Search results

This paper proposes to rethink the concepts of relevance and usefulness and their relation to the theory–practice gap in management research.

On the basis of the cognitive-linguistic relevance theory or inferential pragmatics, supplemented by insights from information science, we define relevance as a general conceptual category, while reserving usefulness for the instrumental application in a particular case.

There is no reason to hold onto the difference between theoretical and practical relevance, nor to distinguish between instrumental and conceptual relevance.

This novel approach will help to clarify the confusion in the field and contribute to a better understanding of the added value of management research.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.

This study investigated how students of the Faculties of Humanities and Education and Social Sciences at a Caribbean University sought information during the COVID-19 pandemic, identified challenges they experienced in seeking information for academic tasks and how satisfied they were with the Library's provision of electronic resources and services during this period.

A quantitative survey design was adopted for this study. Data were collected using an online questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data.

This study revealed that undergraduates relied upon lecture notes to complete assignments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Undergraduate students have developed a definite information-seeking pattern, which did not change during the pandemic. They tend to use information channels that require the least effort. Postgraduate students used a variety of Library information channels but primarily used electronic journals. On the whole, students experienced challenges while seeking information via the channels provided by the Library. Students were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with the Library's provision of electronic resources and services.

The study used non-probability sampling and only included students from two faculties at one university. As a result, the findings may not be generalized to the entire student population or all Caribbean universities.

The results of this study can be used to identify the difficulties students are having in accessing information from the Library and gauge service delivery.

This paper contributes to the scholarship from the Caribbean written to show whether students' information-seeking behaviour changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In vol. 6, 1976, of Advances in Librarianship, I published a review about relevance under the same title, without, of course, “Part I” in the title (Saracevic, 1976). [A substantively similar article was published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science (Saracevic, 1975)]. I did not plan then to have another related review 30 years later—but things happen. The 1976 work “attempted to trace the evolution of thinking on relevance, a key notion in information science, [and] to provide a framework within which the widely dissonant ideas on relevance might be interpreted and related to one another” (ibid.: 338).

Computer technology continues to evolve and improve at an astonishing rate; and the cost for most computer equipment will continue to decline over time. Now library automation software, especially software for the online public access catalog, needs to be evolving and improving. It is time for librarians individually and collectively to indicate what improvements they want to see in the “expanding OPAC”. As libraries and vendors begin to work on tomorrow’s systems, we must not lose sight of a basic element of human nature. Zipf’s “Principle of Least Effort” states that “Each individual will adopt a course of action that will involve the expenditure of the probable least average (least effort) of his work.” The time for action is now! It is time to move beyond “the same old systems” into a new era that incorporates impovements of a library’s existing databases, embraces the research results of the information‐seeking process, and makes fundamental improvements by adding new databases. Users need and deserve innovative online search systems! These new systems will, hopefully, convert the frustrated user of today’s OPAC into the eager user of tomorrow’s local library system.

The purpose of this paper is to present two models of human cognition. The first narrow model concentrates on the mind as an information-processing apparatus, and interactions with information as altering thought structures and filling gaps in knowledge. A second model incorporates elements of unconsciousness, embodiment and affect. The selection of one model over the other, often done tacitly, has consequences for subsequent models of information seeking and use.

A close reading of embodied engagements with pornography guided by existential phenomenology.

The paper develops a phenomenology of information seeking, centered primarily around the work of Merleau-Ponty, to justify a more expansive concept of cognition. The authors demonstrate the roles of affect and embodiment in document assessment and use, with a prolonged example in the realm of browsing pornography.

Models of information seeking and use need to account for diverse kinds of human-document interaction, to include documents such as music, film and comics that engage the emotions or are perceived through a broader band of sensory experience to include visual and auditory components. The authors consider how those human-document engagements form virtual communities based on the similarity of their members’ affective and embodied responses, which in turn inform the arrangements, through algorithms, of the relations of documents to each other. Less instrumental forms of information seeking and use – ones that incorporate elements of embodiment and affect – are characterized as esthetic experiences, following the definition of the esthetic provided by Dewey. Ultimately the authors consider, given the ubiquity of information seeking and its rhythm in everyday life, whether we can meaningfully characterize information seeking as a distinct human process.

Market shaping research predominantly focusses on the activities of the market shaper, rather than the equally important roles of other market actors. Market shapers may enhance resource density and value creation within markets, yet such influences cannot exhaustively explain how markets get shaped. Other market actors also must and do exert effort in the value co-creation processes; this study aims to explore the effects of reducing their efforts, as a mechanism to facilitate market shaping.

This conceptual paper uses a theory adaptation approach to link value co-creation with market shaping and effort. It offers a conceptual framework and five propositions that outline the role of effort reduction in the value co-creation process to achieve market shaping.

The proposed conceptual framework indicates how enhanced resource density, resulting from the firm’s market shaping activities and reduced effort lead to enhanced value creation for market actors. Effort reduction can be achieved by reducing either the level of resource input required or the activities required to access, transform and combine resources to co-create value. Potential resource flows then may benefit the market shaper.

This research contributes to emergent market shaping literature by offering effort reduction as a viable tactic. Specifically, it broadens the scope of consideration of effort in value co-creation, and it advances understanding of resource density as a focal market shaping construct. The resultant framework offers a foundation for future market shaping research.

Aims to build on the work of Buckland and Hindle regarding statistical distribution as applied to the field of bibliometrics, particularly the use of empirical laws.

Gives examples of hyperbolic distributions that have a bearing on the bibliometric application, and discusses the characteristics of hyperbolic distributions and the Bradford distribution.

Hyperbolic distributions are the inevitable result of combinatorial necessity and a tendency to short‐term rational behaviour.

Supports Bradford's conclusion from his law, i.e. that to know about one's speciality, one must go outside it.