At a Crossroads or Caught in the Crossfire?

This study of crime reporting shows that keeping crime records secret hurts democratic consolidation. While many reporters and journalism experts interviewed claimed to value the presumption of innocence, at the same time, many skirted legal restrictions and ethical codes. Police and prosecutors supplied leaks, and reporters sought further information from witnesses. This porous secrecy leads to publication of rumors and unreliable eye-witness accounts. Four exacerbating factors affect this reporting method: widespread “clientelism,” a partisan news media, an alternative definition of “public interest,” and weak professionalism.     

3D or Not 3D? Is that a Question?

Abstract: Stereoscopic 3D images, although going back to the mid‐nineteenth century, are becoming pervasive in cinema, the Web, electronic games, television, graphic simulations, personal photography, and the entertainment and education ecologies. The use of stereo 3D goes beyond a technology vogue to the creation of effective experiences that are more naturally engaging for audiences by conveying real physical depth perception and the illusions of tangibility and tactility. This paper claims that because museums are all about compelling, memorable, and visceral experiences, 3D will become an increasingly important tool for exhibitions, education, and interpretation; the challenge will be to know when, how, and why to use it. Stereo 3D is described and a trajectory of examples of past and current museum use is presented. The paper also provides a rationale for why, when many technologies are vying for priority and resources, stereoscopic 3D technology should be near the top of the list.     

An Insidious Poison or a Door to the Story?

The aim of this paper is to grasp the influence of the newsroom on frame-building processes. First, journalists’ own understanding of “frames” and “framing” is discussed. Second, from an academic interpretation of these concepts, journalists’ framing practices are studied. To this end an ethnographic study was conducted at two newsrooms, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands. The findings reveal that while the noun “frame” is sporadically used as a tool, the verb “framing” is considered as something from which a journalist should refrain. This is explained by the associations journalists make with strategic framing from sources as well as by the newspapers’ explicit attempt to no longer view the world from a single ideological frame. It is argued that the studied newsrooms have replaced ideology by, respectively, a counterframing strategy that strives to disprove existing frames (deframing) and a narrative approach that, one the one hand, sharpens existing frames but, on the other hand, offer more opportunities to create alternative frames (reframing) for events.     

Snakes or Ladders? Evaluating a LibGuides Pilot at UCD Library

Online subject guides are commonly used by libraries to provide information support to students. LibGuides (a cloud-based commercial product launched in 2007) represents one of the latest incarnations of the traditional subject guide or portal, and are widely used across American academic libraries. In Ireland however, library subject guides of entirely local design and hosted on a local web server still dominate.This paper outlines the project management process involved in implementing a LibGuides pilot at University College Dublin Library, including the planning, design and implementation of a new range of subject-related guides. The pilot nature of the project necessitated a strong focus on evaluation, particularly in assessing the effectiveness and suitability of LibGuides as a platform for delivering information literacy support, both from an administrative and end-user perspective. A two-stranded approach was used in this review process, incorporating quantitative web statistics and analytics alongside qualitative feedback from students, academic staff and Library staff.Feedback that was gathered suggested that the LibGuides subject guides were generally viewed very positively by both staff and students. Notwithstanding this, awareness (as indicated through usage statistics) remained moderate during the pilot, pointing to the importance of the visibility, positioning and promotion of guides.     

Documentation practices and recordkeeping: a matter of trust or distrust?

Records are more and more important as instruments of trust, for instance to ascertain accountability. However, they are also objects to be trusted upon themselves. Rather rigorous requirements are established to guarantee the trustworthiness of records; requirements are more elaborated in the digital environment than those that have previously been attributed to analogue records. The purpose of this study is to discuss the conceptualization of trust and trustworthiness in relation to records, and to analyze the relation between the increasing reliance on formal documentation in contemporary organizations and the requirements on records and recordkeeping systems that has been advanced recent years. It can be argued that the effort to enhance trustworthiness actually is a manifestation of diminishing trust.     

Is information ambivalent or monosubstantival? (Instead of a Review)

The monograph by A.V Sokolov “The Philosophy of Information” (St. Petersburg, 2010) is reviewed, which is dedicated to the conceptualization of information as one of the philosophical categories. Doubts are expressed about the legitimacy of the author’s treatment of the phenomenon of information from the perspective of dualistic monism recognizing the existence of a substance with two opposite “hypostases,” which cannot be reduced to one another, namely, about the author’s statement that the nature of information is neither ideal nor material but ambivalent, i.e., it is an indissoluble unity of the material (in this case, the carrier) and ideal (meaning) principles. This doubt is based on the premise that the ideal is not an independent substance, along with the material, but is just one form of existence of matter. Therefore, in our review it is proposed to treat information not as an element of ambivalence that belongs to the two principles of substantival, which is characteristic of dualism, but as an element of a monosubstantival principle, as a type of matter.     

教化or消费?

我认为,任何读物都不必端起架子来教训人,少儿读物尤其如此。但流行时尚究竟是否适合融入少儿读物,或者换句话话,少儿读物是否足以适合定位成纯粹的消费,也令人颇费踌躇,恐怕需要一些讨论吧。     

Survey or Standards?

The literature emphasizes the service factor in libraries and information centres, yet the designing of user service courses is difficult. While the definition of "the user" is improving, definitions of "service" are not. The concept has altered considerably over the years, changing from an adherence to "standards" as the measure of service, to the idea that the results of "surveys" should be the guide to services. This paper examines the implications for service policy in these approaches and the parallel issue of evaluating service success. It considers the significance of these theories in designing courses in public services for the curriculum in professional schools.     

