Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 1993. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliography (leaves 260-266).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1981. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 366-379).

Bibliography: pages 237-246. / An investigation was undertaken into the attitudes held by library/information workers towards their profession because it was considered that the strength of these attitudes may affect not only the self-concept and work performance of individuals, but also the quality and dimensions of the support received by the profession from society. The study was conducted in two parts: the literature survey and the empirical investigation. The empirical investigation was limited geographically to the Western Cape region of South Africa.

No description available.

This thesis is about librarians and librarianship. Questions asked in the thesis are how the librarianship developed between 1475 and 1780 and what the core and the main tasks of the profession were. There is also the question whether the profession is built on a common basis to rely on and if it is characterized by unique knowledge. The history of the librarian is divided in three parallel ongoing parts, the practical, the visionary and finally the personal, the librarians own attitudes. The practical area is characterized by the practical work, as cataloguing, classification, care of books, shelving and protecting the documents in different ways from several possible threats. The work is dictated by the employer. The visionary part complements and develops the methods of library work being established in the practical area, the librarians themselves formulate their thoughts of libraries and librarianship, defines the roles of libraries in society, in education and research. The librarians think about the content of the work and the future of libraries. These two areas done, another dimension is born. That is the ethics of the librarianship, how to behave and how to act towards library users and this dimension puts the librarian in the centre. There have been signs of this before but the completion is done in 1780 by Cotton des Houssayes. His speech opens the future for the librarians to come. The time period covers 305 years from 1475 until 1780. Starting point for this research about the librarian is 1475 because in that year pope Sixtus IV appointed Bartolomeus Platina as librarian of the Vatican library. The bull of 1475 is an official document that describes the librarian as a librarian and that he is told what to do, where to do it, how to do it and why. Jean-Baptiste Cotton des Houssayes, appointed in 1780, sets an end to this period with his speech to the General Assembly of the Sorbonne university in Paris. His speech completes the creation of the librarian. It is also the starting point of something new in librarianship. The common tasks of the librarians investigated, reveal what can be regarded as the essence of librarianship. From the practical area, the employers gave the librarians their tasks, executed at different places in different kinds of libraries. From the area of visions, the librarians built their visions as a continuum of the experiences from the practical work. New areas like the role of the librarian, the goals for the library itself and the librarians as the executors and pathfinders for the future. More of theory became a natural part of the librarianship. The last area of the development of the librarian is to adopt ethical aspects of their profession. This dimension is a self-reflecting attitude important to the librarians themselves. / <p>Akademisk avhandling som med tillstånd av samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet för vinnande av filosofie doktorsexamen framläggs till offentlig granskning kl. 13.15 torsdagen den 10 juni 2010 i hörsal C203, Högskolan i Borås, Allégatan 1, Borås.</p>

Review of M-libraries 2: A Virtual Library in Everyone's Pocket, edited by Mohamed Ally and Gill Needham. London: Facet Publishing, 2010. 273 p. $105.00 ISBN-13: 978-1856046961

A Study of the U. S. Diplomatic Library In Mexico City by Lauren Ann Waelder, M. S. in Information Studies The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 SUPERVISOR: Philip Doty This paper addresses the topic of diplomatic libraries. It opens with a section covering the topic in general, but then focuses on the specific scope of the paper. It focuses on the circumstances associated with the library in Mexico City that goes with the U. S. Embassy to Mexico. That library is the Benjamin Franklin Library, established in 1942 and named after the person from the early United States history. It attempts to provide an overview of the library, as well as theoretical framework surrounding diplomatic libraries and cultural relations in the United States. The paper accomplishes these goals in two ways. First, it performs a review of relevant literature, both old and new, on the topic. This literature review also analyzes the gap in information between the older and more recent sources, focusing on a difference between the older works’ historical base and the newer works’ practical experience. Second, it also incorporates original research through an actual visit to the library in Mexico City. The paper goes on to discuss the two research questions and thirteen other questions that a process of interviews with three different groups of Ben Franklin Library librarians was able to answer. Finally, the paper wraps up both the literature review and the research notes through a discussion of the interaction between the two sections and how they both contribute to the paper as a whole and to an active readership. The discussion of these issues includes references to items in either form, but it transcends actual commentary on the contents of the relevant literature, focusing instead on its larger implications for the topic. It also touches briefly on a few of the ways future research could continue to enhance this field. Finally, a conclusion leaves the reader with a few comments that explain how an article of this nature provides its audience with an expansion of knowledge about the topic of diplomatic libraries and about the Benjamin Franklin Library in particular. This combination of information should allow other readers to form more educated opinions of diplomatic libraries and their place in society. / text

