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This paper theorizes ubiquitous computing as a novel configuration of the archive. Such a configuration is characterized by shifts in agency underlying archival mechanics and a pronounced rhythmic diminution of such mechanics in which the user's experiential present tense is rendered fundamentally historical. In doing so, this paper troubles the relationship between: archival mechanics such as appraisal, accession and access; the archive as a site of historical knowledge production and the pervasiveness of data-driven daily life.

By employing conceptual analysis, I analyze a classic vision of ubiquitous computing to describe the historicization of the present tense in an increasingly computerized world. The conceptual analysis employed here draws on an interdisciplinary set of literature from library and information science, philosophy and computing fields such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and ubiquitous computing.

I present the concept of the data perfect tense, which is derived from the future perfect tense: the “will have had” construction. It refers to a historicized, data-driven and fundamentally archival present tense characterizing the user's lived world in which the goal of action is to have had created data for future unspecified use. The data perfect reifies ubiquitous computing as an archive, or a site of historical knowledge production predicated on sets of potential statements derived from data generated, appraised, acquisitioned and made accessible through and by means of pervasive “smart” objects.

This paper provides foundational consideration of ubiquitous computing as a configuration of the archive through the analysis of its temporalities: a rhythmic diminution that renders users' experiential present tenses as fundamentally historical, constructed through the agency of smart devices. In doing so, it: contributes to ongoing work within HCI seeking to understand the relationship between HCI and history; introduces concepts relevant to the analysis of novel technological ecologies in terms of archival theory; and constitutes preliminary interdisciplinary steps towards highlighting the relevance of theories of the archive and archival mechanics for critiquing sociotechnical concerns such as surveillance capitalism.

Pharmacy sales of over‐the‐counter medicines in the UK represent an economically significant and important mechanism by which customers self‐medicate. Sales are supervised in pharmacies, but this paper seeks to question whether patients' electronic health records (EHRs) – due to be introduced nationally – could be used, ethically, by pharmacists to ensure safe medicines sales.

Using theoretical arguments, three areas of ethical concern are identified and explored in relation to pharmacists' access to EHRs‐consequentialsim, analogies and confidentiality/privacy.

Consequentialist arguments include positive benefits to customer's welfare and control of medicine of abuse, but negative economic healthcare burdens and consequences due to potentially increased or paradoxically, decreased presentation of patients to doctors. Socially accepted analogous practices – credit checks, existing pharmacy access to information and hospital treatment – are then argued to be ethically relevant and supportive of access. Privacy and confidentiality are then considered as reasons not to allow EHR access. A contrasting view is that pharmacy access to EHRs is another form of surveillance and hence the question of pharmacists' assess to EHRs may be answered negatively by empirical research that locates pharmacy customers as expert users and identifies confidentiality and privacy concerns about information technology in healthcare more generally.

This paper offers a unique and valuable contribution to the debate about healthcare professionals' role‐based access to patients' medical records and offers a reflection on the ethical concerns surrounding patient information and the rival concerns of patient qua customer autonomy and safety.

This chapter lays out a research agenda in the sociology of work for a type of data and organizational intermediary: work platforms. As an example, the authors employ a case study of the adoption of automated hiring platforms (AHPs) in which the authors distinguish between promises and existing practices. The authors draw on two main methods to do so: critical discourse analysis and affordance critique. The authors collected and examined a mix of trade, popular press, and corporate archives; 135 texts in total. The analysis reveals that work platforms offer five core affordances to management: (1) structured data fields optimized for capture and portability within organizations; (2) increased legibility of activity qua data captured inside and outside the workplace; (3) information asymmetry between labor and management; (4) an “ecosystem” design that supports the development of limited-use applications for specific domains; and (5) the standardization of managerial techniques between workplaces. These combine to create a managerial frame for workers as fungible human capital, available on demand and easily ported between job tasks and organizations. While outlining the origin of platform studies within media and communication studies, the authors demonstrate the specific tools the sociology of work brings to the study of platforms within the workplace. The authors conclude by suggesting avenues for future sociological research not only on hiring platforms, but also on other work platforms such as those supporting automated scheduling and customer relationship management.

Describes an empirical study of real estate value estimates in Melbourne, Australia, for the purpose of testing to see if computer generated values are as good as those produced by ordinary manual processes. Describes computer systems, including MRA and a process known as comparables selection, a computer‐based system which is an attempt to emulate the manual comparable sale selection system. Finds that the manual method outperformed that carried out by computers.

