Caribbean: Online bibliography environmental history of Latin America

This is an annotated bibliography of articles, conference proceedings, reports, and books

From forgotten intranet to successful wiki

Communication within an academic library can be challenging. The collective nature of wikis and their ability to allow multiple people to edit them have made wikis an ideal technology to help address communication issues within organizations. A successful wiki implementation can help to improve communication issues, but only if staff adopt the new technology. University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) libraries implemented an internal staff wiki in 2007 to replace the staff intranet. Information routinely stored on the wiki includes meeting minutes and committee work, policies and procedures and training materials. This paper illustrates the implementation process by providing an overview of the transition with a focus on what went right and what pitfalls were encountered. Best practices will be presented to illustrate how to successfully implement a wiki that library staff willingly reference and edit, concluding with recommendations for maintaining the wiki after implementation

Users 2.0: Technology at your service

It is exciting, as practicing librarians, to find a singular voice that stands out as a strong influence on the profession. Anne Grodzins Lipow provided one such voice, inspiring us to evaluate our philosophy of patron service and helping us define our professional values. Lipow’s body of work encompasses many contemporary library issues, involving myriad aspects of customer service. Lipow addressed issues including patron-friendly catalogs and reference service in both traditional face-to-face and newer virtual settings, recognized the importance of training staff as part of continuous improvement in customer service, and emphasized the power of using technology to improve delivery of library services. As trends and technologies have evolved, Lipow successfully articulated how those changes could be integrated into the traditional library organization. Her position regarding library issues, including the importance of the “human factor” in reference service, has helped us shape our patron-centered service philosophy. This has impacted the reference service we strive to provide, the issues we advocate for, and the environments in which we work

Building skills F2F – Using chat reference techniques

The UTSA Library, like many organizations, has been experiencing a period of rapid growth and change. Even positive change can cause stress in departments, and one way to help employees deal with change, while still providing customer-oriented service, is to establish a regular forum for discussion that encourages departmental communication. Training is an important aspect of employee development; however, the literature indicates that, in many organizations, training is often given little attention and relegated to the sidelines due to other demands on staff. With the hiring of new personnel, including a new Head of Reference and a Training Coordinator, the UTSA Library’s weekly meetings model was expanded to include more systematic training, including special events such as summer workshops. UTSA librarians provided training in-house, worked with vendors, and collaborated with librarians at other institutions to provide a variety of training sessions to Reference staff. This paper illustrates the training process by providing an overview of training offered to the UTSA Library Reference staff. To compare their training program with those at other libraries, UTSA librarians surveyed other academic libraries in the San Antonio area to determine what types of ongoing training were incorporated into their Reference departments. This paper concludes with recommendations for the future of the UTSA Library’s Reference training program

El uso de los sistemas de Información Geográfica en la planificación territorial.

Sin resume

Mobile Banking as a Mechanism to Increase Access to Financial Services

We study the determinants of mobile banking adoption, with a special interest on how mobile banking can increase access to financial services among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. In our analysis, we use survey data from two different sources: 1) Survey of Consumers\u27 Use of Mobile Financial Services (SCUMFS) We conduct a regression analysis and Oaxaca Decomposition to determine the explanatory factors of racial and ethnic gaps in bank account ownership. We find that minorities are less likely to use mobile banking than Whites in the NSUUH, but more likely to adopt mobile banking according to SCUMFS, after controlling for individual characteristics. When we restrict our sample to only individuals with a bank account in the NSUUH, we no longer observe differences in mobile banking usage between Whites and Hispanics. We find that age is a major factor explaining the gap in mobile banking usage among Whites and Hispanics, and that education and income reduce this gap in both datasets

A general protocol to afford enantioenriched linear homoprenylic amines

The reaction of a readily obtained chiral branched homoprenylamonium salt with a range of aldehydes, including aliphatic substrates, affords the corresponding linear isomers in good yields and enantioselectivities.We thank the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación for their financial support (CTQ2011-24165). I. B. acknowledges the Generalitat Valenciana for a predoctoral fellowship (ACIF/2011/159)

Carbonation of concrete with construction and demolition waste based recycled aggregates and cement with recycled content

Durability is a major concern in concrete (particularly recycled concrete) structures exposed to carbonation-induced corrosion, given the social, economic, environmental and safety implications involved. This article explores carbonation performance in concrete with 25% or 50% mixed recycled construction and demolition waste aggregate, alone or in conjunction with cement containing 25% fired clay construction and demolition waste. Irrespective of cement type, the mean carbonation depth was slightly greater in materials with 25% or 50% recycled aggregate than in concretes with 100% natural aggregate, although the difference was not statistically significant for the 25% replacement ratio. In all the concretes studied, the carbonation coefficient was below the 4 mm/yr0.5 indicative of good quality. Based on the prediction model proposed in Spain’s concrete code, reinforcement passivity was guaranteed in all these types of concrete when exposed to class XC1 to XC4 carbonation environments for substantially longer than their 100 year design service life.This study was funded under research projects BIA 2013-48876-C3-1-R, BIA2013-48876-C3-2-R and BIA2016-76643-C3-1-R awarded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and grant GR 18122 awarded to the MATERIA Research Group by the Regional Government of Extremadura and the European Regional Development Fund, ERDF. In 2016 University of Extremadura teaching and research personnel benefitted from a mobility grant (MOV15A029) awarded by the Regional Government of Extremadura and in 2018 from a José Castillejo (CAS17/00313) scholarship granted by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. Philip Van den Heede is since October 2017 a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO) (project number 3E013917) and acknowledges its support.Peer reviewe

Sensor-Based Seeds for a Chaotic Stream Cipher

In this paper we have used a surface micromachined capacitive accelerometer in order to generate seeds that are suitable for secure communications between wireless smart sensors for IoT networks. These seeds have then been used in a chaotic stream cipher based on a Modified Logistic Map and a Linear Feedback Shift Register. The sequences generated by the chaotic stream cipher have been subjected to the randomness NIST tests. All the tests have been passed, proving that the proposed approach could be used for secure communications

Libraries Atwitter: Trends in Academic Library Tweeting

Purpose – This paper aims to present an overview of how libraries are using Twitter in an academic setting. Design/methodology/approach – This study analyzed the current state of 296 Twitter accounts from a random sample of academic libraries. A total of 19 different criteria were explored, with an emphasis on the following three categories: layout and design, content and number of tweets, and account followers. Findings – Only 34 per cent of libraries in the study had a Twitter account and characteristics varied widely among libraries, however it is evident that it is possible to successfully communicate with patrons via Twitter. Research limitations/implications – A primary limitation for this study is the frequency with which Twitter can change. Practical implications – This paper provides a snapshot of how libraries are currently using Twitter, which can be of assistance to libraries seeking to implement a Twitter presence. Originality/value – The paper presents an overview of trends in academic library Twitter accounts, which could be useful to librarians who are considering launching a Twitter account for their library