Information and communication technology occupies a central place in the modern world, with society becoming increasingly dependent on it every day. It is therefore unsurprising that it has become a growing subject area in contemporary philosophy, which relies heavily on informational concepts. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into four parts: basic ideas quantitative and formal aspects natural and physical aspects human and semantic aspects. Within these sections central issues are examined, including probability, the logic of information, informational metaphysics, the philosophy of data and evidence, and the epistemic value of information. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, computer science and communication studies.

The field of librarianship has undergone traumatic shifts (mostly downward) due to the global financial meltdown that began in the fall of 2008. Libraries have been deeply affected by the worst recession since the Great Depression. While "Advances in Librarianship" endeavors to identify trends and innovations, the trend addressed in this volume is admittedly not a happy one. The current climate does however, present opportunities for analysis, and far reaching searches for solutions and innovations that can alleviate the challenges created by the clash of fiscal retrenchment with steadily increasing use of libraries. Therefore this volume addresses the ripple effects of the economic recession from the point of view of librarianship, the need for advocacy, and the necessity to tout the value that libraries bring to their communities. Chapters focus on identifying means to change library and library related organizations so that they focus on distinctive assets and strengths, use free or low cost resources and technologies, and position themselves to take advantage of collaborative initiatives.

An incisive history of the controversial Google Books project and the ongoing quest for a universal digital library Libraries have long talked about providing comprehensive access to information for everyone. But when Google announced in 2004 that it planned to digitize books to make the world's knowledge accessible to all, questions were raised about the roles and responsibilities of libraries, the rights of authors and publishers, and whether a powerful corporation should be the conveyor of such a fundamental public good. Along Came Google traces the history of Google's book digitization project and its implications for us today. Deanna Marcum and Roger Schonfeld draw on in-depth interviews with those who both embraced and resisted Google's plans, from librarians and technologists to university leaders, tech executives, and the heads of leading publishing houses. They look at earlier digital initiatives to provide open access to knowledge, and describe how Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page made the case for a universal digital library and drew on their company's considerable financial resources to make it a reality. Marcum and Schonfeld examine how librarians and scholars organized a legal response to Google, and reveal the missed opportunities when a settlement with the tech giant failed. Along Came Google sheds light on the transformational effects of the Google Books project on scholarship and discusses how we can continue to think imaginatively and collaboratively about expanding the digital availability of knowledge.

This publication examines aspects of reducing the ecological footprint in libraries' workaday operations as well as the social role and responsibility of libraries as leaders in environmental sustainability. The theoretical background and practical applications of contributions made by worldwide libraries to the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are discussed. General articles and research studies from Finland, Germany, Portugal, and Brazil illuminate libraries' contributions to the SDGs. Case studies from Sweden, Kenya, Germany, Ukraine, China, and Serbia highlight challenges and opportunities in implementing sustainable approaches in public libraries. Examples of best practice from academic libraries in Hong Kong, Cameroon, Germany, Uganda, USA and Kenya, are presented. All papers published in this book are selected from the best papers of the ENSULIB Satellite Meeting 2017 in Berlin, the ENSULIB/Public Libraries Section's Open Session at the IFLA Conference 2017 in Poland, and from the IFLA Green Library Award 2017. All articles are written in English.

Information has become one of the most crucial commodities in today’s world. From multinational corporations to single individuals, we all make critical decisions based on the information available to us. However, modern ease of access to information does not often guarantee access to good information. In this digital age, where facts can be easily manipulated to align with political, social or monetary aims, media literacy has become an essential skill. Media Smart: Lessons, Tips and Strategies for Librarians, Classroom Instructors and other Information Professionals is an invaluable toolkit for navigating the fraught information landscape. From the history of media manipulation to practical applications of media literacy, this book will offer a thorough grounding in teaching students to defend themselves from mis-and dis-information. It discusses how technology affects the information we receive, offers a brief look at the psychology behind how we process information, describes the various means by which media can be manipulated and provides tips about how to recognize and avoid false or misleading information. Featuring numerous classroom exercises and case studies specific to each aspect of media manipulation, this book is essential reading for students and educators in communications, media and information literacy as well as librarians and anyone interested in developing their media literacy skills.