Drawing on Lefebvre’s theorization of rhythm, this chapter presents and discusses rhythmanalysis as a philosophical orientation and as an experimental methodology for social, cultural, and historical research. In particular, it innovatively deploys rhythmanalysis to explore and investigate the everyday life of the contemporary university. To this end it, critically reviews the methods (and findings) of a pilot project that aimed to capture the rhythmic nature of the quotidian activities of staff and students at a “modern” university in the West Midlands of England (2017–2018). The novel combination of research methods employed, comprising audio-visually recorded walking interviews, time-lapse photography of three campuses, and of classroom/laboratory/studio teaching sessions, is examined to reveal the affordances of rhythmanalysis qua experimental methodology. The concluding section offers a reflection on the intellectual and practical purchase of the rhythmanalytical project while suggesting the possibility to further develop these innovative methods in order to refine current analyses and understandings of the contemporary university.

This paper describes the piloting of an approach to social services inspection using a range of objective research evidence as part of the Social Services Inspectorate's inspection process in 1997, in eight local authorities in England. The Welsh Centre for Learning Disabilities Applied Research Unit worked with the Social Services Inspectorate to collect details on residential and day services in advance of the inspection process. The paper repeats the findings of this Report and of the collaboration.

This paper aims to propose a toolset that enables individual digital collections owners to satisfy the requirements of aggregators even in cases where their IT and software infrastructure is limited and does not support them inherently. Managers of repositories/digital collections face the challenge of exposing their data via Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to multiple aggregators and conforming to their possibly differing requirements, for example on output metadata schemas and selective harvesting.

The authors developed a software server that is able to wrap existing systems or even metadata records in plain files as OAI-PMH sources. They analysed the functionality of OAI-PMH data providers in a flow of discrete steps and used a software library to modularise the software for these steps so that the whole process can be easily customised to the needs of each pair of OAI-PMH data provider and service provider. The developed server includes a mechanism for the implementation of schema mappings using an XML specification that can be defined by non-IT personnel, for example metadata experts. The server has been applied in various real-life use cases, in particular for providing content to Europeana.

It has been concluded through real-life use cases that it is indeed possible and feasible in practice to expose metadata records of digital collections via OAI-PMH even when the data sources do not support the required protocols and standards. Even advanced OAI-PMH features like selective harvesting can be supported. Mappings between input and output schemas in many practical cases can be implemented entirely or to a large extent as XML specifications by metadata experts instead of software developers.

Exposing data via OAI-PMH to aggregators like Europeana is made feasible/easier for digital collections owners, even when their software infrastructure does not inherently support the required protocols and standards.

The approach is original and applicable in practice to diverse technology environments, effectively addressing the indisputable fact of the heterogeneity of software and systems used to implement digital repositories and collections worldwide.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the favoured and almost ingrained way of managing groups of documents in systems, specifically in electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS), namely the folder, considered by many users as a sine qua non to any information system.

The most significant barrier to successful implementation of EDRMS is “culture” rather than cost. Implicit is a willingness of users to employ EDRM as their method of choice to achieve such an end. Anecdotal evidence and a real case example are shared to explore the approach to developing virtual folders to meet user requirements and organisational needs.

Staffordshire County Council's EDRMS does not employ folders. To save a document, users associate it with a level in the Council's functional business classification scheme (BCS); this is achieved through a series of “saved searches”. Metadata requirements are embedded within the BCS levels and the user chooses a title and functional association for the record.

This is a way of adopting what exists as standard technology within EDRM systems to satisfy a user need. The vital part is to firstly recognise why the barrier existed in the deployment of a functional classification scheme and further to move beyond the “face value” of why the users performed a particular methodology. More controlled and detailed research is required beyond the work that has been completed.

This paper aims to provoke thought around the need to understand perceptions around documents, records and the systems, in particular EDRM systems, that manage them.

Many libraries in research organizations and in industry operate current awareness services of one kind or another, ranging from the circulation of copies of periodicals to the publication of information bulletins and the personal notification of items of interest to individuals. In the latter case the subject interests of users are recorded and the information staff, when scanning the incoming literature, use these records to match users' interests to documentary input.