School of Library and Information Studies
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Item Alexa, are you listening? An exploration of smart voice assistant use and privacy in libraries(2020) Sweeney, Miriam; Davis, E.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaSmart voice assistants have expanded from personal use in the home to applications in public services and educational spaces. The library and information science (LIS) trade literature suggests that libraries are part of this trend, however there is a dearth of empirical studies that explore how libraries are implementing smart voice assistants in their services, and how these libraries are mitigating the potential patron data privacy issues posed by these technologies. This study contributes to this gap byreporting on the results of a national survey that documents how libraries are integrating voice assistant technologies (e.g. Amazon Echo, Google home) into their services, programming, and check-out programs. The survey also surfaces some of the key privacy concerns of library workers in regard to implementing voice assistants in library services. We find that although voice assistant use might not be mainstreamed in library services in high numbers (yet), libraries are clearly experimenting with (and having internal conversations with their staff about) using these technologies. The responses to our survey indicate that library workers have many savvy privacy concerns about the use of voice assistants in library services that are critical to address in advance of library institutions riding the wave of emerging technology adoption. This research has important implications for developing library practices, policies, and education opportunities that place patron privacy as a central part of digital literacy in an information landscape characterized by ubiquitous smart surveillant technologies.Item An Analysis of Journals Used in Research in Geomorphology(1974-05-15) Sandy, John H.Item Approval Plans Issues and Innovations: Introduction(1996-06-10) Sandy, John H.Item Caring is Connecting: AI Digital Assistants and the Surveillance of Elderly and Disabled Family Members in the Home(Routledge, 2023) Sweeney, Miriam E.This chapter provides an overview of AI digital assistants as surveillant data-gathering devices in the home that are marketed as ideal caregivers for modern home management. Using Alexa Together as one example, this chapter considers how the frame of caregiving may be leveraged to “smooth” people’s concerns about privacy and data gathering, while justifying intensified surveillance for elder adults and disabled family members as a function of market segmentation. The framing of surveillant technologies as caregivers both reflects and reproduces the extractive logics of algorithmic culture that transforms social relationships into opportunities for data gathering. This chapter argues that a key feature of AI urbanism is the access to intimate and personal data in the home as a resource that that can be commoditized and integrated into urban governance and planning. These concepts are critical for theorizing the role of AI digital assistants within broader autonomous processes of urban living and governance associated with AI urbanism.Item Constructing and deconstructing archival memory in Birmingham, Alabama: the role of local collecting institutions in facilitating social justice(University of Alabama Libraries, 2016) Hirschy, Jeff Hirschy; Riter, Robert B.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaIn 1992, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute opened to the public after several years of argument, construction, and development. Was it to remember the heroic events of the Civil Rights Movement, to gain tourist dollars, to correct the historical record, educate the public, or a combination of these ideas? No matter the reason both the Birmingham Civil Institute and the Birmingham Public Library Department of Archives and Manuscripts and created and constructed for, both play an important and needed role in the story of Birmingham. What is that role? Through education and research, collecting institutions like the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute shine a light on important, but dark chapters, of Birmingham’s, the United States’, and the world’s history so that people can remember, discover, and learn from those events. Whatever their size or affiliation, collecting institutions play a needed role in the search for social justice and transitional justice. Thinking about this, what roles have, and could, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Birmingham Public Library play in the search for social justice in Birmingham, Alabama? This study will show that both the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the Birmingham Public Library Department of Archives and Manuscripts have assisted Birmingham, Alabama in that city’s search for social justice for fostering education and research. Education and research allow the public to learn about the events that took place during Birmingham’s Civil Rights movement and apply the lessons and documents from that Movement to their own time and own location.Item Critical analysis of academic library trends in conflict zones(University of Alabama Libraries, 2017) Jaber, Baheya S. J.; Burgess, John T. F.; Prentice, Ann E.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThis study is designed to determine if selected trends in the library literature take into account the realities of libraries and librarians in conflict zones, and if the experience of librarians in conflict zones can be used to provide a model for implementing these trends. The researcher conducted a critical analysis of emerging trends in academic libraries from the perspective of librarians operating in conflict zones. Specific attention is given to libraries operating in Palestine and neighboring countries. These academic libraries are involved in a transition process, moving away from traditional models of library practice but still searching for the best models of practice to move towards. The need to transition is due to changes in higher education’s teaching methods, rapid development in information technology, and students’ evolving needs. Just as in other parts of the world, academic librarians in conflict zones need to improve their libraries’ services to meet patron demand. By reviewing the latest