The findings of this multi-site study emphasise the importance of Organisational Culture for integrating clinical information systems into intensive care units. A novel model, the Iterative Systems Integration Model, has two principle components, these being Organisational Culture and the Actual Usefulness of the clinical information system. The model is derived from empirical data collected in four intensive care sites in England and Denmark, with one site being used to validate the model. The model highlights clinical information systems as directly affecting the work processes of the sites investigated, which in turn affect the Organisational Culture and Actual Usefulness of the clinical information system used, and these features affect clinical information system integration. This forms an iterative process of change as clinical information systems are introduced and integrated. Intensive care units are complex organisations, with complex needs and work processes. The impact of clinical information systems on these work processes is investigated in this thesis using Role Activity Diagrams. These diagrams are analysed to show that although clinical work processes are consistent at each site, the information processes differ. Intensive care information processes are found to have the potential to be much simplified with the introduction of seamless clinical information systems. Qualitative data collectio n methods were deployed, i. e., observations, interviews, and shadowing of clinical staff, together with a questionnaire at each site for further validation. Data were analysed using grounded theory to extract salient variables, which informed the development of the model. These factors were indicative of the Organisational Culture of the sites investigated and the Actual Useftilness of the clinical information systems being used. It was posited that clinical information systems that reconcile expectations of both hospital management and clinical staff - and that have the potential to adapt to their organisational environment - have a greater chance of surviving in complex environments such as intensive care. Despite decades of Health Infon-flatics, no such systems exist in their entirety; this research shows that 'ancient problems' of clinical information systems integration are still prevalent, and presents the Iterative Systems Integration Model, the application of which may assist with the integration of clinical information systems in intensive care.

Knowledge management (KM) is an emerging discipline that promises to capitalize on organizations intellectual capital. KM refers to the process of managing the life-cycle of knowledge relevant to areas that are mission critical to the organization. This includes efforts to capture, store, and deploy knowledge using a combination of information technology and business processes. In recent years, KM has become a critical subject of discussion in the business literature. Both business and academic communities believe that by leveraging knowledge, an organization can sustain its long-term competitive advantage. Approaches to KM varied form emphasizing the capabilities of information and communication technologies to the focus on social systems such as employee training and motivation. Engineering organizations led the way in KM initiatives realizing the potential of successful KM implementation in decreasing production time and cost, increasing quality, making better decisions as well as improve organizations' performance and provide a competitive advantage. Although some engineering organizations reported early KM success, other organizations have tried and failed to implement KM. These failures have been linked to the lack of a generally accepted framework and methodology to guide successful implementation of KM in organizations. This primary aim of this research is to produce a model for a successful implementation of KM in engineering organizations which integrates the various approaches and key factors to implementing KM. The study has produced a model which provides a framework that identifies the different types of knowledge available in engineering organizations, the KM life-cycle which is needed to manage this knowledge, and the key factors that facilitate this process. The model also provides management with guidance for implementing KM in their organizations. In order to achieve the aims and objectives of this research, a triangulation nonexperimental approach is adopted using qualitative in-depth case study with triangulation of data collection methods that uses observation, structured interviews, unstructured interviews, historical data collection, and document review. This is followed by a quantitative approach with the use of a questionnaire to further validate and generalize the proposed KM model. In building the KM model a thorough review of previous related literature from different disciplines was conducted. The literature reviewed included various issues relating to KM, such as KM approaches, perspectives, frameworks, and methodologies as well as strategic planning, human resources, instructional design theories, organizational learning, information technology, etc.

