Jenny Bossaller

Communication overload: a phenomenological inquiry into academic reference librarianship

Purpose – This study aims to provide insight on the meaning of communication overload as experienced by modern academic librarians. Communication is the essence of reference librarianship, and a practically endless array of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools (ICTs) are available to facilitate communication.Design/methodology/approach – This study relied on a phenomenological methodology, which included nine in‐depth interviews with academic librarians. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using RQDA, a qualitative analysis software package that facilitates coding, category building, and project management.Findings – Seven themes about librarianship emerged from this research: attending to communication abundance, librarians of two types, instruction not reference, twenty‐first century librarianship, user needs, trusted methods: filter not retrieve, and self‐impact. The shared meaning of communication overload among these librarians is that it is a problem when it detracts from or hin...

Faculty Views on eTextbooks: A Narrative Study

eTextbooks are both texts and tools. They provide opportunities for textbook companies to expand their services. Some large textbook companies are offering extensive educational technology products and services along with texts. These etexts, integrated into the Learning Management System (LMS), give instructors opportunities to use integrated assessments, data collection tools with in-depth usage statistics, and social networking features that allow instructors and students to interact within the publishers material. News stories often discuss problems with blended and online learning and contentious relationships between faculty and vendors; etexts are part of the discussion. This paper describes findings from narrative interviews with instructors who have used etexts, focusing on affordability, access, privacy, and outsourcing. The goal is to inform instructors and administrators of some pros and cons of etexts.

Public library use of free e-resources

This article describes a multi-method research project examining the use of various freely available online collections and projects, such as Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and Creative Commons-licensed ebooks, by public libraries. This research begins with the questions: what are libraries doing with freely available materials? Are there barriers to incorporating them into the collection? What role are librarians playing in expanding access and awareness of these resources?

Sharing science The state of institutional repositories in Ghana

Scientists around the world benefit from sharing scientific data, lab notes, and preliminary papers, as well as traditional, formal scientific papers. Institutional repositories (IR) are open spaces for scientists to deposit their work. Doing so could potentially spark new collaborations, allowing scientists and scholars to build cross-institutional capacity. However, scientists must trust that the repository is secure, and they must understand copyright law and protections. Many African nations are at a crossroads: poised to solve major problems with well-trained scientists, yet stymied by expensive and unpredictable ICT. Many African scientists are also wary of the Internet due to rampant scams and fraud. This paper describes current African ICT development, reports on findings from a study about ICT, databases, and IRs in Ghana, and concludes with recommendations for expanding the use of IRs.

Alternatives to Apathy and Indifference: Civic Education in Public Libraries

Public libraries depend on public support for their existence. This essay asks, What can and should public librarians do to contribute to civic education? It discusses librarianship, politics and neutrality, and funding. It looks to public statements of librarians in the immediate aftermath of the election, then turns back to what librarians were doing in the realm of civic participation and education immediately prior to the election. Evidence comes from popular articles, tweets focusing on libraries and the election, and an unscientific, post hoc survey of library event calendars. Recommendations include fostering communication and dialogue and participating in actions that foster truth and democracy.

Access to Affordable Care through Public Libraries

This article presents a study of activity that occurred in public libraries during early implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Data were collected through telephone interviews, using open-ended questions, with 72 public library employees between November 2013 and February 2014. The article is not a comprehensive or statistical study; rather, it demonstrates different ways that librarians were or were not helping people find out about ACA health-care coverage options in large and small libraries across the United States. The research found that library involvement was related to perceived community need and to activities of other groups in the city. Anomalies and various problems suggested during the interviews point to areas for future research.

Storing and sharing wisdom and traditional knowledge in the library

Traditional library practice focuses on print collections and developing collections of materials that have been published, which means the documents have gone through some kind of review or vetting process. This practice leaves a wide swath of potential knowledge out of the collection. For example, indigenous knowledge, beliefs, and experience are different, in that they do not undergo the same review or vetting process; we might refer to these types of content as wisdom. Non-print collections, such as collections of recorded oral histories, represent less traditional forms of knowledge. Human libraries push the boundaries further in the quest to integrate wisdom and lived experience into library collections. This paper delineates the relationship between wisdom and knowledge that arose during a phenomenological study of the everyday information practices of Kenyan university women. The women were asked to photograph everyday events from their life and describe what they saw. One finding was a divergent presentation of wisdom and knowledge. Because the women were describing this in relation to their education, we assert that this demonstrates a need to reconsider positivist assumptions in library science, bringing what the women called wisdom into the stacks. How, though, can wisdom be stored and shared?

We Are Not Police: Public Librarians’ Attitudes about Making and Intellectual Property

ABSTRACT This article presents findings from a survey and interviews with public librarians about intellectual property (IP) in makerspaces. The libraries had a variety of different makerspaces, including high-tech (3D printers and software), low-tech (Legos and craft supplies), and production spaces. Results found that librarians tend to show patrons where they can find information about IP, but that they are more concerned with patron privacy and take a hands’ off approach to IP issues.

Making a case for open research: Implications for reproducibility and transparency: Making a Case for Open Research: Implications for Reproducibility and Transparency

Scientific work is time‐consuming and expensive. However, after data has been collected and reports have been written, science becomes an information problem. There are thousands of journals and funding agencies across specialized disciplines with different requirements for data transparency. Science‐focused domains substantiate research findings through defined research methods and data analysis techniques, and emerging practices around data storage and code publishing now allow other scientists to see exactly how researchers come to their conclusions. These new practices not only increase transparency of the scientific process, they also enable replication and derivative research. Despite these emerging practices, the work of research transparency does not always easily enable reproducibility.

Re-Conceiving Time in Reference and Information Services Work: A Qualitative Secondary Analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use the sociology of time to understand how time is perceived by academic librarians who provide reference and information service (RIS). Design/methodology/approach This study is a qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) of two phenomenological studies about the experience of RIS in academic libraries. The authors used QSA to re-analyze the interview transcripts to develop themes related to the perception of time. Findings Three themes about the experience of time in RIS work were identified. Participants experience time as discrete, bounded moments but sometimes experience threads through these moments that provide continuity, time is framed as a commodity that weighs on the value of the profession, and time plays an integral part of participants’ narratives and professional identities. Research limitations/implications Given that the initial consent processes vary across organizations and types of studies, the researchers felt ethically compelled to share only excerpts from each study’s data, rather than the entire data set, with others on the research team. Future qualitative studies should consider the potential for secondary analysis and build data management and sharing plans into the initial study design. Practical implications Most discussions of time in the literature are presented as a metric – time to answer a query, time to conduct a task – The authors offer a more holistic understanding of time and its relationship to professional work. Social implications The methodology taken in this paper makes sense of the experiences of work in RIS for librarians. It identifies commonalities between the experience of time and work for RIS professionals and those of other professionals, such as physicians and software engineers. It suggests revising models for RIS, as well as some professional values. Originality/value This paper contributes a better understanding of time, understudied as a phenomenon that is experienced or perceived, among RISs providers in academic libraries. The use of secondary qualitative analysis is an important methodological contribution to library and information science studies.