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Five years ago the problems being addressed by major educational resources were how to locate and structure a burgeoning universe of Web sites in order to serve their subject and professional communities with useful and relevant content. Today, new challenges, demands and opportunities are emerging: the linking of content with community, static information with dynamic news. Describes the evolution of three educational resources in the social sciences (SOSIG, Biz/Ed and Regard) and their use of personal profiling, distributed contributions and RSS news channels to serve and gather information. Examines the issues that arise from changing user bases and technologies, sustainability and the need for collaboration, data protection and privacy concerns. Analyses the tensions these and other services face as they move toward a model that links the static with the dynamic, content with community.

The purpose of this paper is to generate awareness of and interest in the photovoice method, and help librarians to be more creative in examining user needs, perceptions and behavior and be more effective in conducting outreach to user communities.

Photovice is a qualitative method that combines visuals and narratives in exploring community issues. This paper reviews the photovoice method and discusses its implications in engaging library user communities.

Photovoice is rarely used in library research and practice and only three published studies reported the use of this method. The three studies were reviewed in this paper to offer ideas regarding the potential application of this method in the library profession.

This paper provides an overview of an innovative method and contributes new ideas to library outreach and user engagement.

This conceptual study explicates the dynamic, interlinked relationship between two of the most popular theories in marketing today: psychological ownership (PO) and engagement. The study is set in the sharing economy (SE), where platform business success depends on high levels of engagement by users, both individuals and collectives. The study argues individual PO (iPO) acts as the antecedent to engagement within a dyad of brand and user, and collective PO (cPO) as the antecedent to collective engagement by communities of users.

This conceptual study synthesizes PO theory and engagement theory to produce a PO–engagement framework. The authors adopt a dual-level perspective encompassing individual- and group-level phenomena in the SE and employ examples from practice to illustrate their arguments.

PO acts as the antecedent to the positively valenced disposition and engagement activities of actors in the SE. iPO manifests as engagement within a dyad of brand and user. Outcomes include brand love and contributions to brand reputation and service offerings. Collective PO manifests as engagement within a community or collective. Outcomes include community-oriented peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing for the benefit of others.

This study offers a dynamic framework of PO and engagement in the SE, the PO–engagement framework. The authors contribute to PO and engagement literature studies in marketing by illustrating how a platform user's attachment to targets in the SE motivates emergence of PO, and how different types of engagement manifest from different types of PO.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the types of roles that Twitter played in digital libraries (DLs) and their relationships in building DL online communities.

A mixed method analysis of DLs’ tweets was conducted to identify the usage, roles of Twitter in DL communities and relationships among the roles. Twitter data from 15 different DLs for one year were extracted, and an open coding analysis was performed to identify types of Twitter roles. Pearson correlation coefficient was applied to examine the relationships among the roles based on word similarities.

The results present 15 types of Twitter roles representing five main categories identified from DL tweets, including information, promotion, related resources, social identity and social connection. Moreover, word similarities analysis identifies more strong relationships among the roles in four main categories (promotion, related resources, social identity and social connection) but less with roles in information.

Characteristics of DL online communities are discussed and compared with physical library communities. Suggestions are proposed for how tweets can be improved to play more effective roles. To build a strong community, it is critical for digital librarians to engage with followers.

This study is a pioneering work that not only analyzes Twitter roles and their relationships in building DL online communities but also offers recommendations in terms of how to build a strong online community and improve Twitter use in DLs.

Online/Digital cultural heritage platforms have the potential to serve as empowering sites and tools for democratic participation, and for promoting social cohesion, acting as convergence points for diverse societal groups. They enable the gathering of multiple voices, including those of minorities and groups often marginalised in mainstream cultural heritage documentation. This research paper examines the ways in which these aspirations of cultural heritage platforms as meeting, learning and dialogic spaces for connecting and empowering online communities have been realised.

Using a qualitative design, interviews were conducted with users of New Zealand’s Auckland War Memorial Museum’s Online Cenotaph. Participants shared their experiences with the platform, perceptions of it as a collective social history resource and views on its role as a participatory space for online communities. They also discussed their expectations for its development as an online space for collective memorialisation.

Interviews revealed that users value Online Cenotaph for placing personal, publicly contributed memories and narratives alongside primary military sources. Participants expressed feelings of civic responsibility, social awareness and a sense of identity and connection through their use and contribution to this online commemorative space. The shift from a one-way flow of information from the Museum towards embracing public contribution embodying a high-trust approach, was a notable finding.

This research underscores the evolving role of museums and other GLAM institutions in recognising the importance of inclusivity, diversity and community participation. It provides insights into how digital cultural heritage social platforms can contribute towards these goals and promote social cohesion. This research is also a starting point for further studies on crowdsourcing and social Web activities on digital cultural heritage platforms as sites of community building through public participation and engagement in historical/cultural heritage narratives.

