Search

This study employed content analysis to examine the abilities conveyed in five archival literacy guidelines. Using the User Expertise in Archives (UEA) Model as the basis for content coding, the authors analyzed a total of 157 ability statements from the guidelines and found that all the five guidelines included a good coverage of the three abilities of the UEA model: domain knowledge, artifactual literacy, and archival intelligence. However, the guidelines also contained various abilities not mentioned in the UEA model. They were categorized into five abilities: an overall command of the historical information resources; effective use of primary sources for constructing research theses; appropriate citation and reasonable use of primary sources; ethical interpretation of primary sources; understanding and devotion to the archival profession. Of the guidelines analyzed in this study, two guidelines from professional associations were of good and balanced coverage of all the important abilities extracted from the analyses. The other guidelines, developed out of individual research, were characterized by either an emphasis on artifactual literacy or on broad and extensive understanding of the historical information resources. The analysis may shed light on the use of the guidelines in designing archival literacy instruction.

Appeal factors are the textual characteristics that may induce reading pleasures or the cognitive and affective effects a reader may experience from pleasure reading. Appeal factors are now used as access points in some information retrieval systems for fictional works in the English speaking world. This paper describes the organization and retrieval problems of fiction, which triggered the emergence of appeal-based indexing. It continues to discuss on the nature of reading appeals and the typology of appeal factors, including book-related and reader-driven appeals. It follows to describe four information systems where appeal factors are used as a search mechanism to filter and discover fiction titles that meet the readers' expectations. It goes on to theorize the relationships between appeal factors and literary genres and ends with a discussion on the challenges of appeal-based indexing, including the selection and construction of appeal terms as well as the indexing consistency issues.

This study explored the reuse of existing quantitative data in original social sciences research in Taiwan. Using the 2015 TSSCI List as the basis of journal selection, this study focused on 57 journals listed under the subject divisions of economics, political science, sociology, education, and psychology. Journal issues published between 2001 and 2015 were manually scanned to identify data reuse papers. The characteristics of the reuse papers and the cited data were recorded for the subsequent subject division-level and subject discipline-level analyses. A total of 1,484 reuse papers were identified, which accounted for 17.38% of the total empirical study papers. Among the five subject divisions, economics and political science had the highest percentages of data reuse, while psychology had the lowest. Those reuse papers together cited 2,990 datasets. Most of the datasets were used in economics and political science papers. Further, these two subject divisions had noticeably larger proportions of papers that use more than one dataset. In contrast, papers using only one dataset were the majority for the rest. In regards to data source and data type, datasets originated from government agencies as well as data generated from business operations accounted for the majority of the cited data, but significant differences existed among those subjects. As opposed to the frequently used business and series survey data, data generated from independent research projects as well as data that were non-continuous and one-time in nature were rarely reused in social sciences research. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that data services for social sciences research should focus more on large-scaled continuous data generated from governments and research institutions. A service mechanism that bridges users and data providers from public and private sectors would also enhance data reuse and increase the value of existing data.

This paper describes the results of a survey of possibly predatory open access journals. Based on Jeffrey Beall’s compilations of predatory publishers and standalone journals, the study identified 891 publishers and 7,726 journals with content at the end of January 2015, of which 1,989 journals were published by twelve mega publishers that had published over one hundred journal titles. The distributions of all journals versus journals from the mega publishers by paper quantity, journal debut year/journal age, and subject were systematically examined and compared. It was found that, at the time of this study, nearly half of the publishers had only one non-empty journal. Nearly 2/3 of the 7,726 non-empty journals had published only 50 or less papers, and half of them were debuted within two years. As high as 90% of the journals targeted science, technology, and medicine (STM), and the three domains had roughly equal shares of the journals. A sample of 11,419 articles was further drawn from the journals with more than 100 papers and those with 10 or less papers. The analysis of the first authors showed that India, United States and Nigeria were the top three contributors to suspicious journals; they together constituted approximately 50% of the sample.

Scholarly books, or scholarly monographs, are an important form of research output in humanities and social sciences. However, the current research evaluation practices in Taiwan highly emphasize journal articles and have thereby suppressed the production of scholarly books. This study employed in-depth interviews with 14 Taiwanese sociologists who had written and published scholarly books to understand the problems and challenges facing scholarly monograph production in the contemporary research evaluation culture. Interview topics included the values and contributions of scholarly books to the studies of sociology, the negative influences of journal-focused research evaluations on the sociology discipline, problems and challenges facing book-writing sociologists, and possible solutions to those problems. Based on the findings, the authors discuss on the proposed research review approach that monitors an author’s book-writing progress rather than focusing on the end-product, as raised in the interviews, as well as the problems and reliability issues with the pre-publishing anonymous review requirement that has become a mandate for scholarly book publishing in Taiwan.

