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The purpose of this paper is to examine how the emergent 3D interactive media technologies are used as a viable tool for enhancing visitors’ overall experiences at an exhibition entitled, 300 Years of Hakka Kungfu – Digital Vision of Its Legacy and Future (Hakka Kungfu Exhibition) – presented and co-organized by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Office of Hong Kong, International Guoshu Association and the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.

A questionnaire survey in both online and paper-based formats was used for identifying visitors’ experiences in the interactions with the multimedia technologies. For this research study, a questionnaire, consisting of 26 items, was set out to measure the visitors’ experiences at the Exhibition. Since the Exhibition was about presenting a centuries-old Chinese cultural heritage, Hakka Kungfu via the use multimedia technologies, in the context of establishing a dialogue between the past and present, the researchers included questionnaire items that were devoted to enquire about the level of understanding, knowledge and enjoyment, and visitors’ new knowledge about Hong Kong history and culture was successfully disseminated to the respondents at the end of the questionnaire.

A total of 209 completed questionnaires were collected at this Hakka Kungfu Exhibition. The findings reveal that the exhibits did attract people at all ages. This Exhibition gave the visitors a sense of interest and wonder in the object and information presented in the Exhibition. Findings of this study also reveal that this Exhibition has successfully attracted a large number of female visitors, as well as visitors who have never taken any martial arts training. In addition, visitors’ Exhibition experience was found to be memorable, as well as enjoyable. Furthermore, visitors’ experience within the Exhibition suggested that it was entertaining, as well as educational. By creating a long-lasting impact on the minds of these Exhibition visitors about the connections between and relevance of traditional Chinese Kungfu, their collective cultural identity, as well as the contemporary society we live in. The Exhibition exemplified the successful integration of the presentation of Kungfu as a form of cultural heritage with engagement-creating technology, in which technology is unobtrusive but effective.

Although it is already a global trend for the museums to integrate multimedia technologies into their exhibitions, research on the situation and feedback of multimedia technology used in the museum exhibitions in Hong Kong is scarce as well as scattered. Findings of this study could help identify various factors involved in audience participation, thereby exploring the possibility of building a contact point/space for traditional Chinese Kungfu as an intangible cultural heritage, via the integration of the latest media technologies. In particular, the development of multimedia technologies has become increasingly important to museums, and museum professionals have been exploring how digital and communication technologies can be developed to offer visitors a more interactive, personalized museum experience. In general, despite the growing interest in deploying digital technology as interpretation devices in museums and galleries, there are relatively few studies that examine how visitors, both alone and with others, use new technologies when exploring the museum contents.

Using a Shanghainese context, the purpose of this paper is to understand the effects of the public library in its community, as well as its ability to create social capital. Along with this, this paper aims to look at some socially disadvantaged groups within Shanghai and see the positive benefits that the Shanghai Library (SHL) has in society.

Using a total of 410 respondents from Shanghai through a questionnaire, this study investigates how different groups of disadvantaged groups (namely, students, elderly and unemployed) living in Shanghai perceived the social values, and contributions functions of the SHL to the local community, and its capacities to create social capital.

Findings of this study indicate that respondents expressed an overall highly positive outlook of the SHL’s value to the community, and they found it to have an important role in their daily lives.

This study will be useful for understanding the roles of the public library in a Chinese context, as well as the views and perceptions of the public library to disadvantaged user groups in China.

Appraisal of records to separate the wheat (records of enduring value) from the chaff (ephemeral records) is one of the most important functions of the archives. In terms of the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa (NARSSA) Act (No. 43 of 1996) (the Act), “no public records may be transferred to an archives repository, destroyed, erased or otherwise disposed of without the written authorisation of the national archivist”. In implementing this section of the Act, the NARSSA issues a disposal authority, which emanates from the appraisal process explained in the policy guidelines of 2002. The purpose of the study is to analyse the appraisal policy guidelines on the approach of NARSSA in relation to preservation of digital records.

