Search (52 results, page 2 of 3)

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Date

27. 8.2000 14:46:22

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Footnote

Rez. in: Australian library journal 46(1997) no.3, S.334-345 (P. Calvert)

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Footnote

Rez. in: Electronic library 18(2000) no.4, S.294-295 (J. Edwards); Teacher librarian 27(1999) S.50 (P. Genco)

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Date

22. 3.2008 12:21:28

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Footnote

Rez. in: College and research libraries 57(1996) no.2, S.194-195 (J. Garrett); Journal of academic librarianship 22(1996) no.3, S.223 (A.D. Pratt); JASIS 47(1996) no.10, S.789-790 (C.H. Davis)

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Date

22.10.2006 18:22:51

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Footnote

Rez. in: Managing information 3(1996) no.5, S.47 (P. Gaw); International journal of information management 16(1996) no.3, S.235 (D. Bawden)

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Footnote

Rez. in: Journal of academic librarianship 22(1996) no.1, S.62 (R.F. Rose)

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Footnote

Rez. in: JASIST 58(2007) no.7, S.1066-1067 (X. Zhu u. J. Liao): "The user, without whom any product or service would be nothing, plays a very important role during the whole life cycle of products or services. The user's involvement should be from the very beginning, not just after products or services are ready to work. According to ISO 9241-11: 1998, Part 11, Usability refers to "the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of user." As an academic topic of human-computer interaction, Web usability has been studied widely for a long time. This classroom-oriented book, bridging academia and the educational community, talks about Web usability in a student-friendly fashion. It outlines not only the methodology of user-centered Web site design but also details the methods to implement at every stage of the methodology. That is, the book presents the user-centered Web-design approach from both macrocosm and microcosm points of view, which makes it both recapitulative and practical. The most important key word in Web Usability is "user-centered," which means Web developers should not substitute their own personal preferences for the users' needs. The book classifies Web sites into five types: E-commerce, informational, entertainment, community, and intranet. Since the methods used during Web development differ somewhat depending on the type of Web site, it is necessary to have a classification in advance. With Figure 1.3 on p. 17, the book explains the whole user-centered Webdevelopment life cycle (called "methodology" in this book review), which provides a clear path for Web development that is easy to understand, remember, and perform. Since all the following chapters are based on the methodology, a clear presentation of it is paramount. The table on p. 93 summarizes concisely all types of methods for requirements gathering and their advantages and disadvantages. According to this table, appropriate methods can be easily chosen for different Web site development projects. As the author remarked, "requirements gathering is central to the concept of user-centered design," (p. 98) and "one of the hallmarks of user-centered design is usability testing" (p. 205). Stage 2 (collect user requirements) and Stage 5 (perform usability testing) of the user-centered Web-development life cycle are the two stages with the most user involvement: however, this does not mean that all other stages are user unrelated. For example, in Stage 4 (create and modify physical design), frame is not suggested to be used just because most users are unfamiliar with the concept of frame (p. 201). Note that frequently there are several rounds of usability testing to be performed in the four case studies, and some of them are performed before the physical-design stage or even the conceptual-design stage, which embodies the idea of an iterative design process.
Besides the major well-known software applications such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver (pp. 191-194), many useful software tools can be adopted to assist and accelerate the Web-development process, resulting in improvement of the productivity of the Web industry. Web Usability mentions such tools as the "code validator" (p. 189) to identify problematic areas of the handwritten code against spelling and usage, the tool available at a given URL address to convert portable document format (PDF) files into hypertext markup language (HTML) files (p. 201), WEBXACT, WebSAT, A-Prompt, Dottie, InFocus, and RAMP (pp. 226-227) to automate usability testing, and ClickTracks, NetTracker, WebTrends, and Spotfire (p. 263) to summarize Web-usage data and analyze the trends. Thus, Web developers are able to find these tools and benefit from them. Other strengths of the book include the layout of each page, which has a wide margin in which readers may easily place notes, and the fact that the book is easy to read and understand. Although there are many strengths in this book, a few weaknesses are evident. All chapter wrap-ups should have an identical layout. Without numbering for sections and subsections, it is very likely that readers will lose sense of where they are in the overall information architecture of the book. At present, the only solution is to frequently refer to the table of contents to confirm the location. The hands-on example on p. 39 would be better placed in chap. 4 because it focuses on a requirements gathering method, the interview. There are two similar phrases, namely "user population" and "user group," that are used widely in this book. User population is composed of user groups; however, they are not strictly used in this book. The section title "Using a Search Engine" (p. 244) should be on the same level as that of the section "Linking to a URL," and not as that of the section entitled "Marketing: Bringing Users to Your Web Site," according to what the author argued at the top of p. 236.