This paper describes the development and applications of the three-dimensional printing (3D printing) technology. It first introduces the basics and the history of 3D printing, followed by an overview of six currently popular 3D printing methods, i.e., stereolithography apparatus (SLA), digital light processing (DLP), selective laser sintering (SLS), laminated object manufacturing (LOM), fused deposition modeling (FDM), and powder bed and inkjet head 3D printing. It goes on to describe the commercial and library applications of 3D printing. Specifically, the concept of makerspace and the potentials of 3D printing are mentioned in different types of libraries. Finally, the limitations and challenges of 3D printing including its impact on the environment and industries, ethical issues, intellectual property rights in library service, as well as the training and consultation needs of library patrons are discussed in the paper.

The mystery fiction is a popular pleasure reading genre in Taiwan. This article describes a grounded theory study that explored the reading pleasures and selection behavior of mystery fans. Based on the in-depth interview with 21 engaged mystery readers, this study identified seven types of reading pleasures, i.e., a sense of achievement from puzzle solving, feelings of amazement from the revelation of truths, satisfaction of curiosity for the unknown, a sense of compensation from seeing justice, senses of empathy and sympathy from identifying with the story characters, and the reflection of the social issues and values raised in the stories. The charms of mystery fiction may be systematically described by following four of Hudson’s (1910) conceptualization of fiction elements: i.e. the plot, characters, time and place, and the author’s view of life prevailed in the stories. In regards to readers’ selection behavior, this study identified four selection approaches commonly used by the experienced readers to discover works that possibly meet their expectations, i.e., the subgenre-oriented, author-oriented, series-oriented, and story-oriented approaches. In addition, six factors may influence readers’ selection of works, i.e., availability of expert comments, trust and confidence in the publishers, book award information, adaptation into movies or television, quality of translation, and first impression of the physical books.

Boys’ Love (BL) is a fiction genre now enjoying high visibility and popularity among the young women in Taiwan. Inspired by the reader response theory, this study adopted a grounded theory approach to analyze female readers’ perception of “healing” generated from BL reading. Based on the in-depth interviews with 22 readers, this study revealed three types of “healing” perception and four types of situations that prompted the emergence of the feelings. The three types of “healing” perception included the perceptions induced from the descriptions of interpersonal relations in the stories (i.e., the feeling of sweetness from reading about romantic love, coziness from reading about family love and friendships, and the pain and joy of looking back at the self’s past), perceptions triggered by storylines or story characters (i.e., feeling relieved, feeling soothed, feeling of completion and satisfaction, feeling hilarious, feeling pampering toward story characters), and perceptions triggered by visual or audio sensations. The four types of situations for the emergence of the healing perception included the matching of textual characteristics and readers’ romantic experiences, the matching of textual characteristics and readers’ life experiences, an atmosphere of tenderness and softness induced by textual characteristics, and the reading of derivative creation based on other popular original fiction works that bring about satisfaction and completion. Based on the findings, this paper further discusses on the significance of the healing effects generated from everyday pleasure reading as well as the contribution of the analysis approach used in this study for future genre reading research.

This study examines the influences of online cultural capital on social tagging behavior in Delicious.com. The researchers identified three online cultural capital-related variables (understanding of social tagging, understanding of Delicious' social functionalities, and quantity of tags and bookmarks) via factor analysis of a survey dataset and analyzed their influences on tagging motivations (information organization-oriented vs. social-oriented) and tagging strategies (object-based tagging vs. situation based tagging). An existing dataset from a previous survey of Delicious users was used for the analysis. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the influences of the three variables on tagging motivations and strategies. The study found that understanding of social tagging has a significant positive influence on information organization-oriented tagging; understanding of Delicious' social functionalities has a significant positive influence on social-oriented tagging. In tagging strategies, understanding of Delicious' functionalities significantly influenced how strategic respondents are in situation-based tagging. Quantity of tags and bookmarks influenced both types of tagging strategies.