<p> This research highlights the scenarios that might serve as a strategic vision to describe a future beyond the current library, one which both guides provosts and creates a map for the transformation of human resources and technology in the university research libraries. The scenarios offer managerial leaders an opportunity to envision new roles for librarians and staff which brings a much needed focus on the development of human resources as well as a thought-stream to understand decisions which effectively and systematically move the organization toward a strategic vision.</p><p> These scenarios outline possible future directions research libraries could take by focusing on perspectives from library directors, provosts, and administrators for human resources. The four case study scenarios introduce potential future roles for librarians and highlight the unsustainability of the current scholarly communications model as well as uncertain factors related to the political, social, technical, and demographic issues facing campuses. Given the changes institutions face, scenarios allow directors to include more uncertainty when developing and articulating a vision. These scenarios may start a discussion, before a strategic planning process, to sharpen the evaluations and measures necessary to monitor achievements that define the value of the library.</p><p> This dissertation highlights the importance of research library managerial leaders developing a strategic vision and introduces scenarios as way to communicate that vision with provosts, the senior leadership team, librarians, and staff. How the library directors approach the strategic vision scenario provides insight into the challenges and barriers identified within the existing organizational culture.</p>

<p>Information and communication technology (ICT) is foreign to a number of public libraries and those libraries that have a technology infrastructure in place, suffer from an under-utilization of the technology, owing to a shortage of skills that are critical to boost the library into the global information society. It is important that staff in public libraries have the necessary skills and positive attitude to use the technology offered to them. The main objective of this study was to determine the use of ICT's in Nyanga, Brown's Farm and Crossroads public libraries and make recommendations towards effective use of ICT in the above-mentioned public libraries.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Adviser: Elizabeth Hearne. UMI Cat. no.: 3269982. Includes bibliographical references (p. 411-442)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2004. / Title from title screen (viewed 8 May 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Economics and Business. Degree awarded 2004; thesis submitted 2003. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references.

Unrestricted accessible scholarly resources are increasingly considered essential to knowledge creation and socio-economic development. In order to facilitate this, university libraries at National Research Universities (NRUs) in Thailand have established institutional repositories (IRs). The development of the Open Access publishing movement also provides opportunities and challenges to NRUs’ IRs and scholarly community. Like others, the IR projects in Thailand have experienced low awareness and content contribution from stakeholders. Accordingly, this study aims to optimize the established IR projects in NRUs in Thailand by exploring the stakeholders’ research publishing behaviour, and the perception, participation, and utilisation of IRs. This study advances the understanding of IRs in NRUs in Thailand from the perspectives of multiple stakeholder groups. This inductive qualitative study employs Constructivist Grounded Theory as a research methodology. Theoretical sampling, convenient sampling, and purposive sampling were used to recruit key participants in Thai scholarly communication at three NRUs. An in-depth semi-structured interview method was used to collect data and Charmaz’s Grounded Theory Method of Open coding and Focused coding was used to analyse it. The analysis resulted in the generation of the 4Cs (/foresee/) Model for the Development of University-based IRs. It composes of “Communication” “Collaboration”, “Copyright understanding”, “Control” and “Local academic culture”. This innovative model provides an explanatory framework identifying the factors for the availability and accessibility of full-text digital research publications in Thai university-based IRs. Moreover, the 3Rs – Rethinking, Redefining, and Re-collaborating- are recommended as key activities to be considered when confronting the difficulties in the development of IRs. In addition, this study also proposes the “2PSC model for operational excellence – Policies, Procedure, Services, and Competencies” as a practical and effective mechanism for managing IRs. Further, the study offers theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to the understanding of IRs in NRUs in Thailand from the perspectives of multiple stakeholder groups.

The Web has changed the face of scientific communication; and the Semantic Web promises new ways of adding value to research material by making it more accessible to automatic discovery, linking, and analysis. Institutional repositories contain a wealth of information which could benefit from the application of this technology. In this thesis I describe the problems inherent in the informality of traditional repository metadata, and propose a data model based on the Semantic Web which will support more efficient use of this data, with the aim of streamlining scientific communication and promoting efficient use of institutional research output.

e-Science technologies and tools have been applied to the facilitating of the accumulation, validation, analysis, computation, correlation and dissemination of chemical information and its transformation into accepted chemical knowledge. In this work a number of approaches have been investigated to address the diffeerent issues with recording and preserving the scientific record, mainly the laboratory notebook. The electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) has the potential to replace the paper notebook with a marked-up digital record that can be searched and shared. However it is a challenge to achieve these benefits without losing the usability and flexibility of traditional paper notebooks. Therefore using a blog-based platform will be investigated to try and address the issues associated with the development of a flexible system for recording scientific research.