Jessica Lingel

You should have been there, man: Live music, DIY content and online communities:

In terms of technological change and participatory media, the phenomenon of taking and sharing videos of live music events offers an insightful case study for discussing the individual production of online content and interpersonal interactions on social media sites. We use interviews with YouTube users who post videos of live music events to investigate motivations for the capture of personal video recordings, the protocols for sharing of videos, and the roles videos play in online fan activities. Analysis of interviews identifies key motivations for capture and sharing, and exposes tensions between short- and long-term goals of these activities. Further, the results expose differences in attitudes, motivations and practices between mainstream and ‘indie’ concert goers. These findings have implications for understanding participation on social media sites, as well as broader issues of online communities, fan cultures and individual production of media.

The Digital Remains: Social Media and Practices of Online Grief

This article analyzes comments posted in response to articles and blog posts discussing Facebooks policies on the pages of deceased site members. These virtual discourses reflect the sociocultural importance of social media policies in everyday life that is increasingly a blend of online and offline interaction. The analysis reveals themes of contested ownership of online identities, resistance to unilateral institutional policies, and social media site users’ complex relationship to the preservation of virtual content. As a still-evolving phenomenon, virtual grief elucidates wider cultural trends at work in the construction of identity and community online.

Alternative libraries as discursive formations: reclaiming the voice of the deaccessioned book

Purpose – Deaccessioning, the deliberate culling, disposing, or selling of books from a collection, is one of the most controversial aspects of the collection development function of the library. This article aims to examine what can become of this universe of deaccessioned books through a consideration of two alternative libraries, or libraries‐which‐are‐not‐libraries. The existence of such alternative libraries allows one to address questions such as: Can the value of a deaccessioned book be reclaimed and, if so, how? Do these books continue to have a voice and, if so, what is it possible for that voice to say?Design/methodology/approach – The themes are explored through the work of Michel Foucault, in particular the analyses of statements and discursive formations found in his book, The Archaeology of Knowledge.Findings – Foucaults work is found to offer a means by which to conceptualize and describe the place and value of deaccessioned books as they are reclaimed by the alternative library.Originalit...

The library as heterotopia: Michel Foucault and the experience of library space

Purpose – Using Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a guide, the purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of considering the library as place, and specifically as a place that has the “curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (Foucault, 1986a, p. 24). Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws upon a range of literary examples and from biographical accounts of authors such as Alan Bennett, Michel Foucault, and Umberto Eco to show how the library space operates as a heterotopia. Findings – The paper finds that drawing together the constructs of heterotopia and serendipity can enrich the understanding of how libraries are experienced as sites of play, creativity, and adventure. Originality/value – Foucault’s concept of heterotopia is offered as an original and useful frame that can account for the range of experiences and associations uni...

We realized we had to become librarians: DJs, information practices and music libraries

This project addresses information practices used by disc jockeys (DJs) to organize music collections, focusing in particular on issues of managing large collections of media. Using in-depth interviews with 12 DJs, accounts of music collection, music organization and preparing for shows are analyzed to gain an understanding of how this particular community of practice manages technological change. Main themes from initial analysis include: the problematic nature of genre as a high-level mode of organization and the difficulty of scaling organization practices from smaller physical collections to large digital collections. Drawing on these themes, implications for design of DJ programs (such as iTunes and Serato) are offered, and directions for future work are discussed.

Ethics and dilemmas of online ethnography

Using the example of research conducted in the body modification community, this paper considers some of the methodological issues of researching online communities, especially when those communities are marginalized or non-dominant. Drawing on texts that address ethical ethnographies of subcultures, I focus on boundaries between insiders and outsiders issues of recruitment, and measures of validity.

Live music, social media and participatory metadata

This project examines the metadata practices of YouTube users who take and share videos of live music events. Situated within library and information science scholarship addressing the utility of and applications for harnessing participatory metadata (also called user-generated metadata), it is argued that taking a qualitative approach to this phenomenon allows for a more complex understanding of individual information practices. In turn, this understanding can lead to important improvements in application design and provide valuable insight on the viability of incorporating participatory metadata into institutional archives and catalogs.

it's in your spinal cord, it's in your fingertips: practices of tools and craft in building software

Drawing on interviews with 12 software engineers, we investigate the relationship between developers and the tools they use to build code through the lens of craft. We analyze different conceptualizations of craft in accounts of software development, including craft as a process of building, craft as materiality, and craft as a community of practice. By working through these different facets of craft, we investigate tensions of perceiving coding work as, on the one hand, highly rational, and on the other, deeply personal and embodied. In working through these tensions of code as abstract and concrete, cerebral and intuitive, we note implications for craft, both as a theory relevant to computer human interaction, and for paradigms of education in computer science.

Getting from here to there: information practices of immigrants in urban environments

This project addresses the information practices of the immigrant community in terms of the processes related to gaining, interpreting and disseminating information about host neighborhoods in urban environments. Using in-depth interviews and participatory mapping (a methodology involving analysis of maps produced by interviewees), accounts of immigrants are analyzed to gain an of how migrational individuals with limited access to formal information networks navigate urban environments. Main themes from initial analysis include: the use of multiple information sources to learn about local environments, the influence of personal experiences (such as work history) on interpreting surroundings, and the importance of wandering in becoming familiar with new environments. Further work in this area can lead to important developments for public libraries and acculturation programs in terms of providing improved services for the immigrant community.

When "organizing becomes an extension of your brain": DJs, music libraries and information practices

As contemporary discourses of technology move from identifying information overload as a general concern to designing applications and conducting investigations that understand information overload on a more granular level, it becomes increasingly important to conceptualize what information overload means in everyday life. This paper addresses issues of being overwhelmed by media, looking specifically at a group of people for whom the stakes of media organization are quite high, namely DJs. With the emergence of digitally-stored music, music enthusiasts have been able to build increasingly large collections, to the extent that users frequently become overwhelmed by tasks of organizing their collections and creating usable playlists. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 13 DJs, I examine obstacles in organizing digital music. With thick descriptions of how music technologies are and are not meeting the needs of a high-use groups, this paper contributes to human information behavior research on organizational practices in everyday life within a particular community of practice.