qualitative terms the use of social media by the US government. During the autumn of 2012 the researchers collected and examined over 1,500 unique social media sites used by the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. This data was collected as part of a national web archiving initiative known as the End of Term Harvest, where US government websites are web archived in anticipation of changes prompted by the election. We found that social media is used heavily across all federal agencies and that they utilize a variety of social media platforms, with the most popular being Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and Flickr. The qualitative examination revealed that agencies use social media to provide the public with information and to engage the public in conversation through the feedback and comment mechanisms enabled by the social media providers. However, we did not find evidence that social media is enabling high levels of collaboration between government and citizens, which was a goal stated in Obamas Transparency Memorandum.

National security, individual privacy and public access to government-held information: the need for changing perspectives in a global environment

Governments are often the largest collectors of data within their jurisdiction, and often that data collection and storage is financially supported with public taxes. How governments manage and make available that information when requested by non-government parties varies by country. As the data-sharing world finds new and multi-platform ways to network, variations in legal access to government-held information create both opportunities and challenges. In this article, recent research is reviewed on problems faced by legal systems trying to navigate conflicts between individual privacy, public access and national state security.

Information Needs in Prisons and Jails: A Discourse Analytic Approach

Abstract According to the most recent statistics by the US Department of Justice (“Correctional Populations in the United States, 2014,” accessed September 25, 2016 at http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus14.pdf), more than 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States. Without access to fully stocked and staffed libraries or a connection to the Internet, a broad swath of this population faces significant barriers to accessing a broad range of information sources. This study analyzes the problem of information access for incarcerated people. The dataset was drawn from five semesters of classroom engagement with the New York Public Library (NYPL) letter service, with 290 reference letters having been answered between September 2013 and May 2015. The method of discourse analysis was used to analyze the information needs of people in prisons and jails in the context of information worlds. Geographic distribution and user satisfaction are also analyzed. The research discussion produced the following insights into “life in the round” (Elfreda A. Chatman, “A Theory of Life in the Round,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50 (3):207–17) of people in prisons and jails that emerged from the analysis of the data: the continuing relevance of reference sources; the fact that prison produces anxiety about employment/re-entry; and the development of a mode of discourse through the letter service. The study concludes that information needs of the users often are created by the prison itself. The analysis tells us more about how information works in prisons and jails. Understanding the information needs of incarcerated people offers insight for librarians and libraries seeking to better serve incarcerated populations. Future research should address the information that incarcerated users have, not what those of us on the outside imagine they do not.

United Nations Peacekeeping Missions: A Data Extract Project

This paper describes a project to uncover data about the United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKO). The goals of the project are twofold: first, to uncover the raw numbers available about UN peacekeeping missions, in order to reveal information about the number of troops allocated by different countries to the various missions, as well as numbers about the funding of these missions; second, to describe the process of scraping data and place the practice in the broader context of social science research in the field of open data from intergovernmental organizations.

US Government Websites During the 2013 Shutdown: Lessons from the Shutdown Library

This short communication describes the digital archive created of official dot.gov and official government social media websites during the shutdown of the United States federal government from 1 to 16 October 2013. It discusses the digital landscape against which the shutdown occurred, outlines the process of creating an archive of shutdown websites, and considers what the archive can teach us about the public face of government during the shutdown.

Israel's legal deposit law in global context

Abstract Nearly half a century after it first came into effect, Israels legal deposit law has been amended to make its provisions in accordance with and appropriate for the digital age. Other considerations guiding legislators were the necessity to adjust the law in response to laws (particularly Basic Laws) passed since the original deposit law was enacted. This paper traces the legislative history of the law through primary documents and compares it to similar laws passed in other countries over the past decade. It concludes that while the deposit of electronic materials was the primary justification for the new legislation, the legislators failed to craft the language of the new Books Act to reflect this goal. While some elements of the new law are a vast improvement over the older legislation, the Books Act is not suitable for meeting the challenges of preservation and documentation of cultural heritage in electronic formats.

Ethics, Accountability, and Recordkeeping in a Dangerous World. Richard J. Cox. London: Facet Publishing, 2006. 298 pp.

University, explains the legal difficulties resulting from the fact that while most environmental law is domestic in nature, environmental transgressions increasingly involve transborder and transglobal violations and are therefore thematically fitting for international law. Pauwelyn suggests a World Environment Court that would contribute especially to the enforcement and dispute resolution of multilateral environmental agreements. The second essay in this section, by Catherine Redgwell of St. Peters College in Oxford, also has an interesting proposal. Redgwell suggests reforming the United Nations Trusteeship, that is now devoid of its original mission, to serve as one of the mechanisms for the implementation of international environmental law. The author emphasizes that the Trusteeship should concentrate on implementation rather than enforcement, as a way to improve effectiveness of international environmental law. This idea originates in a 1997 UN Secretary-General report that suggested “collective trusteeship” over global environmental issues. Redgwell develops this idea into a proposal that takes into account the mandate of the Trusteeship council and how this United Nations organ can be reformed to attain goals in environmental protection. She delineates the specific design features that such a newly reformed Trusteeship will have, and describes its duration, scope, functions, and necessary amendments to the United Nations Charter that would make this possible, but ultimately expresses disappointment that in spite of this suggestion in existence for some time, little has been done to advance it. The essays in this book are a valuable contribution to researchers and policy makers in the area of environmental governance. The language tends to at times get somewhat technical and detailed, but overall the writing is clear. Each chapter includes detailed notes to sources mentioned; many of them are rather obscure documents from international organizations, so having the complete bibliographic details is very helpful, making this book a welcome addition to the area of sustainable development.

115 (hardcover), ISBN 1-85604-596-X.

Public access to official information has become in general particularly contentious in the aftermath of 9/11, and with it access to papers of high-ranking elected U.S. officials. In New York, former mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to sidestep the Department of Records and Information Services and declare his mayoral papers private rather than public records, thereby keeping them out of public hands. In Washington, Executive Order 13233, issued by President Bush on November 1, 2001, limited access to records of former United States presidents and put this decision in the hands of the President, or, for the first time, in the hands of the Vice President, rather than the Archivist of the United States, and the CIA has been reclassifying hundreds of documents in the National Archives that were already in the public domain. As these examples and the text demonstrate, threats to the free flow of information between our government and the people are not new. Bruce Montgomery, founding director of the Human Rights Initiative and Director of the Archives at the University of Colorado at Boulder, shows just how ongoing these actions are. His book is a careful analysis of the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA). The PRA requires former presidents to deposit their papers and records with the National Archive, which will release them to the public no later than twelve years after a president leave office, unless national security concerns warrant that this is unwise. The law meant to provide some answers to the concerns that arose during the Nixon presidency over control of presidential tapes and records. Nixons struggle to keep his records from public hands resulted in two landmark cases where the Supreme Court held that the constitutional privileges of the presidency were not absolute, but did acknowledge the significance of executive privilege. As a result of these conflicts, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act of 1978 (PRA), the main provision of which was to guarantee public ownership of presidential records. The tension between executive privilege and public access to the executive records is the main theme of this title. Montgomery takes the reader on a thirty-year journey from the passing of the PRA in the aftermath of the Watergate affair, to current Vice President Cheneys Energy Task Force. In this last case, Vice President Cheney refused to release to the public records of meetings of the Task Force that included both federal and non-federal employees. Cheney refused to release the records citing executive confidentiality. Montgomerys argument is that the Bush–Cheney administration used this case to “reassert executive prerogatives and Available online at www.sciencedirect.com