This study is situated within a poststructuralist paradigm and uses qualitative methods to examine how teachers map and make sense of intersecting barriers to basic education embedded in their specific schooling contexts and communities, in particular, in a context in which HIV/AIDS prevalence is high. The study examines how teacher constructions of their experiences of teaching in a particular context shape their taken for granted understandings of the intersecting barriers to basic education. In other words, it explored how teachers position themselves within historically constructed discourses about their learners and the community in which they teach, and how these shape their understandings of barriers to basic education. The participants were thirty-six teachers (ten males and twenty six females) from five schools in the Richmond Municipality. Focus group interviews were used to access participants understanding and experiences' of barriers to schooling in the context of HIV and AIDS. Within the focus group sessions, participatory techniques were used as a means of drawing out sensitive information from participants, namely, a ranking exercise and the vulnerability matrix. The findings in the study suggest that the teachers relied on a deficiency framework as a basis for understanding the intersecting barriers to basic education in an HIV and AIDS context. Five key themes relating to this framework emerged: a discourse of detachment; silences; difference as deficit; normalisation discourse; and a discourse of caring. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

Based on a case study of the export informatic$ sp1$ services industry, this dissertation examines the prospects for industrial development in Jamaica in the twenty first century. It contends that the island's current strategy of neo-liberal industrial restructuring will not bring about sustained development because it embodies macro-economic reforms that are incompatible with local, cultural and structural realities. Under structural adjustment, Jamaica has embarked upon policies that have been short-term in vision, un-coordinated and subject to the demands of local and global hegemonic groups. These policies have limited the expansion of this export sector and has encouraged forms of work organisation that are deeply exploitative of labour. In the case of the informatics sector, the pressure to satisfy IMF and World Bank macro-economic restructuring requirements, together with, inadequate finance and marketing support, and technical labour, has limited the potential of the sector to become a growth catalyst. Instead of becoming an industry that provides foreign exchange earnings, jobs and technical skills, informatics in Jamaica remains low in value added content, and reliant on sweated, female, low cost labour. The current organisation of work is particularly exploitative of women and their households who provide them with support. The strain that workers and their households sustain creates a vicious cycle, because as workers find ways to resist their employers demands, the industry loses its ability to compete globally. This dissertation concludes that the future of the industry will depend on the extent to which the industry is able to: provide local and foreign firms with equal opportunities to compete in global markets; develop higher value-added services and provide workers with better opportunities for personal and occupational development. I argue that improving the skills and knowledge base of the industry's labour force represents a first step in thi

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The purpose of this creative project was to develop a program on video tape that would briefly explain the local Cooperative Extension Office, the programs and the assistance available. Audio-visual material available prior to this consisted of one slide tape set approximately 10 years old. In the new video tape a short history of Extension, and an overview of each area of the local Extension Office are explained, using examples of how the local Extension Agents provide assistance to the community. The disciplines include 4-H, Agriculture, Family and Consumer Sciences and Community Development.Development of the video tape included planning, script writing, filming, editing and documentation of the project. The major task was to present the best, most informative material explaining the role of Extension with-out being long and boring. By showing preliminary tapes to control groups and making changes as suggested. A final format was established that should most effectively explain the Extension Office and its services.

With the technological development of the last decades, an increasing number of genealogists are carrying out their research online. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine how and why genealogists' information behavior has been influenced by the use of online services for genealogy. Using a conceptual model of genealogists' information behavior as theoretical basis for the study, I examine how the use of online services affect genealogists’ search process, what information they are looking for and what information resources they use. Data is collected by seven qualitative interviews with experienced genealogists.The interviews indicate that online services have not completely taken over the genealogists’ search for information. Genealogists still went to physical repositories for a number of reasons. However, all participants in the study agreed that their visits to physical repositories and their use of physical records had declined since they began to use online services. The search for information was perceived to have become easier and more convenient with online services, although participants also acknowledged the risks of misleading information. Online services for genealogy also seem to have an influence on the contact between genealogists, especially on international contacts. This, together with the increasing research on foreign material, indicates that genealogy has been internationalized as a result of the use of online services. To the extent that the use of online services affects genealogists' information behavior, it seems in large part to be a result of online services removing geographical barriers that previously influenced genealogists’ information behavior. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archival Science.