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Footnote

Rez. in: JASIST 57(2006) no.12, S.1709-1710 (Y. Awazu): "This hook presents a collection of research studies on the creation, use, and deployment of digital information. According to the editors, the goal of the book is "to present results of scientific research on (I) how digital information has to be designed, (2) how artifacts or systems containing digital content should maximize usability, and (3) how context can influence the nature and efficiency of digital communication" (p. 2). Contributors to this volume have a wide assortment of backgrounds in information science, classical studies, cognitive science, information systems, and organizational sciences. The editors did an excellent job in designing the book. Each chapter is unique in its theory and method. The editors successfully put these unique chapters into the life-cycle view of information: creation, use, and deployment. . . . I would highly recommend this book as a supplementary text for graduate classes in information science, especially those dealing with the design of information systems. It was a pleasure to read this book, and I believe that readers will certainly gain from the wealth of knowledge and insights contained in the volume."

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Footnote

Rez. in: JASIST 55(2004) no.5, S.467-468 (W. Koehler): "Virtual Inequality is an important contribution to the digital divide debate. That debate takes two basic forms. One centers an the divide between the "information rich" developed countries and the "information poor" developing countries. The second is concerned with the rift between information "haves" and "have-nots" within countries. This book addresses the latter domain and is concerned with the digital divide in the United States. This book is the product of a cross-disciplinary collaboration. Mossberger and Tolbert are both members of the Kent State University political science department while Stansbury is an the Library and Information Science faculty. The book is extremely well documented. Perhaps the chapter an the democracy divide and e-government is the best done, reflecting the political science bent of two of the authors. E-government is very well covered. Unfortunately, e-commerce and e-education go virtually unmentioned. If e-government is important to defining the digital divide, then certainly e-commerce and e-education are as well. Mossberger, Tolbert, and Stansbury argue that the digital divide should be described as four different divides: the access divide, the skills divide, the economic opportunity divide, and the democratic divide. Each of these divides is developed in its own chapter. Each chapter draws well an the existing literature. The book is valuable if for no other reason than that it provides an excellent critique of the current state of the understanding of the digital divide in the United States. It is particularly good in its contrast of the approaches taken by the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Perhaps this is a function of the multidisciplinary strength of the book's authorship, for indeed it shows here. The access divide is defined along "connectivity" lines: who has access to digital technologies. The authors tonfirm the conventional wisdom that age and education are important predictors of in-home access, but they also argue that rate and ethnicity are also factors (pp. 32-33): Asian Americans have greatest access followed by whites, Latinos, and African Americans in that order. Most access the Internet from home or work, followed by friends' computers, libraries, and other access points. The skills divide is defined as technical competence and information literacy (p. 38). Variation was found along technical competence for age, education, affluence, rate, and ethnicity, but not gender (p. 47). The authors conclude that for the most part the skills divide mirrors the access divide (p. 55). While they found no gender difference, they did find a gender preference for skills acquisition: males prefer a more impersonal delivery ("online help and tutorials") while females prefer more personal instruction (p. 56).
The economic opportunity divide is predicated an the hypothesis that there has, indeed, been a major shift in opportunities driven by changes in the information environment. The authors document this paradigm shift well with arguments from the political and economic right and left. This chapter might be described as an "attitudinal" chapter. The authors are concerned here with the perceptions of their respondents of their information skills and skill levels with their economic outlook and opportunities. Technological skills and economic opportunities are correlated, one finds, in the minds of all across all ages, genders, races, ethnicities, and income levels. African Americans in particular are ". . attuned to the use of technology for economic opportunity" (p. 80). The fourth divide is the democratic divide. The Internet may increase political participation, the authors posit, but only among groups predisposed to participate and perhaps among those with the skills necessary to take advantage of the electronic environment (p. 86). Certainly the Web has played an important role in disseminating and distributing political messages and in some cases in political fund raising. But by the analysis here, we must conclude that the message does not reach everyone equally. Thus, the Internet may widen the political participation gap rather than narrow it. The book has one major, perhaps fatal, flaw: its methodology and statistical application. The book draws upon a survey performed for the authors in June and July 2001 by the Kent State University's Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) lab (pp. 7-9). CATI employed a survey protocol provided to the reader as Appendix 2. An examination of the questionnaire reveals that all questions yield either nominal or ordinal responses, including the income variable (pp. 9-10). Nevertheless, Mossberger, Tolbert, and Stansbury performed a series of multiple regression analyses (reported in a series of tables in Appendix 1) utilizing these data. Regression analysis requires interval/ratio data in order to be valid although nominal and ordinal data can be incorporated by building dichotomous dummy variables. Perhaps Mossberger, Tolbert, and Stansbury utilized dummy variables; but 1 do not find that discussed. Moreover, 1 would question a multiple regression made up completely of dichotomous dummy variables. I come away from Virtual Inequality with mixed feelings. It is useful to think of the digital divide as more than one phenomenon. The four divides that Mossberger, Tolbert, and Stansbury offeraccess, skills, economic opportunity, and democratic-are useful as a point of departure and debate. No doubt, other divides will be identified and documented. This book will lead the way. Second, without question, Mossberger, Tolbert, and Stansbury provide us with an extremely well-documented, -written, and -argued work. Third, the authors are to be commended for the multidisciplinarity of their work. Would that we could see more like it. My reservations about their methodological approach, however, hang over this review like a shroud."

