Supporting the information needs of entrepreneurs in South Africa

This is a post-print/preprint of an article published by Emerald in Library Review, VOL. 58(8): 569-580, available: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/00242530910987064.Purpose - The Library Business Corners (LBC) service for entrepreneurs in the Western Cape of South Africa uses public libraries as a channel for information and expertise. It is a 'grass roots', community-driven, approach which has been adopted elsewhere in South Africa. Similar services have appeared addressing the same, or similar, groups of users, often concentrating on the use of information and communication technology. Design/methodology/approach - Developing an effective service for entrepreneurs depends critically on the quality of staff and their contacts. The opportunities and problems of the LBCs' approach are identified and a response to the emergence of similar services is considered. The 'balanced score card' model is used to explore the vision and strategy of the present services and the potential contribution of information literacy. Findings - Financial support for LBC work is scarce and unlikely to increase. The challenge is to create a sustainable service by the LBC team as points of presence, using the existing or reduced financial base. Concentration on increasing capacity at the point of delivery of information through knowledge of the business environment and information literacy is essential. Originality/value - The paper describes the first application of the 'balanced score card' technique to a public library business information service in South Africa

Probing the Geometry of Warped String Compactifications at the LHC

Warped string compactifications, characterized by non-singular behavior of the metric in the infrared (IR), feature departures from the usual anti-de Sitter warped extra dimensions. We study the implications of the smooth IR cutoff for Randall-Sundrum (RS) type models. We find that the phenomenology of the KK gravitons (including their masses and couplings) depends sensitively on the precise shape of the warp factor in the IR. In particular, we analyze the warped deformed conifold and find that the spectrum differs significantly from that of RS, and present a simple prescription (a mass gap ansatz) which can be used to study the phenomenology of IR modifications to 5-d warped extra dimensions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; v2. typos corrected, references added, improved resolution of Figure

Assessing collaborative performance on construction projects through knowledge exchange : a UK Rail Strategic Alliance case study

Purpose – How knowledge exchange can be used for the continuous assessment and improvement of collaborative performance of project-based organisations in construction is explored. Collaboration on construction projects must be facilitated by people alongside practice of continuous performance assessment and improvement. However, currently available assessment tools fail to explicitly define appropriate behaviours and actions due to a poor understanding of what it means for people to collaborate. On the other hand, it is established that knowledge exchange is the focus of collaborative efforts on construction projects; therefore, as most knowledge resides with people, it represents their role in collaboration. Design/methodology/approach – Through a phenomenological/interpretivist and qualitative methodology, how knowledge exchange can be used for the continuous assessment and improvement of collaborative performance in project-based organisations in construction is explored. A single case study of a UK rail strategic alliance was adopted and 6 semi-structured interviews were conducted and subsequently analysed through a thematic analysis. Findings – An assessment tool is proposed based on a set of 20 characteristics of knowledge exchange, divided into seven categories and linked to indicators of collaboration. The tool can be applied to highly collaborative projects where BIM and Lean are implemented, and project participants are collocated. By measuring their performance against the set criteria, project teams can assess which of their behaviours and actions are inappropriate, and focus their efforts on correcting them. Originality/value – Defining the abstract indicators traditionally used to assess collaboration in terms of characteristics pertinent to day-to-day communication amongst participants on collaborative projects to facilitate the continuous assessment and improvement of collaborative performance

Are pre-compiled citation indexes of peer-reviewed journals an adequate control for research quality? A case study of library and information science

Looks at the South African Department of Education’s new recommendations for the evaluation of higher education research in South Africa, and examines two primary aspects: the use of pre-compiled journal lists from overseas, and the apparent reliance on peer review as a guarantee of quality. Pointing out that these are tried and tested standards of quality, the authors argue that there are nonetheless disciplinary differences between experimental sciences – such as physics or chemistry – and other disciplines that make these measures difficult to apply across the spectrum. They present an analysis of library and information science publications in the chosen lists and point to the weakness of the selection of titles in this discipline. In addition, there are extra difficulties for scientists from South Africa and the developing world in securing publication in premier international library and information science journals. The authors conclude by calling for the employment of other, additional evaluation measures in an integrated system