A hands-on guide to writing a Message Passing Interface, this book takes the reader on a tour across major MPI implementations, best optimization techniques, application relevant usage hints, and a historical retrospective of the MPI world, all based on a quarter of a century spent inside MPI. Readers will learn to write MPI implementations from scratch, and to design and optimize communication mechanisms using pragmatic subsetting as the guiding principle. Inside the Message Passing Interface also covers MPI quirks and tricks to achieve best performance. Dr. Alexander Supalov created the Intel Cluster Tools product line, including the Intel MP Library that he designed and led between 2003 and 2015. He invented the common MPICH ABI and also guided Intel efforts in the MPI Forum during the development of the MPI-2.1, MPI-2.2, and MPI-3 standards. Before that, Alexander designed new finite-element mesh-generation methods, contributing to the PARMACS and PARASOL interfaces, and developed the first full MPI-2 and IMPI implementations in the world. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1990, and earned his PhD in applied mathematics at the Institute of Numerical Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1995. Alexander holds 26 patents (more pending worldwide).

As it continues to publish work that is relevant for both researchers and library practitioners, Volume 30 of "Advances in Library Administration and Organization" contains articles describing efforts at cooperation and collaboration within the library profession. This volume includes scholarship that illustrates both concepts, best defined in one of the chapters as terms 'often used loosely to describe relationships among entities or people working together.' Topics explored within the volume include an examination of public and academic libraries as places that provide purposeful spaces specific to providing user need fulfilment; library services in juvenile detention centers; and, the contribution of school library media specialists. The development of electronic institutional repositories, primarily in academic libraries and based on efforts to encourage campus community involvement and partnerships between librarians and the faculty they serve is discussed. Successful fund raising in libraries is explored through the examination of the impact of organizational placement of the library development officer in universities.

This volume of "Advances in Librarianship" makes contributions to three largely unexplored areas in the field: managing intellectual capital in libraries, reporting on the effects of spatial factors and cooperation and competition upon intellectual capital utilization in libraries; Native American Libraries, offering findings which can apply in any country with ethnically or culturally isolated libraries; and the nature and extent of the engagement of humanities scholars with electronic texts. Other topics explored in this volume include the growth and decline of Operations Research both in general and within academic libraries, approaches to intellectual capital in libraries, and an historical analysis of the two streams of library education in Australia over 40 years. "The Advances in Librarianship" book series presents current international research and professional issues in libraries, the information industry, education and development of information professionals. The series is a key resource for practitioners, researchers, students and faculty members seeking in-depth literature and solutions to current and emerging issues in library and information science and related fields.

This book presents the current state of the art in the field of e-publishing and social media, particularly in the Arabic context. The book discusses trends and challenges in the field of e-publishing, along with their implications for academic publishing, information services, e-learning and other areas where electronic publishing is essential. In particular, it addresses (1) Applications of Social Media in Libraries and Information Centers, (2) Use of Social Media and E-publishing in E-learning (3) Information Retrieval in Social Media, and (4) Information Security in Social Media.

This book critically examines the historical developments and current trends in the scientific scholarly communication system, issues and challenges in scientific scholarly publishing and scientific data sharing, implications and debates associated with the influence of intellectual property rights on scientific information sharing, and new trends related to peer reviewing and measuring the impact of scientific publications. Based on thorough examination of published literature, the book illustrates the involvement of many stakeholders-scientists, science educators, university administrators, government entities, research funders, and other interested parties-in this complex and dynamic system. The discussion highlights the roles these stakeholders have to play, individually and collaboratively, to help transform the future of the scientific scholarly communication system.

