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To review and discuss significant developments in the evolving Web environment and how these developments impact librarians and library services.
Abstract
Purpose
To review and discuss significant developments in the evolving Web environment and how these developments impact librarians and library services.
Design/methodology/approach
The article discusses how four major information industry trends, personalization, self service, mobility, and technology have helped to create a Web environment that is transforming how users are interacting with information and how libraries must adapt.
Findings
The article puts these four trends in the context of library systems and services, illustrating how the role of the librarian has evolved.
Originality/value
The examination of the evolving web as it relates to librarians and library services can provide a unique perspective for librarians who are thinking about, or are in the process of evaluating the effectiveness of services to users.
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Terry Ballard and Edward Donnald
The purpose of this paper is to encourage other libraries to provide access to their own original content via the web. By way of case study, the process of identifying materials…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to encourage other libraries to provide access to their own original content via the web. By way of case study, the process of identifying materials, scanning them and creating web access to original content will be explored.
Design/methodology/approach
To implement a book digitization project, three major things need to be present. The library must own material that was published prior to 1923, making them safely out of copyright in the USA; the library needs access to server space on the web and the library needs to own scanning equipment.
Findings
This project demonstrated that a library does not necessarily need to obtain grant funding to begin an effective and successful digitization program. It also revealed a few things that would improve the process and enhance the return on investment.
Originality/value
A library meeting, the criteria will be able to enjoy the considerable benefits of a digitization project which include favourable attention from researchers when access to original content is provided, and a greater selection of source materials for their institutional community.
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Amy Kroska and Marshall R. Schmidt
We examine the effect of an offender’s occupational status on criminal sentencing recommendations using a vignette experiment that crosses the offender’s occupational status…
Abstract
Purpose
We examine the effect of an offender’s occupational status on criminal sentencing recommendations using a vignette experiment that crosses the offender’s occupational status (white-collar vs blue- or pink-collar) and the crime label, with one label (overcharging) associated with white-collar offenders and the other (robbery) associated with lower-status offenders. We expect negative and potent post-crime impressions of the offender and the crime to increase perceptions of criminality and, in turn, the recommended sentence. We term these negative and potent impressions “criminality scores.” Drawing on affect control theory (ACT) impression formation equations, we generate criminality scores for the offenders and the crimes in each condition and, using those scores as a guide, predict that white-collar offenders and offenders described as “robbing” will receive a higher recommended sentence. We also expect eight perceptual factors central to theories of judicial sentencing mediate these relationships.
Methodology
We test these hypotheses with a vignette experiment, administered to female university students, that varies a male offender’s occupation and the word used to describe his crime.
Findings
Consistent with our ACT-derived predictions, white-collar offenders and offenders described as robbing received a higher recommended sentence. But, contrary to predictions, only one perceptual factor, crime seriousness, mediated these effects, and the mediation was partial.
Research Implications
Our findings suggest the perpetrator’s post-crime appearance of negativity and power offer a valuable supplement to theories of judicial sentencing.
Originality
This study is the first to test the hypothesis that sentencing disparities may be due to the way the perpetrators’ sociodemographic attributes shape their post-crime appearance of negativity and power.
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Amy Paros, Michael Taylor and Robert M. Yawson
The purpose of this paper is to provide an experiential learning exercise that develops student understanding of social networks within organizations. Understanding these networks…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an experiential learning exercise that develops student understanding of social networks within organizations. Understanding these networks can foster complete access to information and inclusive decision-making that translates into career success.
Design/methodology/approach
This experiential learning classroom exercise supports all student learning styles using a puzzle to teach students to apply social network theory toward real-world decision-making. This exercise is best used in small and medium-sized classrooms with ideally 15–40 students. This simulation could be used during 50 up through 120-min class sessions.
Findings
The game-like environment created by this exercise helps extend real-world understanding that may traditionally be lost with a lecture. Components within this simulation provide balanced consideration for many different learning styles. This exercise has been used successfully within a graduate-level leadership and decision-making course in at least ten sessions over 5 years.
Practical implications
This is a real-time theory to practice application exercise where an experiential activity is deployed for students to understand the practical implications and application of a theoretical concept.
Social implications
Organizations have internal social networks connecting employees. These connections are how information is dispersed and knowledge is shared. When these networks are understood and effectively used, it can result in more comprehensive problem-solving, valuable collaboration and the maximization of subject matter expertise within the organization.
