<p> This dissertation focuses on the everyday life information practices of teens in the Nerdfighter online fan community known as Nerdfighteria. Nerdfighteria is the community of fans of vloggers John and Hank Green. This study examines aspects of everyday life information seeking (ELIS) by 1) focusing on an understudied demographic, teens between the ages of 13 to 17; 2) focusing on a fan community, Nerdfighteria, which has many members, but has been rarely studied in the academic literature; and 3) investigating everyday life information practices using a single community that utilizes multiple online platforms (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Discord, and YouTube), rather than centering on a single platform. </p><p> This dissertation is a case study incorporating a survey of 241 teens and semi-structured interviews with 15 teens about their experiences in Nerdfighteria, followed by a month-long diary activities. The study also included observations of public communities and review of documents related to the Nerdfighter community. Data analysis was iterative and incorporated grounded theory techniques. </p><p> This study finds that teen Nerdfighters use their fan community to engage in a wide variety of everyday life information seeking around topics that are related to their personal development. Social, cognitive, emotional, and fan topics were predominant. Teen Nerdfighters engaged across platforms and were likely to switch platforms to find the optimal technical affordances while staying in Nerdfighteria. The teens viewed these changes as staying within the community rather than changing from one platform to another&mdash;illustrating the primacy of the community to the teens in meeting their information needs. Teens were drawn to Nerdfighteria because they believed it to be a unique place on the Internet, which valued intellectualism, positivity, and kindness. In many cases, teens preferred to observe other&rsquo;s interactions in order to gain the information they needed or wanted, and waited to engage via posting or responding when certain criteria were met. These findings describe the complicated interplay of the ELIS topics sought, the preferred practices for meeting an information need, and the reasons for choosing one community over another.</p><p>

This thesis is concerned with the academic study of information policy and aims to improve theoretical and methodological approaches for the analysis of complex information policy environments. In conducting a casestudy on the formulation of the European directive on the legal protection of databases. up to its adoption in March 1996. the research aims to explore the ways in which copyright and information issues were framed. and solutions shaped by the process of formulating policy responses to them at the European level. At the substantive level the research examines the legal issues arising in the protection of databases in Europe and describes and explains the role of human. organisational and contextual factors in shaping the content of the directive as finally adopted. At the methodological level the research examines the utility of a re-interpreted process model of policy-making for providing a coherent framework within which to conduct analysis of this complex information policy issue. At the theoretical level the research aims to use the casestudy findings to generate insights for the academic study of complex (European) information policy environments. The literature review begins by examining the development of information policy and considers the main problems that have inhibited the development of a coherent approach to information policy studies from within the information science tradition. It examines the reinterpreted process model of policy-making and presents it as a heuristic device with which to conduct the casestudy. The literature review also examines in detail the development of copyright policy at the European level and identifies the expansion of protection that has taken place. In particular. the impact of digital information and communication technologies on copyright regimes is considered. The literature review also outlines the emergence of the European Union(EU). and considers how the EU has shaped the characteristics of. and interactions between policy actors operating in the European policy-making environment. The casestudy analysis is conducted in two parts consisting of a detailed analysis of documentary evidence and forty in-depth semi-structured interviews with policy actors directly involved in the formulation of the directive. In deploying the re-interpreted process model the analysis is divided into two overlapping phases linked by the publication of the Commission's formal directive proposal in 1992. To ensure that the casestudy findings can be used in a more generalisable manner the analysis addresses the links between the formulation of the database directive and the wider context of European copyright and information policy-making in the digital age. Following the documentary and interview analysis the research findings are discussed and interpreted. The thesis concludes that at a substantive level the formulation of European copyright policy is problematic and tends towards a strengthening of protection in favour of right shoulders. In the digital environment the implications of this for other areas of information policy are also shown to be of concern. At the methodological level the re-interpreted process model is highlighted as useful in sensitising analysis to sources of complexity in the formulation process and for providing a coherent framework within which to study them. At the theoretical level the thesis enhances understanding of (European) information policy processes and provides some useful insights for academic information policy studies.

The study describes action research undertaken within the Knowledge Management programme of the British Council, a not-for-profit multinational organisation. An interpretive methodology is adopted because of its appropriateness to the study of real-life complex situations. There is a contested literature on Knowledge Management which this study explores and contributes too. The action research draws on a social constructivist stance to develop and introduce Knowledge Management systems for significant groups within the organisation. A rich set of issues emerge from the literature, and the action research, which contribute to the discourse on Knowledge Management systems and their use in practice. The study suggests that a methodological framework is beneficial in supporting the development and introduction of such systems. However the research identified that Knowledge Management problems cannot be identified and so reconceptualises Knowledge Management in terms of improvement. A framework is developed (AFFEKT: Appreciative Framework for Evolving Knowledge Technologies) to such improvement. This framework is used in the final action research cycle. The conclusions are drawn from a reflection on the application of this framework and reflection on broader issues raised by the action research. The study concludes that knowledge management systems should introduced through an ongoing iterative process of reflection and action. Knowledge Management systems should encourage new work practices, however this requires a realisation that the development of a Knowledge Management systems is a reflective process by which the system is integrated into existing practice and enables users to critique this practice. The study contributes to the discourse concerning the application of technology within Knowledge Management (Galliers 1999; Alavi and Leidner 2001; Butler 2002; Wickramasinghe 2002). It contributes to the field of Information Systems by describing a coherent narrative on the introduction of knowledge management systems within a unique organisational context, and by developing a framework to aid intervention.

