Library & Information Science Research最新文献

Feedback orientation is a measure of individual attitudes and receptivity towards feedback. Library managers and workers need to be aware of this individual difference to effectively leverage feedback for individual and organizational success. This exploratory study provides an evaluation and baseline measure of feedback orientation in libraries along with an analysis of individual and organizational factors that predict feedback orientation in library workers. An online survey of library workers (n = 332) revealed overall feedback orientation is in line with other professions. Findings show positive dispositional affect, affective-based interpersonal trust in the direct supervisor relationship, and employee's perception of organizational fairness, are all predictors of feedback orientation in library workers. This study generates awareness of feedback orientation in libraries and has implications for practice, especially for library supervisors who can tailor their feedback approaches to meet the needs of individual employees.

Migrant workers have a need for information about their home culture. These cultural information needs are affected by several factors. Qualitative data from a survey of 168 Chinese migrants, and qualitative data from 20 semi-structured interviews, yielded insights into the nature of these factors and of their influence on the migrants' acculturation. Findings indicate that psycho-cultural factors have the most influence on cultural information needs, followed by human capital factors, social interaction factors, and living situation factors. These findings suggest that the cultural information needs of migrant workers are linked to the workers' capability for cultural integration. Further discussion explores the role of cultural information in helping to enhance migrant workers' fluid identity and emotional resilience, as well as creating harmonious intergroup relationships, achieving social integration, and facilitating intercultural interactions. A theoretical and conceptual framework is proposed to help bridge the gap between studies of migrant information needs and of acculturation theory, and to increase understanding of the underlying links between information needs and cultural issues relating to migration.

Professional writing in library and information science (LIS) constructs and reifies an imagined and “hypothetical” (Sulzer & Thein, 2016) adolescent subject understood in developmental terms as the beneficiary of programs and services created by adults on their behalf. Whereas this figure of the adolescent has and continues to be called up in discussions of young adult literature and young people’s reading of the same, this construct is an implicit informant of professional assessment and recommendation of adult literature for young people. Content analysis of one year of reviews of mainstream adult fiction recommended for adolescent readers and published in the review journal, Booklist, surfaces this discourse in professional writing and demonstrates the ways in which its use in professional practice corroborates a deficit model of adolescence as it sanctions a narrow range of literate identities and practices for adolescent readers and affirms their engagement with only those genres and forms of writing adult professionals have approved for their consumption.

Public libraries are adding social workers to staff as a way of improving their response to the social services needs of library users. This case study of how one public library system undertook to hire a social worker and integrate the position into the life of the library follows the results of this undertaking for roughly 18 months, utilizing semi-structured interviews and corroborating findings with official documentation on the library's website and other documents provided directly by participants. Abbott's system of professions provides the theoretical framework for this case study, which also asks about the potential impact of social work on the profession of librarianship. Overall, participants are very satisfied with the social worker position, even though her defined duties are narrow. This study adds to the knowledge of how social workers are being embedded in libraries and provides needed insights into implications for librarianship as a profession.