Protection or Participation?

Children’s status as a particularly vulnerable group in society implies a journalistic obligation to shed light on children’s stories and listen to their perspectives, but their vulnerable position also means they deserve protection from potentially harmful news coverage. Based on a close-reading of two extensively covered news serials concerning irregular migrant children facing deportation, and on in-depth interviews with journalists, editors, and key actors working on behalf of irregular migrant children, the present article sheds light on how journalists balance competing, ethical, professional, and organizational concerns when reporting on issues concerning children. The article shows that while journalists say they are aware of the ethical aspects concerning extensive media exposure of young children, they justify the reporting by foregrounding children as innocent victims of the immigration system and by highlighting the journalistic obligation of shedding light on the wrongdoings of this system. The potential burden of media exposure is relativized as less harmful than the alternative—deportation. Theoretically, the article contributes to the literature on children in the news media, human-interest stories and journalism, and the role of journalism reporting vulnerable groups.     

Problem or Challenge?

Summary

Every day at reference desks, public service points, and in library instruction, librarians assist people who are apprehensive about technology. There are assumptions in academe, held by librarians, faculty and administration, regarding students' technology savvy. Many of these assumptions are unfounded and incorrect. Librarians are challenged to serve those individuals technology has left behind with the same respect as those technologically up-to-speed. This paper is a discussion about technology anxiety, technophobe myths, and a theory of technophobic learning.     

Happily Ever After? A Content Analysis of Romantic Ideals in Disney Princess Films

This study presents a quantitative content analysis of the romantic expressions portrayed in the 12 Disney princess movies. The films were analyzed for presence of romantic expressions (ideals and challenges) and the character reactions to those expressions. Results indicated that romantic expressions are prevalent in these films, with idealization of other as the most common ideal expressed. The transitional era of films (i.e., princess movies released between 1989 and 1998) contained roughly the same number of ideals as the other eras of classic (i.e., movies released before 1989) and modern (i.e., movies released after 1998) combined. Further, ideals were three times more common than challenges in classic films, whereas ideals and challenges were expressed equally in transitional and modern films. In general, across all three eras, challenges were most commonly met with punishing and negative reactions, whereas ideals were most often rewarded. Finally, there were no sex differences in terms of ideal expressions, but male characters were the dominant pursuers in 9 of the 11 films that featured a romantic relationship.     

Documentary genre and digital recordkeeping: red herring or a way forward?

The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary assessment of the utility of the genre concept for digital recordkeeping. The exponential growth in the volume of records created since the 1940s has been a key motivator for the development of strategies that do not involve the review or processing of individual documents or files. Automation now allows processes at a level of granularity that is rarely, if at all, possible in the case of manual processes, without loss of cognisance of context. For this reason, it is timely to revisit concepts that may have been disregarded because of a perceived limited effectiveness in contributing anything to theory or practice. In this paper, the genre concept and its employability in the management of current and archival digital records are considered, as a form of social contextualisation of a document and as an attractive entry point of granularity at which to implement automation of appraisal processes. Particular attention is paid to the structurational view of genre and its connections with recordkeeping theory.     

Reward or persuasion? The battle to define the meaning of a citation

The history and development of the Science Citation Index (SCI) is an example of the power of users in defining and influencing the development of a new technology. The SCI was developed as a tool for the historian of science for the purpose of tracing the history of ideas, but it was appropriated by users for purposes for which it was unintended – as a tool for evaluating the literature, individuals, institutions, and countries. The development of a citation tool gave rise to a debate over what is actually measured by citations. The citation‐as‐reward camp views citations as indicators of quality and impact, whereas the citation‐as‐persuasion camp views citations as no more than rhetorical devices. While neither view can fully explain how authors use citations, citation‐as‐reward prevails as the dominant interpretation.     

Green Publishing in Germany: A Passing Trend or a True Transition?

Greening the German book industry is a large-scale task. This article, based in part on the results of a one-day conference titled “Bio im Bücherregal?” (Engl. translation: “Eco-friendly products on the bookshelf?”) that was held in Mainz in January 2013, considers different perspectives on green publishing in Germany and presents the status quo as well as an outlook. After a brief historical and theoretical overview on the media and the environmental movement, the article presents current developments such as the initiative “Nachhaltig Publizieren” (“Green Publishing”). Initiated in 2011 by the publisher Oekom, the project has become a catalyst for the green publishing movement in Germany. In addition, this contribution introduces publishers and imprints, in particular of children’s books, that strive to fulfill the highest possible criteria for green publishing in certain project areas. Finally, the close connection between green publishing and green content is discussed.     

Recent Romanian Cinema: Is It a Real New Wave or Just a Splash in the Water?

This article demonstrates that recent Romanian cinema manifests the features of a new, coherent, and strong film movement that was correctly tagged as a late new wave in the context of postcommunist significant changes that have shaped the Romanian society and its artistic milieu over the past two decades. By discussing the general characteristics of new waves and the legacies of the most influential cinematic movements of the 20th century, several common features are highlighted, as is the Romanian directors’ capacity to integrate and restate these influences through innovative techniques and an original approach to reality. The analysis is exemplified through the exploration of some of the most representative films of the recent Romanian cinema, prizewinners at prestigious international film festivals.