Information technology gradually started to play a major role in the service rendering of academic libraries since 1994. Large amounts of money became necessary to enable libraries to provide the latest formats of information sources, as well as access to quality electronic databases. Prices of printed information sources also increased dramatically over recent years, along with a high South African inflation rate. Government subsidies for academic institutions also started to decline annually (De Kock, 1997). User needs, and information seeking patterns of library users also changed over recent years because of major information technology developments. Many authors performed studies on changing user needs in recent years, of which five were chosen to form the basis of this study. It became of utmost importance for libraries to monitor user needs regularly, to be able to identify changing needs and expectations. This will enable academic libraries with tight budgets to render more relevant and appropriate information services to specific user groups. Research procedures and methodology: A literature study was done in order to determine which information rendering models currently exist, as well as to find prior research on the information needs of engineers. This was followed by a qualitative study by means of semi-structured interviews. Personal interviews is a flexible method. which enables the researcher to ask follow-up questions, as well as to ask respondents to explain certain issues in detail (Huysamen, 1993 :15 1). The interview schedule contained thirty-three questions, based on eleven theoretical hypotheses constructed throughout the study. The following engineering departments were included in this study: Electronics, Applied Electronics & Electronic communication, Process instrumentation and Control, Power, Mechanical, Civil & Building, Metallurgy, Industrial & Production, and Computer Systems engineering. The aim of the study: This study is aimed at determining the information needs of engineering lecturers in particular, and also to determine if the Gold Fields library currently satisfies their information needs. All engineering lecturers have access to electronic databases as well as internet from their offices, and in many cases don't need to make use the physical library building any more. This study aims at finding out what their current information needs are, and which avenues they are currently being used to acquire relevant subject related information. Lecturers will also be probed about the role of the Gold Fields Library in their information needs. Conclusion: This study reveals that the information needs of engineering lecturers revolve primarily around their personal research interests, as well as changing lecturing methods. Printed and electronic information sources are currently complementing each other, and in no way is one replacing the other. This study also showed that the Gold Fields Library is currently not satisfying engineering lecturer's information needs, with specific reference to the intranet; some printed and electronic resources; training on electronic databases; packaging of information; personalized information services, and the subject knowledge of information librarians. Engineering lecturers were satisfied with the following: information interviews conducted by information librarians; personal attributes of information librarians; information technology competency of information librarians, and ethics. It became evident that the Gold Fields Library should consider certain changes and expansions to the information services currently rendered to engineering lecturers. / Thesis (M.Bibl.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

The relationships between medical libraries and the main users of medical information in the teaching hospitals and University departments in Oxford is examined. Systems ideas are used to define the sort of model or picture of the users that a library manager needs in order to provide the appropriate services, and to provide a formal means of incorporating users and their information needs into a management control system. Data were gathered by several methods and combined into a rich picture of the users and their information-seeking behaviour. The systems methodology developed by Checkland at the University of Lancaster was used to test this rich picture and link it with monitoring for library effective- ness. Application of the Checkland methodology was a crucial step which shifted the emphasis of the project from quantitative to conceptual modelling. The methods of data collection and the results are described as the User Survey. The following techniques were used: questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, direct observation, feedback forms (a critical incident technique), a reference tracing experiment and analysis of existing library records. The data gathered by those methods presented a consistent picture in which the nature of the users' work, ie research or clinical practice, was the dominant influence on information-seeking patterns. Application of the Checkland methodology and the conceptual models derived from it are described as the Systems Study. This revealed that the formal processes for monitoring and control expected by the conceptual models did not appear in identifiable form in the real world. Further examination showed that a detailed description of the library function was necessary and that this statement could be used to generate performance criteria. In addition, the rich picture from the User Survey was found to be a fair representation of reality. Conclusions for systems thinking, user studies, library managers and medical librarianship are presented.

Healthcare Informatics suffers from the lack of information exchange among domain partners. Allowing cooperation among distributed and heterogeneous applications is a major need of current healthcare information systems. Beyond the communication and integration problems, medical information itself is by nature complex, combined with data and knowledge. The increasing number of standards and representation of the same data in different structures using these standards constitute another problem in the domain. Platform and implementation independency makes Web service technology the natural way to solve the interoperability problems in the healthcare domain. Standardizing the access to data through WSDL and SOAP rather than standardizing the electronic health record will help to overcome the integration problems among different standards in medical information systems. However, introducing Web services to the healthcare systems will not suffice to solve the problems in the domain unless the semantics of the services are exploited. This thesis aims to show that by generating web services and classifying these services through their functionalities, it is possible to achieve the interoperability among healthcare institutes, such as hospitals. The designed system is based on Artemis P2P Framework, and the annotation of the system is realized in the same framework.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-130). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xii, 130 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

The aim of the research was to investigate the formation of the information management discipline, propose a framework by which it is presently understood, and test that framework within a particular area of application, namely the provision of scientific and technological information (STI) services. The work is presented as a PhD by Publication which comprises a narrative that encompasses the series of published papers, and includes excerpts from the book written to illustrate the province of the discipline. In thee book the disciplinary context is detailed and exemplified based upon information management domains. The book consolidates information management principles within a framework defined by these operational, analytical and administrative domains. It was created by a redaction of prior epistemological proposals; an analysis of the understanding of practice that has been shaped by professional, institutional and information science influences; and demonstration of practice within the domain framework. The disciplinary framework was then used in a series of STI case studies where it was found to provide an effective description of information management. Together, the book and subsequent case studies provided illustration of the principles utilised in information management and the way that they are practiced within different domains, along with an explanation of the manner in which the information management discipline has been formed. These should assist with direction of future research and scholarship particularly with respect to factors relevant to information services and indicators for their successful application in future. It is anticipated that this generalised description of the practices across the range of interpretations of information management should enable practicing information professionals to appreciate the relationship of their own work to disciplines that are converging towards similar purpose, such as through a clearer indication of the extent to which technical and management standards may be applied, and performance analysis undertaken. Complementary outcomes that were achieved during the course of the work were: a comparative analysis of thesauri in the information field which shows that in this field, the ways that information professionals represent themselves remains unreconciled; an historical examination of Australian STI services that provides pointers to their effective continuation; and a reconsideration of the relationship between librarianship and information management. The work is presented as a compilation of papers that comprise firstly extracts from the book to exemplify its consolidation of information management principles, then a number of published and submitted papers that examine how principles have been applied in practice. This is in the context of six case studies of Australian STI services including interviews with creators and developers, and analysis of historical information.