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Editor

Schuler, D. u. P. Day

Footnote

Rez. in: JASIST 57(2006) no.5, S.724-725 (P.K. Nayar): "The network society (Castells, 1996) calls for radically new definitions of the public sphere. and this is what Shaping the Network Society's essays set out to do. The first section lays out the essential issues at stake here: human rights, the sociology of cyberspace. and globalization. Oliver BoydBarrett characterizes cyberspace as exclusive. Pointing to the almost total corporate control of the technologies of cyberspace. Boyd-Barrett argues that any attempt of huge corporate bodies to get into grassroots democracy should be viewed with suspicion. The institution of a public sphere. argues Boyd-Barrett, must begin with an assessment of how far the Internet at fords a space of contestation of elitist governing frameworks. Gary Chapman looks at Italy's slow food movement as a counter to the technoglobalist trends, and suggests that the globaltechnological imperative must not be allowed to occlude human values. Rather we need a social imperative here. one which thinks about technology as "malleable, as capable of serving human-determined ends" (p. 64). Cees Hamelink discusses how four rights-right to speech. democratic order, equal participation in social life. and cultural identity are threatened by what he terms the billboardization of society in the networked age. In the second section a range of case studies are presented. Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat survey every public computing facility in Toledo (Ohio) to map the parameters of public access to information and decision-making. They conclude that government public computing sites arc situated randomly, community sites are in economically rich or poor (but not middle-stratum) localities, and that commercial and university sites are influenced by market forces. They suggest that future research must necessarily focus on what forms of cyberpower emerge through such use of public computing.
Geert Lovnik and Patrice Riemens explore the digital culture of Amsterdam to show how. despite the techno-social idealism of the early years of the public sphere Digital City project. the culture ran into problems. Susan Finquelievich studies the practices of civic networks in Buenos Aires and Montevideo to demonstrate how local sociohistorical conditions have shaped the technology's development. Veran Matic focuses on the role of media in defending human rights in a hostile environment (former Yugoslavia). Media, she notes, need not necessarily he (or become) a tool of fascist forces, but can he used to generate resistance and to forge a democratic public sphere. Scott Robinson looks at Mexico's telecenter movement to argue that these cybercafes are likely to become an institution for the new Second World of immigrants and refugees. through socially relevant functions. Fiorella de Cindio looks at one of the worlds most significant community networks that of Milan. She demonstrates how local citizens have used information and communication technologies to build a viable. and potentially empowering, participatory public sphere in academia, computer-supported cooperative work, participatory design, and civil engagement (what she calls genes). The third section, -'Building a New Public Sphere in Cyberspace," pros- ides a series of suggestions and frameworks for the spacing of public space through information and communications technologies. Craig Calhoun argues that a global public sphere is indispensable to the formation of a global democracy. Public discourse can still fight commercialism and violence to form a more democratic civil society. Howard Rheingold the great enthusiast of virtual worlds-performs an intricate mix of autobiographical reflection and speculation when he writes of the role of the new technologies. Rheingold, despite his fetishistic enthusiasm for technology and online community, is cautious when it comes to crucial issues such as the creation of democratic public spheres, arguing that we require a great deal more serious thinking on matters of ownership and control (over the technology). He argues that if citizens lose our freedom to communicate, then even the powerful potential of the Net to create electronic democracy will be fatal illusion (p. 275). Nancy Kranich turns to public libraries as the site of potential democratic society, arguing that as sites of informationdissemination. public libraries can become a commons for the exchange of ideas and social interaction. David Silver compares the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) to the Seattle Community Network the former funded by corporations and the state, the latter built essentially out of and through volunteer efforts. Silver, in characteristic style. looks at the historical archaeologies of the networks to show how sociohistorical contexts shape certain kinds of public spheres (and public discourse). going on to ask how, these networks can overcome these contexts to achieve their original goals. He warns that we need to uncover the histories of such networks because they inform the kinds of interactions of communities that exist within them. Douglas Morris analyzes the Independent Media Centre (IMO) Movement of antiglobalization activists to argue that alternative viewpoints and ideological differences can he aired, debated, and appropriated through the new technologies in order to fight corporate and commercial forces.