<p> Libraries often engage in services that require collaboration across stakeholder boundaries to be successful. Institutional repositories (IRs) are a good example of such a service. IRs are an infrastructure to preserve intellectual assets within a university or college, and to provide an open access showcase for that institution&rsquo;s research, teaching, and creative excellence. They involve multiple stakeholders (librarians, IT experts, administrators, faculty, and students) and are typically operated by academic libraries. They have existed since the early 2000s. </p><p> Collaborative leadership has been studied in areas such as health care and business, but it has received little attention in studies of library leadership and management. Collaborative leadership has been shown to be an effective leadership style for an increasingly networked world; it is an interactive process in which people set aside self-interests, share power, work across boundaries, and discuss issues openly and supportively. Collaborative leadership moves organizations beyond mere cooperation towards a state of interdependence; it empowers all members of a team to help each other to achieve broader goals, find personal satisfaction in their work, and sustain productive relationships over time. A better understanding of collaborative leadership can inform both IR development and future complex multi-stakeholder campus services. </p><p> Two methodologies &ndash; content analysis of IR web pages and surveys of library directors and IR developers &ndash; were employed to determine if IRs revealed evidence of collaborative leadership. The study populations were those members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Oberlin Group of liberal arts colleges that operated IR services by July 2014 (146 institutions overall). The research examined if IR format, size, age, nomenclature, or technology platform varied between ARL and Oberlin Group members. It asked if there is any difference in the perception of collaborative leadership traits, perceived IR success, or collaborative involvement with stakeholder communities between ARL and Oberlin Group members or between library directors and IR developers. The study found evidence of all six collaborative leadership traits being examined: assessing the environment for collaboration, creating clarity, building trust, sharing power, developing people, and self-reflection. </p><p>

<p> The environment in which higher education institutions are situated has been impacted by a number of disruptive forces since the early 1990s, including acceleration in the capability of information technology (Beagle, 2006; Bennett, 2003; Foster, 2014), changing attitudes about learning pedagogy (Barr &amp; Tagg, 1995), and calls for accountability from government and the public (Appleton, Stevenson, &amp; Boden, 2011; Forrest &amp; Bostick, 2013). Innovative leaders in academic librarianship have been empowered by their institutions to lead efforts to create transformative library learning spaces that can effectively leverage the opportunities presented through these disruptions to aid the institution in meeting its goals, now and in the future. </p><p> The theoretical framework for this study was grounded in planned (Lewin, 1951) and emergent change (Bess &amp; Dee, 2012; Burnes, 2004, Leslie, 1996) theories, which are both needed to foster sustainable and transformative outcomes (Mossop, 2013). The following research question guided this study: </p><p> <i>How do organizational leaders experience engagement with stakeholders during the creation of library learning spaces, from visioning through planning, implementation and evaluation?</i> </p><p> This basic, interpretive, qualitative study employed individual, semi-structured interviews with (<i>N</i>=11) library leaders who possessed primary responsibility for leading others to facilitate creation of library learning spaces at their institution. Projects serving as subjects for the study were completed between 2011 and 2016. Leader subjects were identified through intentional and emergent sampling. Themes were inductively identified through open and axial coding methods (Merriam &amp; Tisdell, 2016). Artifacts related to the library space projects were analyzed to corroborate findings. Elite interviews with (<i>N</i>2) professionals from varied backgrounds who have expert knowledge on library learning space design were implemented to integrate additional perspectives into findings. </p><p> Five principal findings were identified that framed the process of leadership engagement through a library space project: 1) Input: Leadership Characteristics &amp; Project Ignition; 2) Project Drivers: Institutional Authority, Mission, &amp; Needs; 3) Building on Relational Capital; 4) Persistence through Planned Change; and 5) Maintaining Sustainable Spaces. This study may contribute a greater understanding of leadership requirements for library space design projects, as well as identify activities associated with project success. </p><p>

<p> The role of school libraries in both public and private school systems has changed dramatically over the last two decades as the Internet and ubiquity of digital devices has made the world accessible within seconds just by the tap of a finger on a touchscreen or keyboard. The purpose of the school library as a functional educational space has traditionally been one that promotes information literacy, reading for information, and reading for pleasure with paper books. In today&rsquo;s ever increasingly digital world, however, well-resourced libraries are exchanging paper books and reference sets for e-books and subscriptions to online services that store information in virtual clouds rather than on bookshelves. Moreover, their coveted spaces are sometimes transformed into tactile learning spaces inspired by the recent Maker Movement. </p><p> This qualitative research study examines the functional role of the school libraries in four independent schools, an inquiry seeking to better understand how young students use libraries to develop multiple literacies&mdash;digital, informational, tactile, and printed&mdash;all of which are necessitated by the growing prevalence of electronic resources and technology in schools. How should well-resourced school libraries today, historically bound to paper collections and archives, design learning spaces and allocate resources to support a generation of students born into the digital age? It is the intersection of these two points, students born into a world dominated by technology and traditional school libraries dominated by paper resources, that the current role and purpose of school libraries is examined.</p>

The era of the knowledge-driven economy has arrived. This economy - based on what people know and are willing to share - requires an ability to find and utilise appropriate knowledge quickly and effectively. Managing knowledge is however, complex and multifaceted. In addition, a history of treating different types of information as discrete entities means that no one profession or function has taken responsibility for this process. The library and information science (LIS) profession in particular, has not even formulated a clear role for itself in this process. This dissertation asks the question why this profession - skilled in the acquisition and distribution of information - is not actively engaged in the debate. It seeks to gain an understanding of the roles, skills and competencies needed for managing knowledge and assesses the implications for the LIS profession, if its members want to play a significant part in this process. Research reflects internationally based theory and opinions. In addition, it provides empirical evidence that the majority of the sample of LIS professionals participating in this study do not play a significant role in the knowledge management environment in South African based companies. / Dr. J. A. Kok

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