This book begins with an introduction to fundamental issues related to digital preservation metadata before proceeding to in-depth coverage of issues concerning its practical use and implementation. It helps readers to understand which options need to be considered in specifying a digital preservation metadata profile to ensure it matches their individual content types, technical infrastructure, and organizational needs. Further, it provides practical guidance and examples, and raises important questions. It does not provide full-fledged implementation solutions, as such solutions can, by definition, only be specific to a given preservation context. As such, the book effectively bridges the gap between the formal specifications provided in a standard, such as the PREMIS Data Dictionary - a de-facto standard that defines the core metadata required by most preservation repositories - and specific implementations. Anybody who needs to manage digital assets in any form with the intent of preserving them for an indefinite period of time will find this book a valuable resource. The PREMIS Data Dictionary provides a data model consisting of basic entities (objects, agents, events and rights) and basic properties (called "semantic units") that describe them. The key challenge addressed is that of determining which information one needs to keep, together with one's digital assets, so that they can be understood and used in the long-term - in other words, exactly which metadata one needs. The book will greatly benefit beginners and current practitioners alike. It is equally targeted at digital preservation repository managers and metadata analysts who are responsible for digital preservation metadata, as it is at students in Library, Information and Archival Science degree programs or related fields. Further, it can be used at the conception stage of a digital preservation system or for self-auditing an existing system.

The Special Collections Handbook, Third Edition is a comprehensive desk reference providing the essential principles, skills, and knowledge to manage special collections in any setting and covering all aspects of special collections work: preservation; developing collections; understanding objects; emergency planning; security; legal and ethical concerns; cataloguing; digitisation; marketing; outreach; teaching; impact; advocacy, and fundraising. This new edition has been revised and updated to incorporate the many developments in the field, reflecting the growth and dynamism of the sector and the complexity of the environment in which we operate. This will include: Enriched and updated guidance on decolonising collections management and all other elements of special collections work working towards zero-carbon buildings, preservation, and other aspects of special collections work lessons/impact of Covid-19: managing remote access by staff and users, emergency planning, health and safety, risk assessments new legislation affecting special collections, notably in the UK the Data Protection Act 2018 new and revised standards, such as the new British Standards relating to collections care, BS EN 16893 and BS 4971, which replace PD5454 new and emerging technologies in collections discovery, digitisation, digital resource and digital libraries, and how to manage them and build capacity. Particular attention will be paid to the implications of the ‘digital shift’ and the place of special collections in online and hybrid learning. Comprehensive and written in a highly accessible manner, The Special Collections Handbook, Third Edition will be an essential resource for staff working with special collections in a wide range of settings, including academia, public libraries, religious organisations, museums, and at scales from solo librarians to ‘nationals’.

This volume presents international research and exhaustive reviews of literature on a range of issues related to the evolving digital environment. Topics addressed include: the educational impact of the digital environment on LIS education curricula and delivery mechanisms; information representation and learning in video games; social semantic corporate digital libraries; the use of E-texts in research projects in the humanities; and information access in e-government environments. Issues surrounding the improvement of library catalogues by emulating web-based search engines, and the extent to which collaborative information seeking is/is not enabled by existing search engines and tools are also explored. With the growing trend for digital-only access to information, this text makes an important contribution in both highlighting problems and challenges, and pointing to pathways for future solutions. Part of the Advances in Librarianship book series, it is a key resource for practitioners, researchers, students and faculty members seeking in-depth literature and solutions to current and emerging issues in library and information science and related fields.

"The Advances in Library Administration and Organization Series" provides a body of research literature that contributes to the base of organizational theory upon which library administrators rely. Its mix of contributions to the literature of library administration and organization is both diverse and eclectic. This volume of the series covers a variety of topics relating to the management of academic, and public and school libraries.

In this book, Meenakshi Gigi Durham outlines and advances a progressive feminist framework for digital ethics in the technosexual landscape, exploring the complex and evolving interrelationships between sex and tech. Today we live in a "sexscape," a globalized assemblage of media, transnational capital, sexual practices, and identities. Sexuality suffuses the contemporary media-saturated environment; we engage with sex via cellphone apps and airport TVs, billboards and Jumbotron screens. Our techniques of sexual representation and body transformation - from sexting to plastic surgeries - occur in relation to our deep and complex engagements with mediated images of desire. These technosexual interactions hold the promise of sexual liberation and boldly imaginative pleasures. But in the machinic suturing of technologies with bodies, the politics of race, class, gender, and nation continue to matter. Paying acute attention to media's relationship to the politics of location, social hierarchies, and regulatory schemas, the author mounts a lucid and passionate argument for an ethics of technosex invested in the analysis of power.

