Lisa M. Given

Social media use among patients and caregivers: a scoping review

Objective To map the state of the existing literature evaluating the use of social media in patient and caregiver populations. Design Scoping review. Data sources Medline, CENTRAL, ERIC, PubMed, CINAHL Plus Full Text, Academic Search Complete, Alt Health Watch, Health Source, Communication and Mass Media Complete, Web of Knowledge and ProQuest (2000–2012). Study selection Studies reporting primary research on the use of social media (collaborative projects, blogs/microblogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual worlds) by patients or caregivers. Data extraction Two reviewers screened studies for eligibility; one reviewer extracted data from relevant studies and a second performed verification for accuracy and completeness on a 10% sample. Data were analysed to describe which social media tools are being used, by whom, for what purpose and how they are being evaluated. Results Two hundred eighty-four studies were included. Discussion forums were highly prevalent and constitute 66.6% of the sample. Social networking sites (14.8%) and blogs/microblogs (14.1%) were the next most commonly used tools. The intended purpose of the tool was to facilitate self-care in 77.1% of studies. While there were clusters of studies that focused on similar conditions (eg, lifestyle/weight loss (12.7%), cancer (11.3%)), there were no patterns in the objectives or tools used. A large proportion of the studies were descriptive (42.3%); however, there were also 48 (16.9%) randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Among the RCTs, 35.4% reported statistically significant results favouring the social media intervention being evaluated; however, 72.9% presented positive conclusions regarding the use of social media. Conclusions There is an extensive body of literature examining the use of social media in patient and caregiver populations. Much of this work is descriptive; however, with such widespread use, evaluations of effectiveness are required. In studies that have examined effectiveness, positive conclusions are often reported, despite non-significant findings.

The Academic and the Everyday: Investigating the Overlap in Mature Undergraduates' Information-Seeking Behaviors.

Abstract This study uses in-depth qualitative interviews to explore the information seeking behavior of 25 mature undergraduates at one Canadian university. It explores the complex interweaving of these students’ everyday and academic information needs in light of Reijo Savolainen’s framework for the study of everyday life information seeking. Findings include the role of social and cultural capital in these students’ information seeking, the diverse ways that everyday and academic contexts inform one another, and the importance of not separating the everyday from other life situations in studies of individuals’ information behaviors.

Qualitative research in evidence‐based practice: a valuable partnership

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the nature of the qualitative research paradigm, with a particular emphasis on the marginalization of qualitative approaches within the current discourse of evidence‐based librarianship.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents examples of qualitative research in the field of library and information studies, reviews the discourse of EBL as it relates to qualitative research, and also draws on debates in the health sciences on the role of qualitative research in evidence‐based practice.Findings – EBL levels of evidence must evolve to include qualitative research, as these methods best suit many of the research questions addressed in LIS contexts.Originality/value – There is currently little acknowledgement of the value of qualitative research for EBL; this paper dispels this notion, and calls for EBL to embrace these methods.

What’s Old Is New Again: The Reconvergence of Libraries, Archives, and Museums in the Digital Age

As cultural institutions begin to share physical and human resources, and as new technologies reshape approaches to access and preservation, educational programs must respond in kind. However, it is important to ask in what ways the current convergence of libraries, archives, and museums marks a return to tradition rather than a departure from it. Are new technologies and curricula leading these three fields of study and practice into new territory, or do they represent new stages in an ongoing history of acquisition, documentation, representation, and access to the enduring knowledge of our communities? This article examines the historic convergence between these institutions, with a focus on museums and libraries as repositories of cultural artifacts. The long‐standing epistemological links between libraries and museums are explored using archival records and examining two contemporary cases, pointing to the reconvergence of a traditional shared history.

Parents as coresearchers at home : using an observational method to document young children's use of technology

This paper discusses the use of observational video recordings to document young children’s use of technology in their homes. Although observational research practices have been used for decades, often with video-based techniques, the participant group in this study (i.e., very young children) and the setting (i.e., private homes), provide a rich space for exploring the benefits and limitations of qualitative observation. The data gathered in this study point to a number of key decisions and issues that researchers must face in designing observational research, particularly where non-researchers (in this case, parents) act as surrogates for the researcher at the data collection stage. The involvement of parents and children as research videographers in the home resulted in very rich and detailed data about children’s use of technology in their daily lives. However, limitations noted in the dataset (e.g., image quality) provide important guidance for researchers developing projects using similar methods in future. The paper provides recommendations for future observational designs in similar settings and/or with similar participant groups.This article discusses the use of observational video recordings to document young children’s use of technology in their homes. Although observational research practices have been used for decades, often with video-based techniques, the participant group in this study (i.e., very young children) and the setting (i.e., private homes) provide a rich space for exploring the benefits and limitations of qualitative observation. The data gathered in this study point to a number of key decisions and issues that researchers must face in designing observational research, particularly where nonresearchers (in this case, parents) act as surrogates for the researcher at the data collection stage. The involvement of parents and children as research videographers in the home resulted in very rich and detailed data about children’s use of technology in their daily lives. However, limitations noted in the data set (e.g., image quality) provide important guidance for researchers developing projects using similar methods in future. The article provides recommendations for future observational designs in similar settings and/or with similar participant groups.

