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Alison E. Adams is a Sociology PhD student at the University of Florida. Her research interests center on social movements, political sociology, and environmental sociology. She is currently involved in a collaborative research project on the environmental movement in communist Czechoslovakia and post-communist Czech Republic. She has recently published in the Sociological Quarterly, American Behavioral Scientist, and Sociological Inquiry.

Existing research indicates that collective identity is critical in sustaining social movements, especially in the face of significant opposition. We extend this literature by analyzing the ways collective identity evolves and develops over time to combat external barriers and obstacles. Drawing from a unique dataset on activists in the post-communist Czech environmental movement, we analyze how women rallied around their gendered identity to protest against nuclear power. Our analysis focuses on the case of the South Bohemian Mothers (Jihočeské matky), an organization that rallied specifically around the protection of children and healthy communities. The activists faced extensive obstacles including: post-communist patriarchal institutions and sexism; the South Bohemian Daddies, a male-dominated pro-nuclear countermovement; and pervasive anti-environmentalist sentiments. Our results highlight the complex and evolutionary nature of collective identity and the role it can play in sustaining activism in the face of external challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significance of value co-creation to the UK animal healthcare sector from the perspective of the key industry stakeholders: clients, veterinarians and paraprofessionals.

Value co-creation constructs in the sector were identified and measured using a mixed methods approach comprised of qualitative NVivo© thematic analysis of depth interviews (n=13) and quantitative exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (n=271).

Qualitative results revealed nine underlying dimensions regarding service delivery in the sector: trustworthiness, communication, value for money, empathy, bespoke, integrated care, tangibles, accessibility and outcome driven service. EFA of professional survey data loaded onto seven latent factors, with strong value co-creation dimensions identified.

The sampling process is sufficiently representative and diverse to present meaningful and valuable results, however, surveying should be extended to include the client group. Due to the originality of the research replication of the study will be beneficial to the broader understanding and application of value co-creation to the high-involvement services of animal healthcare.

Recognition of the importance of value co-creation to the sector should encourage professional stakeholders to develop and adopt integrated models of service provision and to provide improved levels of service quality.

The paper makes an original contribution to knowledge regarding value co-creation in respect of high-involvement service provision. Its findings should be of value to academics interested in value co-creation in service sectors as well as animal healthcare practitioners seeking to offer better value and quality service provision.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2016.

The paper provides information about each source, describes the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

This paper aims to investigate different ways in which faculty members of sustainability-related departments in universities across the world perceive, understand and define sustainability and how these definitions are linked to their demographics and epistemological beliefs.

Scholars from different disciplines investigate the sustainability of social-ecological systems from different perspectives. Such differences in the understanding of, and approaches to, sustainability have created ambiguity within the field and may weaken its effectiveness, impact and reputation as a field of research. To contribute to the discussion about sustainability definition, a survey was conducted involving university faculty members working in sustainability-related academic departments around the world. Participants’ responses were analyzed using SPSS 24.0 involving descriptive and inferential statistics and principle component analysis. Additionally, responses to open-ended questions were qualitatively analyzed.

Factor analysis on sustainability definition items reveal four emergent universal definitions of sustainability, labeled as Environmentalism concerns, Common understanding, neo-Malthusian environmentalism and Sustainability as well-being. Statistical analyses indicate that individuals from developed countries are more likely to define sustainability as Environmentalism and Common understanding; however, individuals from developing countries tend to define sustainability as well-being. Also, more heavily engaged scholars in interdisciplinary research of sustainability are more likely to perceive sustainability as Common understanding. Logistic Regression models demonstrate a connection between epistemological perspectives of researchers and sustainability definitions. Qualitative content analysis indicates that interdisciplinarity and collaboration are the most common challenges to sustainability research.

The findings of this study demonstrate disconnects between scholars from developing and developed countries in understanding and defining sustainability, and these disconnects may present further challenges for global sustainability scholarship.

This chapter begins with a short story based on a personal memory which is about how the interplay between ‘human’ and ‘technology’ may indicate a level of mastery in knowing in practice. The story suggests that ‘human’ and ‘technology’ can perform tasks that could not be performed by only one element. I turn to discuss how papers could be designed to be accepted as ‘scientific’, providing examples of the use of stories in research and explicitly sets ‘story’ in relation to Dewey’s ‘art as experience’. Dewey states that we should pay attention to what a product does with and in experience; something that is relevant for scientific products. Different forms of writing contribute knowledge that lie outside the strict framework of scientific articles. Notwithstanding this, a story needs a framework of some sort if it is to connect to a scientific discourse. To be able to write differently, we need arenas for publications that are accepted within the evaluation systems that govern academic careers. This matters to researchers’ careers and to the relevance of the knowledge that is developed in the scientific community and the relevance of universities as ‘knowledge providers’. If the formal structure of an academic article determines what researchers can say, then the scope of scientific knowledge will be limited. The inclusion of stories can stimulate dialogue, potentially link creative and logical thinking together, and bridge theoretical and practical knowledge. We need stories to heal and unite separated life worlds.