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Footnote

Rez. in: JASIST 55(2004) no.2, S.181-182 (J. Scholl): "The book is based an a doctoral thesis titled "Global opportunity and national political economy: The development of internet ventures in Germany," which was supervised by Razeen Sally and accepted at the International Relations Department of the London School of Economics & Political Science, UK, in 2002. Its primary audience, although it is certainly of interest to policy makers, trade press journalists, and industry practitioners, is the academic community, and, in particular, (international) policy, business, business history, information technology, and information science scholars. The book's self-stated purpose is to explain "why Europe, despite initiating a tremendous amount of change ... failed to produce independent internet ventures of note" (p. 1) in contrast to the United States, where Internet start-ups such as Amazon.com, eBay, E*trade, and Yahoo managed to survive the notorious dot.com shakeout of 200I-2002. A few pages down, the objective is restated as "to explore the hypothesis of a global opportunity for technology innovation delivered via the internet and to explain Europe's entrepreneurial response" (p. 4). As a proxy case for Europe, the study provides a broad account of the changing legal and socioeconomic setting during the phase of early Internet adoption and development in Germany throughout the 1990s. The author highlights and details various facets of the entrepreneurial opportunity and compares the German case in some detail to corresponding developments in Sweden. Waesche concludes that starting an Internet business in Germany during that particular period of time was a "wrong country, wrong time" (p. I86) proposition.
Waesche sparsely Sketches out a theoretical framework for his study combining "network thinking," which he Claims to stand in the Schumpeterian research tradition, with classical institutional theory a la Max Weber. It is not clear, though, how this theory has guided his empirical research. No detailed hypotheses are presented, which would further clarify what was studied. Beyond the rudimentary framework, the author presents a concept of "refraction" denoting the "distorting effect national institutions have an a global innovation opportunity" (p. 17). Again, no hypotheses or measures for this concept are developed. No indication is given about which specific academic contribution was intended to be made and which particular gap of knowledge was attempted to be filled. Waesche's book would have greatly benefited from a more sharply posed and more detailed set of research questions. Instead we leam many details about the German situation in general and about the perceptions of individual players, particularly managerial personnel, in entrepreneurial Internet businesses in a specific Situation within a relatively short period of time. While many of those details are interesting in their own right, the reader is left wondering what the study's novelty is, what it specifically uncovered, what the frame of reference was, and what was finally learned. Contrary to its Claim and unlike a Chandlerian treatment of business history, the study does not explain, it rather just deseribes a particular historical situation. Consequently, the author refrains from presenting any new theory or prescriptive framework in his concluding remarks, but rather briefly revisits and summarizes the presening chapters. The study's empirical basis consists of two surveys with Sample sizes of 123 and 30 as well as a total of 68 interviews. The surveys and interviews were mostly completed between July of 1997 and November of 1999. Although descriptive statistics and detailed demographic information is provided in the appendix, the questionnaires and interview protocols are not included, making it difficult to follow the research undertaking. In summary, while undeniably a number of interesting and illustrative details regarding early Internet entrepreneurship in Germany are accounted for in Waesche's book, it would have provided a much stronger academic contribution had it developed a sound theory upfront and then empirically tested that theory. Alternatively the author could have singled out certain gaps in existing theory, and then attempted to fill those gaps by providing empirical evidence. In either case, he would have almost inevitably arrived at new insights directing to further study."

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Date

22.10.2006 10:22:33