This thesis examines factors affecting the dissemination of findings arising from DHSS-funded health and personal social services (HPSS) research. The Department&apos;s programme covers a broad area of HPSS research, and is highly diverse in respect of topics, methods, research personnel and institutions, etc. The findings of projects within this programme are normally expected to have relevance to &apos;customer divisions&apos; within the Department, whilst also having interest and implications for a variety of extra-Departmental groups. For the purpose of this investigation, DHSS, the research community and research audiences were each viewed as 'open systems' exchanging information (along with other commodities) with one another. Researchers and &apos;key actors&apos; within DHSS (i.e. personnel concerned with research management and the Department&apos;s information resources and publications) were interviewed to determine the nature and extent of their communication practices, and to examine how each came to adopt his or her particular methods for processing and transmitting research information. The handling of completed research within the Department was further studied by means of an analysis of the minutes and papers of the DESS Research Liaison Groups. Amongst other findings it is shown that the fixed-term nature of research funding limits researchers' opportunities for a full dissemination of their findings. meanwhile, the research community's reward system leads researchers to publish their findings preferentially in specialist research journals. Dissemination to the field, to practitioners in particular, is further frustrated by the Department's uncertainty with regard to the role which it should play in assisting or effecting such action, and by its preferential concern for the consideration of the implications of research findings for primary Departmental 'customers'.

The research explores the theoretical possibility of a semiotic approach to the Museum phenomenon, seen as a process of communication and signification, and the consequences on the determination of the social function of museums, in its semantic and pragmatic levels. It proposes a new discipline for the field - that of 'Museum Semiotics', as a theoretical background and a tool for the understanding of museums as 'semiosic spaces', acting in the cultural process through their 'communicative actions'. PARTS I and II propose the basic assumptions and premises for the study of the specific Museum Language, defining its terms and concepts, and considering museum objects as bearing a 'sign-function', as 'signifying units' used in the construction of messages and 'discourses', manifested or hidden in museum exhibitions. The mechanisms of the process of sign production and of sign interpretation in the Museum context, the concept of 'museality', the Museum 'mythological speech', the interplay of codes and the interaction between emitters and receivers in the museum communication process, are explored here. PARTS III and IV propose and develop a preliminary model of analysis of exhibition 'texts' and of their specific 'rhetorics', applied in a particular case study, the exhibition on 'Buddhism, Art and Faith', held at the British Museum (1985), in order to detect the multiple ways in which the public 'reads' a Museum message, and all the elements working in this process. PART V presents the conclusions and insights on Museum Communication, on exhibition production and evaluation, on Museum Education, and on new fields of research opened up through the approach of Museum Semiotics, proposing a strategy for changing the conditions of communication, through open and aesthetic texts, which may encourage the visitors to recover their freedom of decoding'.

The thesis aims to investigate the implications of incidental recall for the design of personal information systems. Incidental recall is defined here as memory, without prior intent to recall, for information that is not meaningfully related to the information handling situation. When an information worker fails to recall how information is filed, is uncertain of its whereabouts, retrieval of that information becomes problematic and can result in the system not being used. One possible approach to solving this problem is to increase technological power, but even though electronic filing systems may offer varied and complex functions to assist information management, these functions lose their value if the systems are not actually used. An alternative approach to solving this problem is tailoring the system to make use of information that human memory can remember with little or no effort, in particular using attributes that human memory can recall incidentally, as labels for files. An experimental paradigm was developed to explore the nature of incidental recall for aspects of office information. The scarcity of investigative work using realistic, information handling, tasks to investigate incidental recall prompted the experimental design using a realistic task for an office worker. A business simulation game was employed involving the subjects sorting information, in the form of documents, based on decisions about their information content. Situated on the documents' were "Icons", logo-like designs, each with unique attributes of colour, location, and shape. Following the sorting task, the subjects participated in an unexpected test for each attribute of the icon. Four experiments were run within this paradigm which involved subjects experiencing varying levels of exposure to different combinations of attributes. The analysis provided substantial evidence for incidental recall of the attributes. Incidental recall of the attributes varied as a function of the task orientation. Evidence suggested a predisposition to integrate colour and shape in memory, while in contrast, location had a tendency to be recalled independently of the other attributes. The findings suggest that incidental recall as a filing aid will be most useful when attributes incidental to the information content are actively used in the course of handling the information.