This study has used qualitative data obtained through content analysis and literature to review the appraisal policy guidelines and approach of NARSSA in relation to preservation of digital records. The 2002 approved appraisal policy, as well as the directives issued by NARSSA in terms of Section 13(4) of the Act, is examined to determine the criteria, the process and the methodology adopted in the appraisal of records. Content analysis data are augmented through interviews conducted in person with the head of the records management unit at NARSSA and the archivist responsible for appraisal of government records.

The study has established that, in terms of the approach, records are appraised two years after the implementation of records classification systems in governmental bodies and those of archival value are then transferred to an archives repository after a period of 20 years. Twenty years is a long period as records might be lost, especially in digital environments. Furthermore, the appraisal policy guidelines limit the powers of records managers in governmental bodies in deciding on records of enduring value, as this responsibility is assigned to archivists at NARSSA. It is clear that the policy was written with paper records in mind.

This study may go a long way in influencing policy review to embrace appraisal of digital records in South Africa. This in turn will help in determining the feasibility of preservation technology for digital records.

This study is useful to ensure participation of the public in the appraisal process. This study has triangulated content analysis data with interviews to examine appraisal criteria, process and methodology, followed by NARSSA.

This paper proposes that if a political system is more like to facilitate a unified government, to establish a strong executive body and to respond to the needs of the majority, financial reforms are more likely to emerge from the policymaking process and produce positive results. On the contrary, political systems that discourage those governing features are less likely to produce reforms. This chapter compares financial reform processes in China, Taiwan and New Zealand. All of them performed low level of financial reforms in the early 1980s but resulted in different situations later. In the mid-2000s, New Zealand heralded the most efficient and stable financial system; while Taiwan lagged behind and China performed the worst. Evidence showed that China’s authoritarian system may be the most superior in forming a unified government with a strong executive, but the policy priority often responds more to the interests of a small group of power elites; therefore the result of financial reform can be limited. Taiwan’s presidential system can produce greater financial reform when the ruling party controls both executive and legislative bodies, but legislative obstructions may occur under a divided government. New Zealand's Westminster system produces the most effective and efficient financial reform due to its unified government and a strong executive branch with consistent and stable supports from the New Zealand Parliament.

Reforms of the Vietnamese economy have been widely credited for stabilizing the value of the state-issued currency in the marketplace. Nevertheless, how people evaluate the Vietnamese dong as a symbolic form can be read as a symptom of shifting economic and political forces, above all in Ho Chi Minh City, a city associated with commerce. Through three ethnographic cases – the introduction of “big money,” the scarcity of “new money” in 2002, and the campaign to build Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), this paper analyzes the contentious politics around symbolic exchange that shape confidence in Vietnamese currency.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of creative re-appropriation of goods, symbols, and other manifestations of the dominant material culture in the Emo subculture identity construction process.

The authors conducted an ethnographic study on a purposive sample of social networks, blogs, discussion forums and online platforms for images sharing. Verbatim and visual texts as photos, drawings and moodboards were qualitatively content analysed in order to understand the network of meanings underlying the ambiguous amalgam of signs composing the Emo style.

Consistent with the literature, the qualitative content analysis of texts, images, videos, drawings and other forms of fan art typical of this micro culture revealed four key areas of semantic value: the aestheticization of inner pain, the sense of alienation and isolation from socio-cultural mainstream, the search for authenticity, and the need for emotional connection.

The research followed a quite new research method, the netnographic approach, originally developed to analyse brand communities.

Emo creative practices of re-appropriation of goods, symbols and icons of the dominant culture reveal a subtle message of protest against the consumer society and the commodification of everyday life.

The paper presents the deconstruction of Emo Lifestyle and Aesthetics analysing the system of meanings underneath the rituals Emos share through the Web.