Originality/value
This is a “how-to” teaching and pedagogical exercise. It is original with the benefit of its flexibility and adaptability in the classroom.
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Avichai Shuv-Ami and Tamar Shalom
Service quality and patient satisfaction have a significant impact in healthcare. Health organizations have also begun to put the customer at the center and meet his or her needs…
Abstract
Purpose
Service quality and patient satisfaction have a significant impact in healthcare. Health organizations have also begun to put the customer at the center and meet his or her needs. This study aims to indicate the need to develop a simple and appropriate scale for measuring quality of service in hospital emergency rooms.
Design/methodology/approach
The validity and reliability of the scale were established by three separated and independent studies that used exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and correlation analysis to test the nomological network validity of the scale. The data was collected randomly from an internet panel that comprises more than 50,000 people over the age of 18. The research is based on 1,002 Israelis who accompanied a patient to a hospital emergency room.
Findings
In total, 23 items comprised the new scale of emergency room service quality with three dimensions: “staff professionalism”, “staff caring” and “tangibles”. The internal reliability for the total scale was high with Cronbach's α of 0.97.
Research limitations/implications
In Israel, there is a state health system, and therefore, it is necessary to check the scale elsewhere in the world.
Originality/value
The measurement of service quality for emergency room needed to be focused on the unique charters of the service provided in hospitals’ emergency room. The findings show that a client may assesses the service their loved one has received to decides whether to return to the same hospital and recommend it to his or her friends.
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Avichai Shuv-Ami, Anat Toder Alon, Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro and Hans Ruediger Kaufmann
This study, an empirical research, aims to construct and validate a new love-hate scale for sports fans and tested its antecedents and consequences.
Abstract
Purpose
This study, an empirical research, aims to construct and validate a new love-hate scale for sports fans and tested its antecedents and consequences.
Design/methodology/approach
The scale was designed and validated in three separate empirical survey studies in the context of Israeli professional basketball. In Phase 1, the authors verified the factorial validity of the proposed scale using exploratory factor analysis. In Phase 2, the authors conducted a confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling. In Phase 3, the authors tested the nomological network validity of the scale.
Findings
The findings show that fans' involvement, loyalty and fandom significantly predicted their love–hate, which in turn significantly predicted self-reported fan aggression, fans' acceptance of fan aggression, price premium and frequency of watching games.
Research limitations/implications
The model was tested on a relatively small sample of fans within a single country. This lack of generalizability should be addressed in future studies by examining the model in other sports contexts and countries.
Practical implications
This study suggests that understanding the properties of the love–hate measure may assist team sports clubs in identifying, preventing and controlling potential fan aggression.
Originality/value
The study provides three incremental contributions above and beyond existing research: it develops and validates a scale for measuring the phenomenon of sports fans' love and hate as mixed emotions; it makes it possible to capture the variations in the magnitude of fans' love–hate; and it relates fans' love–hate to important attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.
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Amy Jayne Eastham and Diane Cox
The purpose of this paper, practice-based mixed methods small-scale study, is to explore the design features of a “dementia friendly” acute ward environment and, staff views on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper, practice-based mixed methods small-scale study, is to explore the design features of a “dementia friendly” acute ward environment and, staff views on the implications of daily activity engagement for patients with dementia.
Design/methodology/approach
Eight staff members of the multidisciplinary team who work full time on an acute “dementia friendly” ward completed semi-structured questionnaires. Thematic analysis explored responses to the open-ended questions, and a further environmental assessment tool rated features of the “dementia friendly” ward design, on promoting aspects of well-being in patients with dementia.
Findings
Six overarching themes were found. These included: contrasting ward colours; clear ward signage; positive staff interaction; memorabilia, and activity rooms and items, had a positive influence on patient interaction, well-being and engagement in daily activities. The audit scores were rated highly for various aspects of the ward design. These included: the ward design promoting patient interaction, well-being, mobility, orientation, continence, eating and drinking and calm and security.
Research limitations/implications
This practice-based small-scale study highlights the importance that a “dementia friendly” ward environment may have on patient engagement and well-being, from a daily activity perspective. Further research into the key aspects of design that enable meaningful daily activity engagement is required.
