Search results

Library data are often hard to analyze because these data come from unconnected sources, and the data sets can be very large. Furthermore, the desire to protect user privacy has prevented the retention of data that could be used to correlate library data to non-library data. The research team used data mining to determine library use patterns and to determine whether library use correlated to students’ grade point average.

A research team collected and analyzed data from the libraries, registrar and human resources. All data sets were uploaded into a single, secure data warehouse, allowing them to be analyzed and correlated.

The analysis revealed patterns of library use by academic department, patterns of book use over 20 years and correlations between library use and grade point average.

Analysis of more narrowly defined user populations and collections will help develop targeted outreach efforts and manage the print collections. The data used are from one university; therefore, similar research is needed at other institutions to determine whether these findings are generalizable.

The unexpected use of the central library by those affiliated with law resulted in cross-education of law and central library staff. Management of the print collections and user outreach efforts will reflect more nuanced selection of subject areas and departments.

A model is suggested for campus partnerships that enables data mining of sensitive library and campus information.

Depending on the research approach one uses, the development of particular bodies of knowledge over time is the result of a combination of agency, chance, opportunity, patronage, power, or structure. This particular account of the development of geographies of tourism stresses its place as understood within the context of different approaches, different research behaviors and foci, and its location within the wider research community and society. The chapter charts the development of different epistemological, methodological, and theoretical traditions over time, their rise and fall, and, in some cases, rediscovery. The chapter concludes that the marketization of academic production will have an increasingly important influence on the nature and direction of tourism geographies.

The degree of interest in the subject of a survey has no effect on response rates from samples of the general public, and short questionnaires yield substantially higher response rates than lengthier ones. Two questionnaires of identical length but covering two different topics were used in a survey of 240 people drawn at random from a Montreal telephone directory; the results concluded that an offer of survey results to participants does not affect response rate significantly, but persistence alone represents the crucial factor in securing good returns.

Travel and tourism have had a long history in the Nordic countries, but research on tourism has a relatively short tradition in the region. Recently, academic interest in the Nordic tourism space has grown and diversified especially as a result of increasing numbers of academics and institutions involved with tourism geographies and studies and education in the region. The Nordic context has provided thematic focus areas for empirical studies that characterize tourism geographies in the region, with topics including nature-based tourism, utilization of wilderness areas, second-home and rural developments, impacts in peripheries, and tourism as a tool for regional development. In addition, there are emerging research themes outside of the traditional core topics, such as urban, events, and heritage tourism.

This chapter discusses the main research interests and outputs in the various branches of geography that have influenced the study of tourism from a geographical perspective. It argues that the idiographic tradition has been transversal throughout, leading to the growing interest for tourism within the geography academic community in the last 10 years. There is a focus on the birth of specific research groups, mainly related to a constellation of new university curricula on tourism and—with few exceptions of territorial tradition—to an intermittent availability of public research funds. The chapter concludes with a more general picture of the place of tourism within the geography discipline in Italy and of evolving trends in terms of research results, dissemination, and evaluation.

Women have been at the vanguard of transhistorical resistance against oppressive structures on the African continent. Targets of women’s struggles for social justice include colonial governments, neo-colonial states, transnational corporations and entrenched traditional institutions. These struggles have had a catalytic effect on dynamics of social change in multifarious contexts in Africa. This chapter deploys a select number of case studies to argue that the challenges posed to entrenched structures of oppression have historically put women in the crosshairs of power. Women have also sometimes pursued feminist goals using state machinery. ‘State feminism’, which is widespread on the continent, the chapter argues, enables and disenables women’s emancipation. The chapter reflects on women’s resistance movements in Africa and analyses seven major themes. These are obduracy of patriarchy, social divisions, prevalence of maternalist framing, elite women’s engagement, deferment of women’s issues and tactical divide. The contradictions immanent in women’s social positionality and challenges are explored.

This chapter aims to familiarize the reader with some of the important aspects of tourism geography in the German-speaking countries. It starts with a primarily historical-genetic perspective on tourism development and the theoretical traditions associated with them. The second section describes the structure of the discipline, with a focus on the institutionalization of the field in the universities including their research specialization. The chapter maintains that tourism geography plays a marginal role compared with other subdisciplines of geography, though this is reflected primarily in its institutionalization and less so in the research undertaken. The last section deals with the current challenges and future prospects in German-speaking geographies of tourism from a problem-centered perspective.

This chapter reflects upon the trajectory of research in the geography of tourism in Spain. It begins with a review, including the evolution of the main topics present in the subdiscipline, with a special focus on developments since the 1990s. This is followed by an analysis of the current role and potential impact of academic tourism geography and a discussion on the recent growth in the publication of research results in international journals. Of importance are the institutional factors that explain the increasing recognition of research on the geography of tourism in Spain. Finally, the chapter discusses the hegemony of positivist approaches pivoting on land use, local and regional development, impact analysis, and landscape transformation, as well as the emerging links between Spanish tourism geography and the international mainstream schools of thought.