This book provides a comprehensive review of complex networks from three different domains, presents novel methods for analyzing them, and highlights applications with accompanying case studies. Special emphasis is placed on three specific kinds of complex networks of high technological and scientific importance: software networks extracted from the source code of computer programs, ontology networks describing semantic web ontologies, and co-authorship networks reflecting collaboration in science. The book is primarily intended for researchers, teachers and students interested in complex networks and network data analysis. However, it will also be valuable for researchers dealing with software engineering, ontology engineering and scientometrics, as it demonstrates how complex network analysis can be used to address important research issues in these three disciplines.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the Final Conference of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage, held in Olimje, Slovenia, in May 2017. The 29 revised full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 198 submissions. They focus on interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research concerning cutting edge cultural heritage informatics, -physics, -chemistry and -engineering and the use of technology for the representation, documentation, archiving, protection, preservation and communication of cultural heritage knowledge.

This book frames the undeniably copious 21st-century performances of stupidity that occur within social media as echoes of rhetorical experiments conducted by humanist writers of the Renaissance. Any historical overview of humanism will associate it with copia-abundance of expression-and the rhetorical practices essential to managing it. This book argues that stupidity was and is a synonym for copia, making the humanism of which copia is a central element an inherently stupid philosophy. A transhistorical exploration of stupidity demonstrates that not only is excess still the surest way to eloquence, but it is also just the kind of spammy, speculative undertaking to generate a more generous and inventive comprehension of human and nonhuman relationships. In chapters exploring the rhetorics of memes, attack ads, public shaming blogs, clickbait and gifs, Stupid Humanism outlines the possibilities for a humanism less invested in the normative logics that enshrine knowledge, eloquence and linear development as the chief indicators of an active, articulated selfhood and more supportive of a program for queer knowledge, trivial pursuits, anti-social ethics and the curious relationships that form around and in response to abundance of expression.

This innovative collection explores uses of Shakespeare in a wide variety of 21st century contexts, including business manuals, non-literary scholarship, database aggregation, social media, gaming, and creative criticism. Essays in this volume demonstrate that users' critical and creative uses of the dramatist's works position contemporary issues of race, power, identity, and authority in new networks that redefine Shakespeare and reconceptualize the ways in which he is processed in both scholarly and popular culture. While The Shakespeare User contributes to the burgeoning corpus of critical works on digital and Internet Shakespeares, this volume looks beyond the study of Shakespeare artifacts to the system of use and users that constitute the Shakespeare network. This reticular understanding of Shakespeare use expands scholarly forays into non-academic practices, digital discourse communities, and creative critical works manifest via YouTube, Twitter, blogs, databases, websites, and popular fiction.

This edited volume explores different meanings of media convergence and deconvergence, and reconsiders them in critical and innovative ways. Its parts provide together a broad picture of opposing trends and tensions in media convergence, by underlining the relevance of this powerful idea and emphasizing the misconceptions that it has generated. Sergio Sparviero, Corinna Peil, Gabriele Balbi and the other authors look into practices and realities of users in convergent media environments, ambiguities in the production and distribution of content, changes to the organization of media industries, the re-configuration of media markets, and the influence of policy and regulations. Primarily addressed to scholars and students in different fields of media and communication studies, Media Convergence and Deconvergence deconstructs taken-for-granted concepts and provides alternative and fresh analyses on one of the most popular topics in contemporary media culture. Chapter 1 is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

This volume unpacks an intriguing challenge for the field of media research: combining media research with the study of complex networks. Bringing together research on the small-world idea and digital culture it questions the assumption that we are separated from any other person on the planet by just a few steps, and that this distance decreases within digital social networks. The book argues that the role of languages is decisive to understand how people connect, and it looks at the consequences this has on the ways knowledge spreads digitally. This volume offers a first conceptual venue to analyse emerging phenomena at the innovative intersection of media and complex network research.

