Does Blogging Empower Women? Exploring the Role of Agency and Community

Two studies explored the relationship between blogging and psychological empowerment among women. First, a survey (N = 340) revealed that personal journaling empowers users by inducing a strong sense of community whereas filter blogging does so by enhancing their sense of agency. Various user motivations were also shown to predict psychological empowerment. Next, a 2 (type of blog) X 2 (comments) X 2 (site visits) factorial experiment (N = 214) found that 2 site metrics—the number of site visits and number of comments—affect psychological empowerment through distinct mechanisms—the former through the sense of agency and the latter through the sense of community. These metrics are differentially motivating for bloggers depending on the type of blog maintained: filter or personal.     

Designing a Special Library's Intranet for an Engineering Audience

ABSTRACT

Designing a successful library Web site for an engineering audience means researching how engineers find and use information. It also requires the special librarian to conduct usability tests to determine what is and isn't working on the site. The special librarian is more than simply a librarian, he or she must be able to take the research and the test results and either build the Web site or make sure the site is built by a team. The librarian must be able to play several roles: researcher, tester, project leader, and Web manager. The more successful the librarian is at involving users in site design, the more used and usable the site will be. This article describes one librarian's experience with designing a special library Intranet. It also includes an extensive bibliography of related articles.     

Blog scrubbing: Exploring triggers that change privacy rules

An increasing number of individuals of all ages maintain important interpersonal relationships through blogs. Wide variation exists in how people disclose and manage their privacy on these blogs, particularly concerning the choices made about leaving information permanently visible on blogs or retrieving it sometime after an initial posting. This study applies Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory to explore the process of privacy rule adaptation for blogging by examining situations that have triggered bloggers to change their privacy rules to enact blog post deletion practices (“blog scrubbing”). Overall, open-ended responses from 356 bloggers were content analyzed. Chi-square analysis revealed differences in the frequency of triggers that changed the blogging post privacy rules and the proactive versus reactive nature of blogging privacy management deletion practices. Bloggers’ critical incidents that activate privacy rule changes demonstrate that impression management triggers, personal safety identity triggers, relational triggers, and legal/disciplinary triggers resulted in greater alteration of individual privacy rules used to protect these bloggers from the privileged online community of individuals granted access to an individual’s blog. Thus, bloggers essentially “scrubbed” their blog site and adapted their typical privacy rules with new ones that better protected them from the online community regarding that particular blogged information.     

The Internet Movie Database

ABSTRACT

Reference services are increasingly dependent on information available through well organized and reliable Web sites. Questions submitted by library users of all ages are often incomplete, making it difficult for the librarian to easily, quickly, and completely answer the question. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an established Web site that allows easy access to material relating to movies, television series, actors, and actresses with a minimal amount of information from the searcher. This article explores the Internet resource of the Internet Movie Database and its potential benefits for librarians.     

Bloggers and Readers Blogging Together: Collaborative Co-creation of Political Blogs

A significant amount of research has focused on blogs, bloggers, and blogging. However, relatively little work has examined blog readers, their interactions with bloggers, or their impact on blogging. This paper presents a qualitative study focusing specifically on readers of political blogs to develop a better understanding of readers?? interactions with blogs and bloggers. This is the first such study to examine the same blogging activity from both readers?? and bloggers?? perspectives. Readers?? significance and contributions to blogs are examined through a number of themes, including: community membership and participation; the relationship between political ideology, reading habits, and political participation; and differences and similarities between mainstream media (MSM) and blogs. Based on these analyses, this paper argues that blogging is not only a social activity, but is a collaborative process of co-creation in which both bloggers and readers engage. Implications of this finding contribute to the study and understanding of reader participation, to the design of technologies for bloggers and blog readers, and to the development of theoretical understandings of social media.     

About the Web

ABSTRACT

This article reviews selected magazines and journals of interest to academic librarians that include information about the Web. Reviewed titles include library science titles, general educational titles, and popular titles found on newsstands. The titles reviewed are aimed towards two groups of librarians: those most involved with developing content (such as reference librarians and bibliographers), and those involved with Web design, development, and policy issues.     