Interorganisational partnerships and knowledge sharing: the perspective of non-profit organisations (NPOs)

Purpose – This paper aims first to identify key interorganisational partnership types among non-profit organisations (NPOs) and second to determine how knowledge sharing takes place within each type of partnership. Results explore the value of social media specifically in facilitating external relationships between NPOs, firms and the communities they serve. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical qualitative analysis of exploratory interviews with 16 Canadian NPOs generates a non-exhaustive classification of partnership types emerging from these organisations, and their defining characteristics in the context of interorganisational knowledge sharing. Findings – Overall eight categories of partnerships from the sampled NPOs emerged from the analysis of the data. These include business partnerships, sector partnerships, community partnerships, government partnerships, expert partnerships, endorsement partnerships, charter partnerships and hybrid partnerships. Using examples from interviews, the sharing of ...

Principled, Transformational Leadership: Analyzing the Discourse of Leadership in the Development of Librarianship's Core Competences

Using discourse analysis, this article explores three questions: (a) Why was “principled, transformational leadership” the leadership style added to Core Competences? (b) What was the discourse of leadership in the profession surrounding the development of the Core Competences? (c) How might this competence affect LIS education? And what measures, if any, have MLIS programs taken to address it? Informants involved in the development of the Core Competences indicated that leadership was added because it is an important issue for LIS professionals and it links “transformational” to professional change; however, they were unable to provide a clear explanation for the descriptor “principled.” Discursively, leadership is strongly tied to discourses of management, change, and youth. Preparing leaders is a stated goal of most ALA-accredited LIS programs; however, the discourse on leadership within the profession indicates that schools of LIS may be paying more attention to leadership within their curricula, specifically in management classes.

The effect of spelling and retrieval system familiarity on search behavior in online public access catalogs: A mixed methods study

A huge number of informal messages are posted every day in social network sites, blogs, and discussion forums. Emotions seem to be frequently important in these texts for expressing friendship, showing social support or as part of online arguments. Algorithms to identify sentiment and sentiment strength are needed to help understand the role of emotion in this informal communication and also to identify inappropriate or anomalous affective utterances, potentially associated with threatening behavior to the self or others. Nevertheless, existing sentiment detection algorithms tend to be commercially oriented, designed to identify opinions about products rather than user behaviors. This article partly fills this gap with a new algorithm, SentiStrength, to extract sentiment strength from informal English text, using new methods to exploit the de facto grammars and spelling styles of cyberspace. Applied to MySpace comments and with a lookup table of term sentiment strengths optimized by machine learning, SentiStrength is able to predict positive emotion with 60.6p accuracy and negative emotion with 72.8p accuracy, both based upon strength scales of 1–5. The former, but not the latter, is better than baseline and a wide range of general machine learning approaches.

Collaboration, Information Seeking, and Technology Use: A Critical Examination of Humanities Scholars’ Research Practices

Despite a rise in collaborative research, resulting in complex collaborative information seeking (CIS), few studies have explored the CIS experiences of academics in the humanities. This research explores the CIS activities of digital humanities scholars within the broader context of their collaborative research practices. Data from qualitative semi-structured interviews and guided interactions with digital tools are analysed using the conceptual lens of “parallel work” to best understand scholars’ engagement with CIS. The results demonstrate the complexities of research contexts and how CIS is shaped by individuals’ research needs, technology use and general information behaviours. The findings demonstrate how digital tools enable and constrain collaborative information work, and show how availability, ease of use, and other peoples’ activities often determine which tools and seeking practices are used in collaboration. Additionally, while scholars in the digital humanities work collaboratively, they continue to work as solo scholars, at times working quite independently within a collaborative project. Of particular note are results that show a lack of group-based information seeking practices within collaborative research practices. The model of Parallel Research Practice is proposed as a way to understand how digital humanities scholars engage in collaborative information activities.

Knowledge Management and Social Media: A Case Study of Two Public Libraries in Canada

It is important for all types of organisations including non-profit organisations (NPOs) to manage knowledge for effective and efficient utilisation of resources. Technology is considered as one of the key enablers of knowledge management (KM) practices but it can be costly to develop and implement in an organisation. With the advent of social media, NPOs such as public libraries have the opportunity to harness the power of technology for KM purposes as it is considered a low cost medium. A study was conducted, using an exploratory qualitative interview technique, in two contrasting public libraries: one is a large urban public library, and the other is a small rural public library. The data were analysed using a grounded theory approach informed by a social constructionist theoretical framework. This paper presents comparative findings from these case examples on their understanding of KM as a concept and their use of social media in management of knowledge. Results show that social media are valuable KM tools in public libraries, not only when directed externally for the purpose of promotion, but also to foster engagement with the public and collaborative work within the organisation.