trends in academic librarianship and the library literature regarding these trends, the researcher highlighted three trends that can be applied by academic libraries in conflict zones. These trends are the library commons approach, community involvement and collection assessment. This review focuses on the emerging trends in academic libraries in conflict zones, challenges they encounter, and how they deal with these challenges. It is followed by a critical analysis of the three most applicable trends for academic libraries in conflict zones. This critique allowed the researcher to build a model that focuses on creating a comfortable and collaborative place for library patrons to facilitate their use of place and technology, satisfy their needs, and for the growth of these libraries and the academic institutions they serve. The conclusion is that emphasizing local authority and political, economic, and cultural knowledge allows select academic library trends to be embraced by librarians in conflict zones while minimizing unintended negative consequences associated with those trends. Recommendations encourage collaborative efforts between academic library professionals and organizations in conflict and non-conflict zones by holding workshops, training programs and conferences to increase the awareness of the emerging trends in conflict zones.Item Designing the “Good Citizen” through Latina Identity in USCIS’s Virtual Assistant “Emma”(Taylor & Francis, 2019-07-25) Sweeney, Miriam E.; Villa-Nicholas, Melissa; University of Alabama TuscaloosaVirtual assistants are increasingly integrated as ‘user-friendly’ interfaces for e-government services. This research investigates the case study of the virtual assistant, ‘Emma,’ that is integrated into the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website. We conduct an interface analysis of Emma, along with the USCIS website, and related promotional materials, to explore the cultural affordances of Latina identity as a strategic design for this virtual assistant. We argue that the Emma interface makes normative claims about citizenship and inclusion in an attempt to ‘hail’ Latinx users as ideal citizens. We find that the ‘ideal’ citizen is defined through the Emma interface as an assimilated citizen-consumer that engages with digital technologies in ways that produce them as informationally ‘legible’ to the state.Item Digital Assistants(2019) Sweeney, Miriam E.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaIn machine learning, "uncertainty" describes the margin of error of a given measurement as a range of values most likely to contain the "true" data value. A critical cultural approach to digital assistants reframes uncertainty into a strategy of inquiry that foregrounds the range of cultural values embedded in digital assistants. This is particularly useful for exposing what sorts of ideological "truths" are enclosed and/or foreclosed as part and parcel of the design, implementation, and use of these technologies. Exploring the anthropomorphic design of digital assistants through feminist and critical race lenses requires us to confront how dominant ideologies about race, gender and technology forma a kind of cultural infrastructure that undergirds technology design and practice. From this perspective, uncertainties emerge about the "common sense" of anthropomorphic design of digital assistants, particularly surrounding how this design strategy is employed in ways that target vulnerable communities at the behest of state, corporate, and commercial interests.Item Digitizing the ‘Ideal’ Latina Information Worker(2022-03) Sweeney, Miriam; Villa-Nicolas, Melissa; University of Alabama TuscaloosaRecent examples of virtual assistant technologies designed as Latina information service workers are noteworthy objects of study for their potential to bridge analyses of Latinas’ labor history and information technology. Latinas in the United States have traditionally worked in blue collar information technology sectors characterized by repetitive labor and low-wages, such as electronics manufacturing and customer service. Latinas information service workers, though fundamental to technoscience, have been largely invisible in histories of computing. Latina virtual assistants mark a shift in this labor history by relying on the strategic visibility of Latina identity in/as the technology interface. Our research explores Latina virtual assistants designed by Airus Media, and installed as airport workers in airports along the southwestern border of the United States. We situate the technocultural narratives present in the design and marketing of these technologies within the broader histories of invisible Latina information labor in the United States. We find continuities between the ways Latinas have historically been positioned as “ideal” information workers, and the use of Latina identity in the design of virtual assistants. We argue that the strategic visibility of Latina virtual assistants is linked to the oppressive structures of invisibility that have traditionally organized Latina information service workers.Item Educating for Social Justice: Perspectives from Library and Information Science and Collaboration with K-12 Social Studies Educators(2015) Naidoo, Jamie Campbell; Sweeney, Miriam E.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaLibrary and Information Science (LIS) as a discipline is guided by core values that emphasize equal access to information, freedom of expression, democracy, and education. Importantly, diversity and social responsibility are specifically called out as foundations of the profession (American Library Association, 2004). Following from this, there has been a focus in LIS on educating librarians from a social justice perspective. In this essay we will discuss some of the strategies we use for training librarians to practice librarianship using a social justice framework as a way to help social studies teachers and other educators critically think through their role in educating for social justice in their classrooms. Some areas of particular transference from LIS to K-12 educators that we focus on include locating classroom technologies as sites of power and privilege, prioritizing print and digital materials representative of culturally diverse populations and relevant contexts, and expanding the notion of literacy to include multiple literacies. These strategies lay a foundation for