Librarian Participation in the Online Classroom

SUMMARY

As distance education courses increasingly move to the online environment, librarians are discovering new challenges and opportunities for reaching distant students. Collaboration with faculty is essential in reaching students who may never enter the library building. One such method of collaboration is librarian participation in online courses through “lurking” in Blackboard and Desire2Learn classrooms and monitoring discussion threads devoted to library research. Advantages such as improved access to students, course content, and assessment data are discussed, as are disadvantages, such as time commitment, varying expectations, and privacy issues. Considerations for librarians interested in “lurking” are outlined.     

Animal Rights and Experimentation: Exploring and Examining the Issue on the Internet

ABSTRACT

For librarians, assisting patrons in locating balanced and unbiased information on controversial topics can be a frustrating and difficult task. Among those issues is the animal rights movement in the United States, which is among the most contentious of today's societal controversies. The controversy began with the founding of the ASPCA and other animal rights organizations in the late 1800s, fueled by the rise in experimental medicine and the consequent use of animals in research in the United States. Many Web sites exist today that seek to educate the reader about one side of this controversy or the other. This article hopes to provide the librarian with the background and history to understand the movement and its resources in order to provide library users with a balanced view of both sides of the controversy.     

The World Wide Web

Abstract

The World Wide Web is increasingly being used by libraries as a way to extend traditional services to patrons. The Web can also be used as a tool to facilitate communications between library professionals and to deliver presentations, organize exhibits, and develop demonstration projects. The allocation of personal Web work space on a library server provides librarians with a means to experiment with using the medium and a place to publish information of interest to the library profession. This paper explores the uses of the Web to enhance communications between library professionals and addresses some of the issues associated with such uses.     

Does Anyone Need Help Out There?

SUMMARY

In order to provide online help for distance students, as well as the increasing number of on-campus students who regularly access library resources, a team of librarians from the Marshall University Libraries created an online library assistance site (HELP). This site brings together traditional print handouts, FAQs, online subject guides, course-specific guides, learning modules, and instructional videos in one central location where users can get assistance with library-related questions at their point of need. This article discusses the rationale for developing the site, the process of creating it and incorporating user input, ongoing content development, the impact upon the Libraries' Web site, and future development plans.     

Gender Differences in British Blogging

This article asks whether blogging in the United Kingdom, which started later than in the United States, reproduces the gender differences in blogging behavior and the gender inequalities in recognition that have been observed in studies based largely on U.S. bloggers. A sample of 48 female and male British bloggers answered a questionnaire about their blogging practices and attitudes; data were also collected from their blogs and by means of online tools. For both sexes, blogging is mainly a leisure activity, and men and women find the same range of satisfactions in blogging. However, more women use blogging as an outlet for creative work, whether as a hobby or as a livelihood. The results support several reasons advanced in previous research for the lower public profile of women bloggers.     

Communicating with Faculty,Staff, and Students Using Library Blogs: Results from a Survey of Academic Health Sciences Libraries

This study investigated use and management of blogs in academic health sciences libraries. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected with a questionnaire distributed to bloggers and administrators representing 22 libraries self-identified as using blogs to publish library newsletters. Perceived barriers to use of blogs included lack of patron awareness and technical issues. Blogs were viewed as easy to use by librarians and blogs are used to promote licensed resources. Blogs do not replace other interactions with librarians, but in the future, could be used to develop a community, provide tools for learning, and increase visibility of the library.     

Prompting authentic blogging practice in an online graduate course

Blogging is characterized by an individual exploration of ideas of personal interest through frequent online posts, documenting ideas as they emerge over time. Community emerges as bloggers read and link across blogs, based on shared interests. Blogs have gained acceptance in higher education for a variety of instructional activities, among which, reflective journal writing is popular. In this study, we examine a project in which blogs were implemented within an online graduate course in order to create opportunities for students to reflect on their academic, professional and personal interests, with the goal of establishing consistent blogging that exhibits the timely, frequent and interest-driven practices of blogging practices outside educational contexts. Students enrolled in an online graduate course maintained individual blogs in which they were prompted to write about their interests and experiences as graduate students. Through an analysis of the patterns of prompt use and blog content, as well as data from a post-course survey and an online discussion, we explore how to support student engagement with blogging practice within an educational setting. Findings suggest that frequency of writing, topic resonance with the students own interests, and the timeliness of entries were key factors in scaffolding writing that aligns with blogging practice. By focusing on writing as characterized by authentic blogging practice, this study contributes to an understanding of how to harness the unique communicative elements of the blog in post-secondary settings.     

