Graeme Johanson

The Experience of Anxiety in Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Anxiety is known to be common among young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), yet little is known about the nature of their experiences or the strategies they use to live and cope with their reported anxiety. In this qualitative study, we began to address this issue through two focus groups involving 11 young adults with ASD, and 10 parents and professionals. Participants in each group were asked to discuss the triggers for anxiety, the consequences of anxiety, and strategies they have used, would like to use, or have seen individuals with ASD use to manage their anxiety. The participants identified multiple personal and environmental sources of anxiety, noting the substantial impact they have on their everyday lives at home, work, university, and in the community. Their individual experiences and strategies for living and coping with anxiety are presented.

Wild data: Collaborative e-research and university libraries

The literature speaks of a ‘deluge’ of scientific and research data and the importance of capturing and managing it for use beyond its original creating community, purpose, and time. Data value increases as it is interconnected, networked, shared, used, and re-used. This paper extends the conversation about data sharing to ‘wild data’: that is, data generated and held outside of ‘academic’ or ‘professional’ science, as in the case of environmental voluntary groups (EVGs). Currently, important data generated by these groups are likely to be inaccessible to the academic community, or any community or body outside those often-small EVGs. Although large quantities of data are often generated by EVGs, management of thesedata may be poor or non-existent; and quality control of data may be haphazard and spasmodic. This article reports on a pilot project which explored the data sought, generated, stored, and shared by members of EVGs. The project also investigated members’ views about data management and sharing ...

Systematic performance measurement for university libraries in Vietnam

Purpose – Higher education reform in Vietnam has recently required university libraries to improve their quality, to evaluate their performance, and to be accountable for the purpose of quality assessment and accreditation. Systematic performance measurement is an integral part of this process. The aims of this paper are: to provide an overview of the current state of performance development in Vietnamese university libraries; to address issues related to the measurement of library performance; and to propose an approach to evaluation for university libraries in Vietnam.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the literature on library performance measurement, with particular focus on university libraries in Vietnam. Relevant documents relating to performance measurement were examined, and two case studies of performance measurement in university libraries in Vietnam were carried out.Findings – It is critical that university libraries in Vietnam develop systematic performance measures and apply dif...

Characteristics and choices of public access Internet users in Victorian public libraries

Provision of public Internet access has been viewed by governments as a key step towards encouraging uptake among people who do not have access to information communication technologies, and as an important means of building an equitable information society. The Victorian Public Library network has led Australia in providing this access, at no small cost. However, little substantial data is available about the users of this public access, little is known of what they use the access for, nor how well it meets their needs. Through a wide‐scale survey, and through focus groups this study explores the demographic characteristics of public library public access Internet users, the extent to which public access Internet provision meets the needs of those users, and users planned/future use of public access Internet. The role of public access and the policy implications of this data are discussed.

CULTURE AND VIETNAM AS A KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

Key features of traditional Vietnamese culture are contrasted with modern conceptions of a knowledge society on a national scale. Longstanding features of Vietnamese society inhibit the acceptance of necessary ingredients of a knowledge nation. This article analyses evidence from official publications, recent commentaries about Vietnam, and fieldwork interviews undertaken between 2004 and 2007, relating to economic progress and cultural change, challenges of the market economy to traditional culture, and the contribution of information and communications technologies to the promotion of knowledge.

Data sharing for the advancement of science: Overcoming barriers for citizen scientists

Systematic study of data sharing by citizen scientists will make a significant contribution to science because of the growing importance of aggregated data in data‐intensive science. This article expands on the data sharing component of a paper presented at the 2013 ASIST conference. A three‐phase project is reported. Conducted between 2011 and 2013 within an environmental voluntary group, the Australian Plants Society Victoria (APSV), the interviews of the first phase are the major data source. Because the project revealed the importance of data sharing with professional scientists, their views are included in the literature review where four themes are explored: lack of shared disciplinary culture, trust, responsibility and controlled access to data, and describing data to enable reuse. The findings, presented under these themes, revealed that, within APSV, sharing among members is mostly generous and uninhibited. Beyond APSV, when online repositories were involved, barriers came very strongly into play. Trust was weaker and barriers also included issues of data quality, data description, and ownership and control. The conclusion is that further investigation of these barriers, including the attitudes of professional scientists to using data contributed by citizen scientists, would indicate how more extensive and useful data sharing could be achieved.