This study analyzed how social capital is conceptualized in the existing empirical studies of online community knowledge sharing. We firstly introduce the theoretical concept of social capital, followed by an examination of the variables representing the concept in ten empirical information science research papers. We further used Nahapiet and Ghoshal's (1998) three-dimensional framework for conceptualizing social capital (i.e., structural, relational, cognitive) to compare the variables. The systematic literature review and analysis allows for a revelation of how the relatively complicated social capital concept has been constructed and operationalized in empirical research and shed light on how the conceptualization may be strengthened in future studies. (Article content in Chinese with English extended abstract)

開放近用期刊（open access journals，簡稱OA期刊）因圖書館期刊危機而崛起，這種新型態的學術期刊經營模式強調在網路平台上提供大眾免費下載全文，企圖去除期刊價格和使用的限制，讓研究成果更容易被使用者使用。作者對OA期刊的看法與投稿意向對OA期刊之發展具有舉足輕重之影響力，因此本研究以不同投稿OA期刊經驗之生物醫學領域研究人員為個案，利用開放式深入訪談法，探討影響其投稿OA期刊之個人與社會因素、得知管道，以及促成與阻礙投稿之狀況。本研究發現受訪者在投稿時會考量論文與目標期刊之間的契合程度、目標期刊的內容或刊務等表現、以及當下的個人與情境狀況。在選擇OA期刊時，個人因素（如對OA期刊的經驗與評價）及社會因素（如學科領域的資源豐沛程度與行政單位的投稿鼓勵制度）均可能會促成或阻礙受訪者投稿給OA期刊。研究發現可供OA推廣單位如圖書館或大學研究機構等參考，基於學者的角度，提供客製化之推廣與服務。Open access (OA) journals emerged in response to library budget cuts and the journal price crisis due to the monopoly of a few major publishers. Today, more and more OA journals have appeared in the landscape of scholarly publishing. However, how do authors who serve an important role in the chain of scholarly communication understand and perceive open access? This study used a multiple case study design to understand twelve biomedical researchers’ publishing experiences with OA journals, i.e., how they chose a journal to submit their papers, and how the personal and situational factors influence their selection of OA journals. The major findings include that: (1) the interviewee selected journals based on whether the target journal and the paper to be submitted was a good match, the overall performance of the target journal, and their past experience; (2) interviewees’ selection of OA journals could be reinforced or hampered by complicated individual (personal preference or experiences with OA journals) and social factors (subject disciplines or reward mechanism). The findings may shed lights on the promotion of OA journals to scholars in Taiwan.

This article describes the novel phenomenon of librarian-initiated publications discovery (LIPD) in state-level digital depositories in the United States. LIPD is a series of actions taken by digital depository librarians to discover and inspect government Web sites and select Web content qualifying as government publications for inclusion in the state depositories. In a current popular model in which states employ OCLC Digital Archive™ for the depositories, the power of content selection has shifted from government agencies (content producers) to digital depositories. This study systematically documented and compared the LIPD actions in four case states and developed a LIPD process model for descriptive and analytic purposes. It also discusses the impacts and challenges facing the changing practices in preserving government information as historical record. (Article content in Chinese with English abstract)

This paper introduces Records Continuum, a recordkeeping theory emerging from the Australian archives and records management studies which gained international recognition in the 1990s. This paper first describes the background of the theory development. It goes on to explicate the theses of continuum theorists including the Records Continuum Diagram developed by Frank Upward. Finally, it offers some critiques on the theoretical propositions and discusses their implications on records and archival practices. (Article content in Chinese with English abstract)

This study explores the feasibility of establishing a government-sponsored English abstract service for Taiwan's humanities and social sciences (H&SS) publications. The key issues are how to select the H&SS publications to be promoted, and thus given clear English abstracts, and how to enhance the quality of the English abstracts via systematic review. Focus groups and in-depth interviews were used to collect experts' and stakeholders' opinions and suggestions regarding such a program. Most participants viewed the proposed plan positively and offered suggestions regarding the potential problems it might face. To launch the project effectively and have an immediate impact, government agencies may consider two options for the initial stage of implementation: book selection and the writing of English abstracts may be undertaken by scholars in different H&SS fields, working on commission, or it may be undertaken by a reputable academic publisher. Furthermore, government agencies should publish the results of these projects in the form of a scholarly journal. Multiple channels of communication such as websites, newsletters, RSS and Web 2.0 applications may be used to widely promote these English abstracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]