a critically-oriented classroom as a step towards teaching for social justice, and provide opportunities for collaboration between social studies educators and librarians.Item Filtering Google Search Results Using Top-Level Domains(2015) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaA book chapter: Simply by entering keywords into the primary Google search box, researchers usually find useful information. But even better results are obtained by applying filtering techniques. Top-level domains (TLDs) are an effective tool to sort information retrieved from the Internet and get highly relevant results. In scientific research on topics related to forestry, for example, filtering by the dot gov TLD, a user immediately finds publications from government departments and agencies, eliminating the need to drill down through dozens of pages which can be filled with less valuable and often general information.Item Financial Tips for Librarians(2009) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaItem A Greater Need for Reference Librarians(2007) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaItem Guidance for Evaluating Library Program(1993) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaItem How Much Statistical Data can be Recovered from Alabama Football History?(2019) MacCall, Steven L.; Liu, Huapa; Anderson, Melissa; University of Alabama TuscaloosaWe presented on the results of a pilot project that investigated the recoverability of historical statistical play-by-play data from the documentary football collection at the Paul W. Bryant Museum at the University of Alabama using Wikibase as our data repository. The recovery of data from the historical record for purposes of reconstructing the past in digital form is an active area of research across many areas, such as the recovery of climate data from historical ships’ logbooks. Our crowdsourced approach included volunteers who transcribed documentary materials in order to “mine” statistical play-by-play data from the 1992 and 1961 Alabama football season.Item The Impact of the Monographs Crisis on the Field of CommunicationYates, Steven D.; Chapman, Karen; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThis study replicates and extends Yates and Chapman’s [(2007), Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 26(1), 39-51] study of references from Communication Monographs, Communication Research, and Journal of Communication for the years 2010 and 2015 to draw further conclusions on the use of monographs in journal literature in the field of communication. Results show that the use of monographs in these journals has been outpaced by references to journal articles by a ratio of 5 to 1. The references were further analyzed by date and publisher. The authors then selected a random sample of the monographs cited in the journals to explore the availability of these monographs in electronic format and found that many are available as ebooks, particularly the more recent titles. The authors also examined the references from a collection of scholarly books in communication from 2005, 2010, and 2015 and found that the use of monographs may be declining slightly. The most notable trend in these references was the increase in the number of references to items in other formats such as film, television, comic books, and websites. The authors conclude that the monographs crisis is indeed affecting citation patterns in the field of communication.Item Implementation of an Online Catalog in a Special LibrarySandy, John H.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaItem Management of intelligence archives of fallen authoritarian regimes(University of Alabama Libraries, 2013) Blum, David Alexander; Aversa, Elizabeth Smith; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThis thesis poses the question: What happens to intelligence archives when authoritarian regimes collapse? These files have both personal privacy and national security connotations that separate them from most archival material. As countries make the transition towards democracy, what can be done and are there any lessons learned from historical examples? Three cases have been examined: the Soviet Union's KGB, East Germany's Stasi, and Apartheid South Africa's NIS. This research examines how the files were handled by the regimes while they were in power, what happened during the transition, and the status of the archives after the transformation of government. The research finds that while some outcomes are positive or negative, the decisions and the situations are not clear-cut. Not all information can be released as a country becomes a democracy, while information can be obtained from nations that restrict their democratic reforms. These cases provide examples of the decisions that leaders and archivists could make to open these files to citizens. Although each country is unique in how a government will be run, this work offers additional perspectives on what policies could be in place for other countries in the future.Item Natural Resources Library Duluth(1989-12-10) Sandy, John H.Item Reconstructing hunger: recollection and re-presentation of the 1981 hunger strike(University of Alabama Libraries, 2018) Kinder, Eliscia; Riter, Robert B.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaAs a pivotal moment in “the Troubles,” various media have portrayed the 1981 hunger strike, including documentary films and print journalism, as well as artistic representations that span from murals and street art to feature-length films. I would like to explore the theoretical framework of a digital archive that will support the complexity of this historical event, both in the content of the material and the cultural issues that arise from addressing a traumatic moment for Northern Irish communities. I approach this project from a humanities perspective to push the boundaries of traditional archival practices while experimenting with developments in the field of digital humanities. I am particularly invested in how systems-level archival construction can foster dynamic (re)readings of the past. I also explore the ethical responsibilities and repercussions of such an archival system. Ideally, this archive will contribute to our understanding of the hunger strike and help illuminate other protests in separate conflicts. However, sociological conditions and the limitations of electronic archives suggest this will be a difficult process.