Background modelling has played an imperative role in the moving object detection as the progress of foreground extraction during video analysis and surveillance in many real-time applications. It is usually done by background subtraction. This method is uprightly based on a mathematical model with a fixed feature as a static background, where the background image is fixed with the foreground object running over it. Usually, this image is taken as the background model and is compared against every new frame of the input video sequence. In this paper, the authors presented a renewed background modelling method for foreground segmentation. The principal objective of the work is to perform the foreground object detection only in the premeditated region of interest (ROI). The ROI is calculated using the proposed algorithm reducing and raising by half (RRH). In this algorithm, the coordinate of a circle with the frame width as the diameter is considered for traversal to find the pixel difference. The change in the pixel intensity is considered to be the foreground object and the position of it is determined based on the pixel location. Most of the techniques study their updates to the pixels of the complete frame which may result in increased false rate; The proposed system deals these flaw by controlling the ROI object (the region only where the background subtraction is performed) and thus extracts a correct foreground by exactly categorizes the pixel as the foreground and mines the precise foreground object. The broad experimental results and the evaluation parameters of the proposed approach with the state of art methods were compared against the most recent background subtraction approaches. Moreover, the efficiency of the authors’ method is analyzed in different situations to prove that this method is available for real-time videos as well as videos available in the 2014 challenge change detection data set.

In this paper, the authors presented a fresh background modelling method for foreground segmentation. The main objective of the work is to perform the foreground object detection only on the premeditated ROI. The region for foreground extraction is calculated using proposed RRH algorithm. Most of the techniques study their updates to the pixels of the complete frame which may result in increased false rate; most challenging case is that, the slow moving object is updated quickly to detect the foreground region. The anticipated system deals these flaw by controlling the ROI object (the region only where the background subtraction is performed) and thus extracts a correct foreground by exactly categorizing the pixel as the foreground and mining the precise foreground object.

Plum Analytics provide a new conduit for documenting and contextualizing the public impact and reach of research within digitally networked environments. While limitations are notable, the metrics promoted through the platform can be used to build a more comprehensive view of research impact.

The algorithm used in the work was proposed by the authors and are used for experimental evaluations.

Word of mouth (WOM) plays an important role for the decision process of customers. This is especially interesting for service-dominant organizations like theaters where quality is more difficult to evaluate. In times of social media, third party recommendations can be given much more quickly, effectively and in greater detail. However, up to now not much has been researched on electronic word of mouth (eWOM) in a performing arts marketing context. The purpose of this paper is to provide some first exploratory insights into this research area.

To do so, a literature review is conducted to clarify the concept of eWOM and the relevance of recommendations in the performing arts. Then, parts of the results of an online survey on Facebook with 16 German theaters and their fans will be presented. Finally, the implications of the study results for theater marketing are considered and ideas for future research are discussed.

The study results confirm that recommendations have a high relevance for theatergoers and are very relevant in a social media context. They also show that the trustworthiness of eWOM on social media depends on the familiarity between the message sender and receiver. However, the results are limited with regard to the research design. Therefore, this paper concludes with ideas for further research.

All in all, though the study’s focus is narrow, this paper fills a research gap in the performing arts. In doing so, the understanding of the phenomenon and its importance for arts marketing will be enhanced.

The purpose of this study is to assess the extent to which the Mpumalanga Provincial Archives (MPA) complies with the Mpumalanga Archives Act, 2008 legislative/policy provisions of archives building, capacity building and electronic records management and to suggest recommendations for effective archives and records management (ARM) programme in South Africa.

This paper adopts a quantitative approach supplemented by qualitative data using document review to collect data and content analysis.

The results show that MPA enacted Mpumalanga Archives Act, 2008. However, the challenge is the implementation of such legislation. The findings of this paper would contribute towards the literature in archival legislation in South Africa and other parts of the world.

Even though the paper was based in South Africa, it was limited to the MPA of South Africa.

The findings are expected to be instrumental in the implementation of Mpumalanga Archives Act, 2008.

The findings and recommendations will help in guiding MPA on the implementation of an effective provincial archive and records to facilitate the effective management of records to determine those of archival value, to preserve them for posterity and to make them accessible to the public.

This is an original study using a document review to review the Mpumalanga Archives Act, 1998. The effective archives infrastructure will contribute to compliance with legislative components such as archives building, cooperation, ERMS, appraisal and disposal of records, archives advisory body and access to information.