Concluding Remarks: The Benefits of Overcoming Local Liabilities

This concluding chapter summarizes the main results emerging from the book, and highlights the positive aspects to the phenomenon of new forces arriving in an industrial territory. The term native entrepreneurship suggests that the culture of the incumbent community may no longer be the dominant one in the settlement context. This is because globalization endows the transnational communities with a position of strength and/or certain advantages. This chapter briefly summarizes the contributions emerging from the previous chapters. We consider the connections between the contributions, including identifying the most obvious liabilities, and assessing the related costs and the potential benefits. The main finding emerging from the book is that the relationship between native and immigrant entrepreneurship is challenging. The relationship is associated both with local liabilities and with great opportunities. Overcoming the separations between the communities in a settlement presents risks; however, it is necessary and can offer important benefits.

Liabilities of Native and Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the Processes of Globalization

This chapter introduces the main issues addressed in the book by examining the liabilities of native and immigrant entrepreneurship in local contexts from a multidisciplinary perspective. Immigration leads to the presence of different cultures in the same place of settlement. This may push immigrant entrepreneurship into ethnic enclaves because of discrimination and racism. However, through globalization, native entrepreneurship can also lose centrality and become peripheral in global markets compared with the transnational networks. Both groups (immigrants and natives) can experience liabilities of outsidership, and acculturation stress. The local liabilities are associated with costs, competitiveness losses, and missed business opportunities. These liabilities may significantly affect the development of Prato’s industrial district, on which the city’s economic prosperity relies. The liabilities of native and immigrant entrepreneurship are so many and so varied, that they do not solely concern market relationships. Considering the second generation of immigrants adds another layer of complexity to analyzing the local liabilities. The second generation hold great promise for the improved integration of the Chinese community in Prato in the future. The radical social transformation provided by smartphones and similar technologies, can help immigrants to maintain contacts and business with their community of origin. We propose examining the local liabilities of native and immigrant entrepreneurship in terms of degrees of outsidership, rather than from clearly bounded positions of insidership or outsidership. Finally, we compare the disciplinary points, providing a broad context for the chapters that follow.

Smartphones and Outsidership in Prato’s Small Business Community

The theories of outsidership and insidership, and of foreignness, create contested discourse about the globalization of businesses, large and small. This chapter reviews the relationships between businesses, Chinese migrants, and mobile telecommunications based on available published research and on two small constructivist studies undertaken in Prato, Italy in December 2015 and May 2016. The studies generated two fresh datasets that are analyzed in the chapter. Prior studies of Prato’s industrial district have been undertaken by economists, sociologists, political scientists, geographers, anthropologists, linguists, and media scholars (among others). This chapter focuses on overturning the usual representation of outsidership and foreignness in Prato. The chapter argues that many Wenzhounese outsiders (numerous hardworking micro businesspeople) insert their own portable insider networks and tight-knit practices in Prato. They thus marginalize the local textile manufacturers into the role of outsiders in their own territory. Many of the migrants from Wenzhou, China, along with their family businesses and self-selected virtual networks, tend to act independently with the assistance of smartphones. The trading conditions that they experience in Prato are similar to those in Wenzhou.

Mobile Phones and the Well-Being of Blind Micro-Entrepreneurs in Indonesia

The wide‐scale economic benefits of mobile (cell) phones for developing regions of the world have been well researched over an extended period. But the potential value of mobiles for the well‐being of specific poor groups has been overlooked. This paper reports on a project which focused on the welfare of blind masseurs in Indonesia, as representatives of three million blind people in that country. Links between the advantages of Information and Communications Technologies and human development have been presented before in papers in general terms, but very limited research has attempted to make the further link to disability and micro‐entrepreneurs, making use of the Capability Approach (CA). This paper illustrates how mobile phones impact on the well‐being of blind masseurs. Grounded theory methods are employed for the analysis of 10 interviews with blind masseurs in Makassar and Bandung, Indonesia. The discussion shows that mobile phones play significant roles in micro‐entrepreneurs’ perceived well‐being. Application of the CA shows that mobile phones facilitate beneficial ‘functionings’ that are deemed very valuable by participants.