Can I Have Your Attention? Implications of the Research on Distractions and Multitasking for Reference Librarians

The media have identified the last decade as “the age of distraction.” People today find it harder to work on long, sustained tasks because distractions are eroding their attention span, fostering a culture of discontinuity. Fields as diverse as psychology, business, education, human-computer interaction, and communication studies have produced a wealth of studies on interruptions, distractions, and multitasking–research that has important implications for reference librarians. The nature of our jobs invites interruptions by the public, requires familiarity with the latest technology, stimulates curiosity about a broad range of subjects, and demands adeptness at multitasking–all factors which can atomize attention

Challenges of communication system during emergency disaster response in Malaysia: A review

The purpose of this review is to provide the overview of available systems and potentialfuture systems for communication during disaster in Malaysia. Electronic searches in majorsubject loci databases such as MEDLINE (via PUBMED), Ovid, Science Direct, Scopus,IEEE Xplore digital library and Springer are used in conducting the reviews. The majorchallenge is to integrate between readily available communications systems at pre-disaster,during disaster and post-disaster. Therefore, this review will further provide information forthe policy makers, responsible personnel as well as researchers on the vulnerability of thecommunication systems during disaster and the future direction of effective communicationsystem in Malaysia.Keywords: disaster; communication system;GIRN; effective communication system;emergency medicine

The impact of the internet of things on information institutions from the perspective of library employees

The present paper addresses the role of the Internet of Things applications in supporting knowledge management activities in information organizations and so their services improve. To achieve this objective, the research adopts the descriptive approach through the investigation and analysis of the intellectual outcome published in the Arab and foreign countries to identify the relationship between the Internet of Things and knowledge management activities in information institutions. The results indicated that information institutions benefited from the Internet of things in tracking all the physical and intangible entities in these institutions and defining their locations in case of loss or replacement. Moreover, they could define the numbers of visitors, peak hour and the most used sources. Hence, they offered fast and interactive services that comply with the aspirations of the beneficiaries. The research recommends that various information institutions should take the initiative to benefit from the Internet of things applications that fulfill the new requirements of their beneficiaries

What\u27s New in Online News

Although traditional news services have made some of their product available online since the early 1990s the changes that have taken place in this arena over the past few years has been phenomenal. Distributing the news online has a significant impact on the traditional news cycle, the business model of news corporations, the work of journalists and the role of traditional news consumers among the general public. In addition to the online presence of the traditional news media, entirely new online news websites are emerging outside the mainstream media ownership, allowing both professional and amateur journalists a global forum for individual reports and opinions. In this paper, we revisit the results of the first phase of a longitudinal study of online news, conducted two years ago and compare those results with the current state of affairs. The most dramatic change that we are now witnessing in the news industry is the emergence of citizen journalism and the trend to the convergence of the roles of news producers and news consumers. Here we describe and discuss the lessons learnt from this change and build on these lessons to speculate on where this will take us in the futur

What\u27s new in online news?

This paper examines aspects of the field of Information Systems (IS) concerned with its diversity and with the rapid changes within the discipline that have been incurred by the continued evolution of the IS artefact. This examination is done in order to establish the suitability of the Cynefin framework, developed for knowledge management, as a suitable tool for sense-making in IS. A description and assessment of the Cynefin framework is provided with its varied applications in both organisational practice and research. The paper then applies the framework to make sense of some historical trends and contemporary issues of IS emphasising their diversity and changing nature. We conclude with speculation on how this approach may help guide future sense-making in IS research

The encounter of new ICT tools and local traditions in rural Samoa

Telecentres were implemented in the rural villages of Samoa in 2005 as part of the national information and communication technology (ICT) strategy for development. The aim for the telecentres is to ensure the people of Samoa can be connected locally and globally. The telecentres provide access to ICT tools in villages where many have never seen a computer before. The newly provided ICT tools also bring about some concerns, especially having access to the internet. Local villagers are now exposed to a vast amount of information whereby access is practically unlimited. While we cannot discount the fact that the internet makes available useful information, the question of how and to what extent this computer-mediated information may affect their traditions deserve some attention. Will local villagers use it to build up their society or will it compromise their cultural values? Seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted among residents from three villages. Data was also collected by observing the context of each village lived by the villagers. Together these methods collected rich data that was later analysed in an inductive fashion. The findings provide an insight into the encounter between the global environment and the local values, customs and beliefs of Samoans. This led to the identification of five categories of impact: expanding skills and capabilities, efficient tool for document production, panopticon-surveillance, virtual connection and community networks. A theme that addresses the research question emerged: the moulding of ICT by local culture

PRAESENTIA EX MACHINA: The Millennial Technoculture, Liveness and Theatre

This work examines the modern technoculture, its component parts and the changing role of theatre in Anglo-American culture. Our contemporary society is marked by the ubiquity of digital technologies and has become reliant on their commodities. The emerging Millennial Generation has matured with many of these devices and has embraced the modern technoculture. Many changes in daily life brought on by new technologies are obvious, but fundamental shifts remain obscured by the nature of technology itself. These subtle transformations are cumulative and have caused a technological disorientation with broad reaching implications. Liveness, initially defined as that which is unrecorded, has been perceived in many new technological formats. This phenomenon, combined with pervasive digitization of information and entertainment has minimized the cultural significance of the theatrical arts. Theatre, however, offers a form of liveness that cannot be digitized. In its varied iterations, theatre may be a vital forum for combating technological disorientation and fostering pertinent social discourse as the technoculture develops

A cross-layer implementation of Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing (AODV) protocol

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are networks which will form the basis for the ubiquitous data access because of their ease of deployment. Due to the dynamic nature of a MANET, routing is one of the most critical elements of MANET. Routing protocols for MANET can be broadly classified as a proactive routing protocol or a reactive routing protocol. In the proactive routing protocols, mobile nodes periodically exchange routing information among themselves. Hence proactive routing protocols generate high overhead messages in the network. On the other hand, reactive routing protocols work on-demand. Thereby generating less number of overhead messages in the network compared to proactive routing protocols. But reactive routing protocols use a global search mechanism called \u27flooding\u27 during the route discovery process. \u27Flooding\u27 generates a huge number of overhead messages in the network. Those overhead messages affect the performance of reactive routing protocols in term of network throughput. That kind of performance problem is called \u27scaling\u27 problem. Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector Routing with Cross-Layer Design (AODV-CL) protocol has been proposed to solve this scaling problem. The AODV routing protocol has been modified to implement AODV-CL protocol. AODV-CL protocol reduces \u27flooding\u27 problem of reactive routing protocols by limiting the number of nodes that should participate in route discovery process based on their status in the network and also avoiding congested area of the network. It is shown that AODV-CL protocol reduces overhead messages by 73% and reduces end-to-end delay per packet by 32% compared to regular AODV protocol. I

Interactive Food and Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age

Looks at the practices of food and beverage industry marketers in reaching youth via digital videos, cell phones, interactive games and social networking sites. Recommends imposing governmental regulations on marketing to children and adolescents