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Aggressive weeding in academic libraries is becoming more commonplace as colleges seek to create student-centered environments and space is at a premium. For one community college in the Southwest United States, several factors required the library to proactively weed its collection within three years. At the same time, the library sought to maintain the circulation of its physical books.

Updating the library’s collection development policy to include robust selection and weeding criteria allowed the library to embark on a revitalization project to remove thousands of outdated or unused items, resulting in a net loss of nearly 32,000 books.

The loss of more than half of the general collection had an unforeseen consequence – a 70% increase in circulation statistics during the three-year deselection project. The case study's results highlight the need for continual maintenance of academic library collections.

The case study is original and not published elsewhere.

Tabletop ‘pen and paper’ role-play games (TTRPGs) can function as spaces of creative experimentation with gender identity through shared storytelling. The last decade has seen an explosion of Actual Play (AP) shows that broadcast recorded gameplay of TTRPGs to online audiences. Neverafter is the 15th season of well-known AP show Dimension 20 and is a horror-themed re-imagining of classic fairy tales through the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. Four of the six player characters are male, based individually on the fairy tales of Pinocchio, Puss in Boots, the Frog Prince, and a (gender-swapped) Mother Goose, adventuring together in a story-world called ‘The Neverafter’. Not only are these versions of the fairy tale characters shaped by the players' own explorations of identity, but as an AP show, this is also layered with the expectations produced by the show's wide fan base. Their diverse gender explorations and their subversion of fairy tale conventions are enabled by the fluency of the players and audience in freely flowing between the framing perspectives of player and character. This chapter will focus on non-binary player Ally Beardsley's creation and performance of Mother Timothy Goose as a gay, elderly, human man as a particularly meaningful case study. This analysis considers how heroic masculinity is reconceptualised in Neverafter through the horror-themed embodiment of fairy tale men in the context of contemporary gender issues.

It has been 50 years since the publication of Studs Terkel’s groundbreaking book, Working, which consists of a compilation of interviews carried out with over 130 workers in the United States. In this chapter, the author revisits this masterpiece, which offers a penetrating analysis of the dehumanization and degradation of work. The author argues that Working is an ode to, and guide for, ethnographic scholarship on work and that it remains as powerful and relevant today as when it was originally published a half of a century ago.

The role of procurement managers is crucial for diffusing sustainability throughout the supply chain. Whether or not they are willing to pay for sustainability is an important and not yet fully understood question. The authors examine antecedents and consequences of their willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainability.

The authors develop a multi-level framework to examine the WTP for sustainability in a B2B context. The authors test this multi-level framework with 372 procurement managers from multiple sectors and countries using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The authors find that individual values of procurement managers and institutional pressures directly, while ethical organizational culture indirectly influence WTP for sustainability. Functional and cognitive competencies of procurement managers improve the sustainability of procurement, but not WTP for sustainability. Importantly, WTP for sustainability directly influences the performance of the procurement function which in turn is positively associated with increased organizational performance.

The study, examining the interplay between individual, organizational and contextual factors, provides empirical evidence on the pivotal role of procurement managers in diffusing sustainability throughout the supply chain. The findings of the study, on the one hand, contribute to the literature on operations management and sustainability, and on the other hand, guide policy and managerial actions.

The objective of the research is to evaluate the carbon footprint of the green asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) supply chain, encompassing the agricultural production to the packaging stage in Italy, as it is the sixth largest producer and the second largest in Europe. It provides an assessment in the province of Foggia and highlights the global perspective of the carbon footprint application in agro-food systems.

The carbon footprint (ISO 14067:2018) considers 1 t of packaged fresh asparagus as a functional unit in the agricultural production and packaging stage and is based on primary data collected in one of the leading companies of asparagus production in the province of Foggia, which markets about 0.21 kt of asparagus per year produced in about 31 ha. Data were integrated with face-to-face in-depth interviews and pre-filled checklists.

Findings show that the carbon footprint of 1 t of packaged fresh asparagus is equivalent to 335.31 kgCO2eq, of which 61% in the agricultural stage and 39% in the packaging one. The majority of the emissions are associated with the fertigation and the diesel consumption for the transportation of workers. Farmers should adopt green electricity so as to reduce the emissions associated with the electric pump for the extraction of water from artesian wells. Moreover, it would be desirable to replace mineral urea phosphate with organic fertilizers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, scholars have not yet investigated the environmental impacts of the green asparagus supply chain, even if it represents one of the most cultivated vegetables worldwide, with a global production that amounts to 8.5 Mt per year.

Small farmers in India are collectivized and legalized as Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) to progress in agri-food value chains as small agribusiness enterprises. FPCs are dependent on timely information for their sustainability and profitability. Mobile apps are a cost-effective form of information and communication technology. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore the major determinants of mobile apps adoption by FPCs.

Quantitative and qualitative data are collected by administering a semi-structured questionnaire and conducting in-depth interviews with board members of 115 FPCs, with a total membership of 30,405 farmers operating in 14 districts of the state of Kerala, India. The logit model is used for quantitative analysis, while dialog mapping is used for qualitative analysis, based on an integrated technology acceptance model and technology organization environment framework.

Logistic regression results evidence that amongst FPC characteristics, while company size and age are significantly impacting apps adoption, there is no significant association between board size, education level, multiple commodities business or export intention of companies on apps adoption. Digital literacy and technical hands-on training for FPC board members are quintessential to facilitate mobile apps adoption.

The findings are pertinent to policymakers to earmark funds for technical handholding and digital upskilling of FPCs. The need for developing comprehensive, location-centric, farmer-friendly apps by agritech companies is evidenced.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a pioneering work in the domain of mobile apps adoption from a farmers’ agribusiness enterprise perspective in an emerging market economy using a mixed-methods approach.

Considering information processing theory, this study aims to examine how big data analytics (BDA) mediates the influence of e-procurement coordination (EPC) and e-procurement transactional (EPT) applications on transparency and accountability (TA) in the procurement processes of firms within the United Arab Emirates' private sector. Furthermore, it investigates the moderating role of information processing capabilities (IPCs) in the relationships among EPC, EPT and BDA to clarify their collective impact on enhancing TA and procurement performance.

Data were collected from procurement and information technology professionals in the UAE’s private sector through a Web-based survey. Established scales were used to assess e-procurement, BDA, TA, procurement performance and IPCs. Data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

Integrating e-procurement with BDA demonstrates the potential to improve TA and procurement performance in the UAE’s private sector. BDA is positively associated with EPC and EPT applications use, contributing to increased procurement TA and enhancing overall procurement performance.

Organizations can enhance procurement TA by adopting e-procurement and BDA technologies.

This study identifies the mediating role of BDA in the relationship between e-procurement and procurement TA. In addition, it investigates the moderating role of IPCs in the relationship between e-procurement and BDA.