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Most studies pertaining to social tagging focus on one platform or platform type, thus limiting the scope of their findings. The purpose of this paper is to explore social tagging practices across four platforms in relation to cultural products associated with the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming.

A layered and nested case study approach was used to analyse data from four online platforms: Goodreads, Last.fm, WordPress, and public library social discovery platforms. The top-level case study focuses on the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming and its derivative products. The analysis of tagging practices in each of the four online platforms is nested within the top-level case study. Casino Royale was conceptualized as a cultural product (the book), its derived products (e.g. movies, theme songs), as well as a keyword in blogs. A qualitative, inductive, and context-specific approach was chosen to identify commonalities in tagging practices across platforms whilst taking into account the uniqueness of each platform.

The four platforms comprise different communities of users, each platform with its own cultural norms and tagging practices. Traditional access points in the library catalogues focused on the subject, location, and fictitious characters of the book. User-generated content across the four platforms emphasized historical events and periods related to the book, and highlighted more subjective access points, such as recommendations, tone, mood, reaction, and reading experience. Revealing shifts occur in the tags between the original book and its cultural derivatives: Goodreads and library catalogues focus almost exclusively on the book, while Last.fm and WordPress make in addition cross-references to a wider range of different cultural products, including books, movies, and music. The analyses also yield apparent similarities in certain platforms, such as recurring terms, phrasing and composite or multifaceted tags, as well as a strong presence of genre-related terms for the book and music.

The layered and nested case study approach presents a more comprehensive theoretical viewpoint and methodological framework by which to explore the study of user-generated metadata pertaining to a range of related cultural products across a variety of online platforms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changing research practices of historians, and to contrast their experiences of serendipity in physical and digital information environments.

In total, 20 historians in Southwestern Ontario participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed employing grounded theory. The analytical approach included memoing, the constant comparative method, and three phases of coding.

Four main themes were identified: agency, the importance of the physical library experience, digital information environments, and novel heuristic forms of serendipity. The authors found that scholars frequently used active verbs to describe their experience with serendipity. This suggests that agency is more involved in the experience than previous conceptualizations of serendipity have suggested, and led us to coin the term “incidental serendipity.” Other key findings include the need for digital tools to incorporate the context surrounding primary sources, and also to provide an organizational context much like what is encountered by patrons in library stacks.

The increased emphasis on digital materials should not come at the expense of the physical information environment, where historians often encounter serendipitous finds. A fine balance and a greater integration between digital and physical resources is needed in order to support scholars’ continued ability to make connections between materials. By showing the active role that historians take in their serendipitous encounters, this paper suggests that historical training is critical for eliciting incidental serendipitous encounters. The authors propose a novel approach, one that examines verbs in serendipity accounts.

Social media are central to the creation and maintenance of social relations, including romantic relations. While much of the scholarship has examined how social media play a role in the initiation and maintenance of romantic relations, little is known about their role in romantic dissolution. This chapter fills this gap by examining the kinds of strategies young adults employ to cope with the aftermath of a romantic breakup complicated by Facebook. Based on qualitative analysis of 10 interviews with young adults, the authors propose a typology of Facebook coping strategies for romantic breakups. The typology includes seven types of coping strategies with 12 subtopics and 25 specific actions linked to the subtopics. The authors find that those coping with a breakup engage in erasing and avoiding breakup reminders and digital traces, as they perceive them as hurtful. They regulate their use of Facebook and limit Facebook communication with the ex. An important coping strategy used was to express their emotions via Facebook content, often aimed at the ex-partner. They also use Facebook to seek support and new information about the ex, including about potential new romantic interests. Others preferred to avoid information about the ex and either deleted the ex and their friends or chose to unsubscribe to updates. Coping strategies included preventative measures such as changing passwords, blocking the ex, and adjusting privacy settings. We found our participants engaged in both goal-directed and emotionally based coping strategies. Yet, the findings suggest a tendency to rely more extensively on goal-directed coping strategies by actively addressing the breakup stressor. We also note that coping strategies specific to Facebook are more likely to be used than traditional offline forms of coping. This exploratory study serves as a starting point to better understand the role that Facebook plays in mediating online behaviors following a romantic dissolution, such that these strategies can be subsequently evaluated in terms of usefulness in clinical coping recommendations.