A Comprehensive Website Meets the Serials Librarian's Back Issue Needs

Abstract

The author describes USBE's Website, which meets virtually every back issue need of the serials librarian. An online catalog of over 17,000 scholarly journal title holdings, order page, membership application, and a fee-free out-of-print book search service are some of the features of the USBE site. The USBE Web pages also include instructions on how to donate surplus periodicals to the nonprofit organization, as well as special offers and other news pertinent to serials librarians. Includes interview comments by USBE President, John Zubal and USBE Operations Manager, Jean Marie Zubal.     

Usability Testing of Academic Library Web Sites

ABSTRACT

This is a selective annotated bibliography of books, journal articles, and electronic resources relating to the usability assessment or testing of the academic library Web site. It focuses on the library Web site specifics, thus answering a librarian's need for one source of information on the available publications. All journal articles have been written by or for academic librarians. This bibliography embraces the issues of usability testing as a process, its goals, objectives, tools, and methodology. The bibliography is grouped by the following topics: background information, tools and methodologies, case studies, dedicated Web sites, and samples of presentations.     

Finding the top influential bloggers based on productivity and popularity features

A blog acts as a platform of virtual communication to share comments or views about products, events and social issues. Like other social web activities, blogging actions spread to a large number of people. Users influence others in many ways, such as buying a product, having a particular political or social opinion or initiating new activity. Finding the top influential bloggers is an active research domain as it helps us in various fields, such as online marketing, e-commerce, product search and e-advertisements. There exist various models to find the influential bloggers, but they consider limited features using non-modular approach. This paper proposes a new model, Popularity and Productivity Model (PPM), based on a modular approach to find the top influential bloggers. It consists of popularity and productivity modules which exploit various features. We discuss the role of each proposed and existing features and evaluate the proposed model against the standard baseline models using datasets from the real-world blogs. The analysis using standard performance evaluation measures verifies that both productivity and popularity modules play a vital role to find influential bloggers in blogging community in an effective manner.     

Uniting Political Bloggers in Diversity: Collective Identity and Web Activism

In contrast to the common view of blogging as a highly narcissistic activity, this study explicates how blogging is a communal activity and the emergence of a collective identity which drives collective action. 41 interviews with activist and nonactivist bloggers revealed that shared consciousness, distinctive blogging practices, and the articulation of a common adversary contribute to the development of a collective identity. Furthermore, identity multiplexity points to the emergence of “individualized collectiveness,” which extends beyond networked individualism and is reinforced by offline participation in activism and pre‐existing social ties with other activists.     

Centralizing Information About Library Services and Resources

SUMMARY

The School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona (UA) has a mix of local and distance students in its program. The librarian at the UA Library who works with this program developed a Web site that centralizes information about several library services and resources that benefit distance learners: online orientation and research guides, chat reference, document delivery, and more. Bringing together this information with a focus on distance learners provides a platform for delivering the library to all users, whatever their distance from the library.     

What would it mean to blog on the semantic web?

The phenomenon known as Web logging (“blogging”) has helped realize an initial goal of the Web: to turn Web content consumers (i.e., end users) into Web content producers. As the Semantic Web unfolds, we feel there are two questions worth posing: (1) do blog entries have semantic structure that can be usefully captured and exploited? (2) Is blogging a natural way to encourage growth of the Semantic Web? We explore empirical evidence for answering these questions in the affirmative and propose means to bring blogging into the mainstream of the Semantic Web, including ontologies that extend the RSS 1.0 specification and an XSL transform for handling RSS 0.9x/2.0 files. To demonstrate the validity of our approach we have constructed a semantic blogging environment based on Haystack. We argue that with tools such as Haystack, semantic blogging will be an important paradigm by which metadata authoring will occur in the future.     

The S.A.G.E. Project

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the process and creation of a library resources and services Web page within WebCT, a course authoring program that is being used to deliver complete course content over the Internet in a distance education program at The Ohio State University. A librarian at the Prior Health Sciences Library was asked to join a faculty team to teach and provide library services for a series of three courses. The students are working health professionals who cannot attend regularly scheduled classes. Illustrations are included of the WebCT course page and the library resources and services page. The initial process and planning are described, and recommendations for future research are identified.