This book focuses on the almost entirely neglected treatment of empire and colonialism in videogames. From its inception in the nineties, Game Studies has kept away from these issues despite the early popularity of videogame franchises such as Civilization and Age of Empire. This book examines the complex ways in which some videogames construct conceptions of spatiality, political systems, ethics and society that are often deeply imbued with colonialism. Moving beyond questions pertaining to European and American gaming cultures, this book addresses issues that relate to a global audience - including, especially, the millions who play videogames in the formerly colonised countries, seeking to make a timely intervention by creating a larger awareness of global cultural issues in videogame research. Addressing a major gap in Game Studies research, this book will connect to discourses of post-colonial theory at large and thereby, provide another entry-point for this new medium of digital communication into larger Humanities discourses.

Student literacy is a perennial concern in and across nations, with measurement and accountability continually ramped up at both individual student and school levels. Debates about literacy and how it can best be improved are never far from media headlines. However, relatively little consideration is given to the role that school libraries and their staff play in building and maintaining student literacy, despite research linking school libraries and qualified staff to student literacy gains. With the number of students who struggle with basic literacy skills increasing in many nations, school libraries can play an important role in improving the academic, vocational and social outcomes for these young people, thereby increasing their opportunities. Fostering student wellbeing is also a key priority for schools given the challenges young people face in current times. This book seeks to promote greater understanding of the links between reading, literacy and wellbeing that could help students cope with these challenges, and the role of the school library in leading this approach. It explores the current role of school library professionals and highlights how literacy and wellbeing education and support sit within this, paying specific attention to how school library professionals build reading engagement and promote student wellbeing through various approaches, such as fostering health literacy and creating nurturing environments. Readers will be empowered to build a case for the importance of their role and library, and audit their current literacy and wellbeing offerings, and adjust or extend them where applicable based on best practice. The book also explores some of the many challenges facing school libraries and their professional staff that may need to be mitigated to ensure that they can reach their full potential for supporting student literacy and wellbeing.

This book proposes a novel approach to classification, discusses its myriad advantages, and outlines how such an approach to classification can best be pursued. It encourages a collaborative effort toward the detailed development of such a classification. This book is motivated by the increased importance of interdisciplinary scholarship in the academy, and the widely perceived shortcomings of existing knowledge organization schemes in serving interdisciplinary scholarship. It is designed for scholars of classification research, knowledge organization, the digital environment, and interdisciplinarity itself. The approach recommended blends a general classification with domain-specific classification practices. The book reaches a set of very strong conclusions: -Existing classification systems serve interdisciplinary research and teaching poorly. -A novel approach to classification, grounded in the phenomena studied rather than disciplines, would serve interdisciplinary scholarship much better. It would also have advantages for disciplinary scholarship. The productivity of scholarship would thus be increased. -This novel approach is entirely feasible. Various concerns that might be raised can each be addressed. The broad outlines of what a new classification would look like are developed. -This new approach might serve as a complement to or a substitute for existing classification systems. -Domain analysis can and should be employed in the pursuit of a general classification. This will be particularly important with respect to interdisciplinary domains. -Though the impetus for this novel approach comes from interdisciplinarity, it is also better suited to the needs of the Semantic Web, and a digital environment more generally. Though the primary focus of the book is on classification systems, most chapters also address how the analysis could be extended to thesauri and ontologies. The possibility of a universal thesaurus is explored. The classification proposed has many of the advantages sought in ontologies for the Semantic Web. The book is therefore of interest to scholars working in these areas as well.

Cataloging standards practiced within the traditional library, archive and museum environments are not interoperable for the retrieval of objects within the shared online environment. Within today's information environments, library, archive and museum professionals are becoming aware that all information objects can be linked together. In this way, information professionals have the opportunity to collaborate and share data together with the shard online cataloging environment, the end result being improved retrieval effectiveness. But the adaptation has been slow: Libraries, archives and museums are still operating within their own community-specific cataloging practices. This book provides a historical perspective of the evolution of linking devices within the library, archive, and museums environments, and captures current cataloging practices in these fields. It offers suggestions for moving beyond community-specific cataloging principles and thus has the potential of becoming a springboard for further conversation and the sharing of ideas.