Many academic libraries use digital humanities projects to disseminate unique materials in their collections; during project planning, librarians will consider platforms, scanning rates and project sustainability. Rarely, though, will academic librarians consider how members from the communities that created the materials can contribute to digitization projects. The purpose of this study is to explain how collaboration with Zuni Pueblo (a Native American tribe in the southwest) community members improved a digital humanities project to disseminate Zuni language learning materials.

Methodologically relying on critical making, which involved community member feedback throughout the process, the Zuni Language Materials Collection will provide digital access to 35 language learning items.

The authors argue that collaboration with members of the community of creation dramatically improved item description, collection discoverability and collection interactivity. This study historicizes CONTENTdm and describes how the team modified this content management system to meet user needs. This project produced a prototype digital collection, collaboratively authored metadata and an interactive portal that invites users to engage with the collection.

Libraries continue to struggle to reach and reflect their diverse users. This study describes a process that others may use and modify to engage nearby Native American communities.

This piece shares a unique strategy of partnering with Native American community members on all aspects of digital humanities project development and design. This case study attempts to fill a gap in the literature as the first study to describe a digitization process using CONTENTdm with a Native American community.

Digital business models are often designed for rapid growth, and some relatively young companies have indeed achieved global scale. However, despite the visibility and importance of this phenomenon, analysis of scale and scalability remains underdeveloped in management literature. When it is addressed, analysis of this phenomenon is often over-influenced by arguments about economies of scale in production and distribution. To redress this omission, this paper draws on economic, organization, and technology management literature to provide a detailed examination of the sources of scaling in digital businesses. We propose three mechanisms by which digital business models attempt to gain scale: engaging both non-paying users and paying customers; organizing customer engagement to allow self-customization; and orchestrating networked value chains, such as platforms or multi-sided business models. Scaling conditions are discussed, and propositions developed and illustrated with examples of big data entrepreneurial firms.

This paper aims to propose an extended model to examine these motivations. As technology-led changes have revolutionized the marketplace, researchers and practitioners have grown keen to understand customers’ motivations for engaging in co-innovation in online communities.

The research model is based on a review of previous literature and relevant business practices.

The proposed conceptual model can be used to test empirically and explicate customers’ attitude towards engagement in co-innovation communities in the hospitality industry. Three major motivations drive customer engagement in online co-innovation communities (OCCs): brand equity, sense of community and monetary incentive. Customers’ prior experience with co-innovation projects also moderates the effects of the three motivations on customers’ attitude towards engagement in OCCs.

The proposed model highlights the importance of engaging customers through OCCs to create service innovations. These OCCs advance customers’ active participation in the firm’s co-creation and co-innovation process. Leading service firms already rely on online brand communities to stay on the cutting edge. Co-creation represents a unique, strategic partnership between the firm and the customer that can enhance both the customer experience and the firm’s innovativeness.

This study provides an initial exploration of the key components of the co-innovation of service through online communities in the hospitality industry.

This chapter discusses the Learning Theater, a flexible library space that permits substantial patron involvement in designing dynamic environments to meet diverse learning goals.

We use a case study method to describe and discuss the Learning Theater.

We found that many challenges associated with designing and building a radically different library space to support patron learning goals can be resolved by eliciting patron input in all phases of the process.

We offer three lessons for other libraries intent on developing dramatically new kinds of library spaces: engage the community of users early and throughout, new spaces require robust communications to convey the possible set of uses to the community, and a flexible infrastructure and a responsive staff are key to meeting demands for unanticipated uses.

Our experience in developing the Learning Theater as part of the library education program suggests that libraries can share greater control of new flexible facilities and partner in the creation of intellectual properties to make best use of those facilities in more powerful ways than has typically been done in the past.

Through a review of the literature, this article seeks to outline and understand the evolution and extent of user–participant involvement in the existing library and information science (LIS) research to identify gaps and existing research approaches that might inform further methodological development in participant-oriented and design-based LIS research.

A scoping literature review of LIS research, from the 1960s onward, was conducted, assessing the themes and trends in understanding the user/participant within the LIS field. It traces LIS research from its early focus on information and relevancy to the “user turn”, to the rise of participatory research, especially design-based, as well as the recent inclusion of Indigenous and decolonial methodologies.

The literature review indicates that despite the reported “user turn”, LIS research often does not include the user as an active and equal participant within research projects.

The findings from this review support the development of alternative design research methodologies in LIS that fully include and involve research participants as full partners – from planning through dissemination of results – and suggests avenues for continuing the development of such design-based research. To that end, it lays the foundations for the introduction of a novel methodology, Action Partnership Research Design (APRD).