Search results

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate large Canadian companies’ communication behaviour about SDSR on their websites, the authors’ goal being to analyse the evolution of what they communicate about those issues on their websites, over a period of eight years.

A longitudinal content analysis of the top 100 Canadian firms’ web-based communication practices was performed over a period of eight years, between 2006 and 2013. A conceptual method was applied to establish the presence/absence of SDSR concepts and related questions in the communication data available on corporations’ websites.

Data analysis showed that over this period, an increasing number of firms had: a dedicated section on their website about SDSR, a more accurate definition of SDSR, an enhanced accessibility and an eagerness to improve their information by adding complimentary SDSR documents.

The results in this study are representative of very large and probably resource-rich Canadian firms and may not apply to all types and sizes of companies.

The increasingly positive behaviour of large firms about SDSR communication on their websites demonstrates a continuous interest to enhance their communication positioning about these new values, moreover, shaping a new paradigm with the creation of a new pattern of communication on the web.

The study is one of the very few longitudinal studies of SDSR communication practices by large firms in one Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country. Given the scope of activities of these companies at the global scale, this study also contributes to provide a first sketch of the communication profile of multinational corporations about their SDSR web practices.

OUR correspondent revives the problem of fiction supply on a paying basis to readers in public libraries. The figures he gives of the sums that a charge of one penny per issue might realize in certain libraries if the number of books issued remains as last year are impressive; the sums are usefully substantial. He does not deal with objections obvious to librarians. We have recently been admonished for making any charge in connexion with our lendings, as we have shown in these pages, when we wrote that the law can be altered although new library legislation seems unlikely at present. The other quite practical difficulties are that one withdraws privileges from the public only at the risk of a clamour for their restoration. Then it is commonsense to argue that if the people desire to provide themselves with any kind of reading from public funds they have the right to do so. At present they appear to exercise that right, otherwise it seems unlikely that a large city would allow two millions of fiction to be circulated out of a total issue of three and a half millions. It cannot be contended that our local statesmen do not see the significance of these figures. There is the further question of the unsatisfactory nature of the terms non‐fiction as embracing everything that is not narrative imaginative prose, and fiction as embracing everything that is. The whole question, like the poor, is always with us, but it cannot conveniently be brushed aside.