Search results

Purpose — The purpose of this discussion is, first, to review the concept of truth claim and how it forms the framework for four research traditions: science, social science, law, and judgments of excellence. Then, the operational mechanisms of networks are reviewed. The discussion concludes by introducing three philosophic perspectives that might deepen the meanings nascent in the concept of “search.”

Methodology/approach — The methodology includes a historical approach to outline brief but sufficient definitions for how truth claims are built in four established research traditions. Each tradition is then analyzed with a view to testing its methods. The tests suggest a number of pathways to reframe search engine results in order to evaluate their relationship to the previously established types of truth claims.

Findings — The findings constitute an outline of the research traditions in the four areas of science, social science, law, and judgments of excellence. These are followed by a review of the current configurations of networks, their infrastructures, and their capabilities, including a brief section on the importance of search engine mechanisms. Crawling, indexing, and then ranking form the operational mechanisms that search engines employ in delivering search results. It is clear that each operation introduces logical problems. Then, the final sections outline three widely ranging philosophic perspectives on the nature of search: (1) an aesthetic theory of indexing, (2) understanding search from the psychology of learning, and (3) an exploration of the relationship between performativity and recent economic models of how data accumulates in today's world.

Research implications — It is suggested that exploration of a deeper philosophical perspective will assist library and information science (LIS) scholars to reframe Web search in ways that allow linkages to the established research traditions.

Originality/value of the paper — The idea of testing the “truth claim” as connected to traditional research methods was presented initially by Rall (2002, 2004). This area has been neglected in the literature as many Internet scholars find that the philosophy of research methodologies remains outside of their knowledge base. Overall, LIS scholars have focused on information seekers, on the politics of search engines, as well as documenting the computational problems that are present in search engine results. The consideration of how truth claims are formed and subsequently tested will allow LIS researchers to explore the linkages between their current studies and the established frameworks of scholarly research.

Purpose – To explore an ethics of entanglement in the context of mental health and psychosocial research.

Design/methodology/approach – To bring together debates within body and affect studies, and specifically the concepts of mediated perception and the performativity of experimentation. My specific focus will be on voice hearing and research that I have conducted with voice hearers, both within and to the margins of the Hearing Voices Network (see Blackman, 2001, 2007).

Findings – The antecedents for a performative approach to experimentation and an ethics of entanglement can be found within a nineteenth-century subliminal archive (Blackman, 2012).

Originality/value – These conceptual links allow the researcher to consider the technologies that might allow them to ‘listen to voices’ and introduce the non-human into our conceptions of listening and interpreting. This directs our attention to those agencies and actors who create the possibility of listening and learning beyond the boundaries of a humanist research subject.

The paper aims to examine high school students' use of social networking to participate in teledeliberative democratic dialogue and explicates the implications of this dialogue for democratic education that is inclusive of all students.

The case study analyzes the comments of 111 high school students over ten days following what they perceived to be an injustice committed by the administration against one of their fellow classmates.

Analysis of student commentary led to the development of three categories of teledeliberative citizenship: the demagogue, the proselyte, and the egalitarian. Together, these categories serve as a spectrum of sophistication along which democratic discourse can be classified.

The primary limitation of this research is a product of the online medium in which it occurs. Though “observing” students' interactions on Web 2.0 application was beneficial for cataloguing conversations, social cues like body language and tone of voice had to be inferred.

Web 2.0 provides students with an opportunity to build a community of shared belief that crosses gender, racial, religious, and cultural divisions.

Teachers could use Web 2.0 as a forum for teledeliberative democratic dialogue in a multicultural democratic educational framework to engage students and encourage a sophisticated, active citizenship.

In the spring of 1982, I published an article in Reference Services Review on marketing libraries and information services. The article covered available literature on that topic from 1970 through part of 1981, the time period immediately following Kotler and Levy's significant and frequently cited article in the January 1969 issue of the Journal of Marketing, which was first to suggest the idea of marketing nonprofit organizations. The article published here is intended to update the earlier work in RSR and will cover the literature of marketing public, academic, special, and school libraries from 1982 to the present.

This paper provides a clinical practice overview of the challenges that can arise when working with dangerous and severe personality‐disordered patients in a high secure hospital. Poor engagement and treatment readiness, mistrust, paranoia and dominant interpersonal styles are all clinical features that affect treatment delivery. The paper discusses the impact of these features, and suggests how clinicians can engage effectively with individuals who have personality disorders in regard to therapy in general.

The aim of the research was to find out if the work environment of professional librarians in the five state‐owned university libraries in Ghana encouraged continuing professional development (CPD) and to discover who the librarians felt should be responsible for this.

The research was carried out among professional librarians in the five state‐owned university libraries in Ghana. The study was to find out if their work environment encouraged CPD. The study further investigated who the employees felt should be responsible for their CPD. The importance of a plan for effective CPD was also discussed. Finally, benefits of CPD to the individual professional were looked at. The survey method was used. The instruments for data collection were the questionnaire and interviews.

The study found that the library environment in the state‐owned universities was supportive to a large extent of CPD. The study revealed that the professional librarian's involvement in CPD was a shared responsibility of the library and the individual. Some benefits derived from CPD by the professional librarians were job advancement and updated skills leading to competence.

It is hoped that the study will encourage library management especially in universities to consider formulating and writing down CPD policies and also to adopt management styles that will make them “learning organisations.”