Practical implications
This study supports staff perceived views of the positive influence that “dementia friendly” design may have for patients with dementia. Both the physical design modifications of the ward and staff interaction were highlighted as positively influencing patient well-being, and daily activity engagement. Staff members also felt that they needed to balance the clinical ward priorities, with the contextual requirements of patients with dementia, to establish an effective “dementia friendly” ward.
Originality/value
The value of this research is the combined consideration of an environmental assessment tool and qualitative interviews with members of the multidisciplinary team.
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Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to describe a new supervised machine learning study on the prediction of meeting participant’s personal note-taking from spoken dialogue acts uttered…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe a new supervised machine learning study on the prediction of meeting participant’s personal note-taking from spoken dialogue acts uttered shortly before writing.
Design/methodology/approach
This novel approach of providing cues for finding important meeting events that would be worth recording in a meeting summary looks at temporal overlaps of multiple people’s note-taking. This research uses data of 124 meetings taken from the AMI meeting corpus.
Findings
The results show that several machine learning methods that the authors compared were able to classify the data significantly better than a random approach. The best model, decision trees with feature selection, achieved 70 per cent accuracy for the binary distinction writing for any number of participants simultaneously or no writing, whereas the performance for a more fine-grained distinction of the number of participants taking notes showed only about 30 per cent accuracy.
Research limitations/implications
The findings suggest that meeting participants take personal notes in accordance with the utterance of previously uttered speech acts, particularly dialogue acts about disfluencies and assessments appear to influence the note-taking activities. However, further research is necessary to examine other domains and to determine in what way this behaviour is helpful as a feature source for automatic meeting summarisation, which is useful for more efficiently satisfying people’s information needs about meeting contents.
Practical implications
The reader of an Information Systems (IS) journal would be interested in this paper because the work described and the findings gained could lead to the development of novel information systems that facilitate the work for businesses and individuals. Innovative meeting capture and retrieval applications, satisfying automatic summaries of important meeting points and sophisticated note-taking tools that suggest content automatically could make people’s daily lives more convenient in the future.
Social implications
There are wider implications in terms of productivity and efficiency. Business value is increased for the organisation, as human knowledge is built more or less automatically. There are also cognitive and social implications for individuals and possibly an impact on the society as a whole. It is also important for globalisation, social media and mobile devices.
Originality/value
The topic is new and original, as there has not been much research on it yet. Similar work was carried out recently (Murray, 2015; Bothin and Clough 2014). This is why it is relevant to an IS journal and interesting for the reader. In particular, dialogue acts about disfluencies and assessments appear to influence the note-taking activities. This behaviour is helpful as a feature source for automatic meeting summarisation, which is useful for more efficiently satisfying people’s information needs about meeting contents.
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Michael De Martinis, Amy Aw and Er Meng Kim
This study adds to the literature on the audit expectations gap (AEG) by examining the extent to which lower levels of user cognisance of the role, objectives, and limitations of…
Abstract
This study adds to the literature on the audit expectations gap (AEG) by examining the extent to which lower levels of user cognisance of the role, objectives, and limitations of an audit are associated with unreasonable audit expectations and perceptions. Cognisance is proxied by respondents' demographic characteristics including profession, work experience, university qualification, age, and gender. Respondents include 130 Singaporean auditors, prepares, and users of audited financial reports. Results indicate that the AEG prevails where respondents have relatively little business work experience, and no university qualifications. This supports the premise that lower levels of cognisance of the audit function are associated with the AEG The study also argues that in obtaining results consistent with prior AEG studies set in other countries, the AEG is not affected or constrained by political, legal, social, or economic factors. The study recommends that the accounting professions continue to address the AEG by further educating the public on the role and limitations of an audit, extending the auditor's current responsibilities to match users' expectations, and ensuring the existence and monitoring of audit quality.
Karen R. Johnson and Kasha Williams
In the next decade, it is estimated that a large percentage of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) will become of working age. With this projection, there is an urgent…
Abstract
In the next decade, it is estimated that a large percentage of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) will become of working age. With this projection, there is an urgent need to expand employment opportunities and to find ways to support individuals with ASD on the job. However, very minimal research investigates organizational practices needed to integrate individuals with autism in the workplace successfully. Training is one company practice that can significantly impact the behavior and work outcomes of individuals with ASD. Despite the importance of training interventions, research focused on relevant training techniques for individuals with ASD is lacking and fragmented. This chapter summarizes the types of training that are appropriate and most often utilized to foster skill development and aid employment outcomes for Generation A.
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