Research and Publications - School of Library and Information Studies

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    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.
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    Natural Resources Library Duluth
    (1989-12-10) Sandy, John H.
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    Approval Plans Issues and Innovations: Introduction
    (1996-06-10) Sandy, John H.
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    Implementation of an Online Catalog in a Special Library
    Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
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    Recruiting Entry-Level Sci-Tech Librarians: An Analysis of Job Advertisements and Outcome of Searches
    (2002) Jones, Mary Lou Baker; Lembo, Mary Frances; Manasco, James E.; Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    This research analyzed 167 job ads for science and technology librarian positions. Provides data on required and preferred qualifications listed in the ads. The outcome of selected searches is summarized.
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    A Greater Need for Reference Librarians
    (2007) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
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    Susan Kantor: Scholar & Librarian
    Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
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    Financial Tips for Librarians
    (2009) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
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    Filtering Google Search Results Using Top-Level Domains
    (2015) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    A 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.
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    Guidance for Evaluating Library Program
    (1993) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
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    Round Rock Public Library Moves into New Building
    (1980) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    A new public library opened in the historical district of Round Rock, Texas, in 1980. The library offered new and expanded services for a rapidly growing community near Austin, Texas.
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    Recruiting the Public Library Director
    (1981) Sandy, John H.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
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    Digitizing the ‘Ideal’ Latina Information Worker
    (2022-03) Sweeney, Miriam; Villa-Nicolas, Melissa; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    Recent 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.
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    Alexa, are you listening? An exploration of smart voice assistant use and privacy in libraries
    (2020) Sweeney, Miriam; Davis, E.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    Smart 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.
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    How Much Statistical Data can be Recovered from Alabama Football History?
    (2019) MacCall, Steven L.; Liu, Huapa; Anderson, Melissa; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    We 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.
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    Digital Assistants
    (2019) Sweeney, Miriam E.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    In 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.
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    Social Reproduction Theory in the Academic Library: Understanding the Implications of Socially Reproductive Labor as Labor
    (2019-08-25) Guild, Craig M.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    Traditional Marxist and Postmodern theories have been very useful in describing the library’s ideological role within society, however they both lack an ability to explain why the library came into its current existence in a capitalist society and why it has such staying power in an increasingly privatized and performance driven society. The development of Social Reproduction Theory provides a window to begin explaining the historic development of libraries and the role they have come to play. This article looks to begin introducing an application of Social Reproduction Theory that can contextualize libraries as important components of a global capitalist system. This approach centers the labor conducted by librarians, and other socially reproductive workers, as crucial to the functioning of modern capitalism. Ultimately, this can mean new approaches to the librarian-patron relationship and new implications for library advocacy and leadership.
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    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 Tuscaloosa
    Virtual 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.