This book examines various views and perspectives on digitisation. Topics covered include electronic theses, search engine technology, digitisation in Africa, citation indexing, reference services, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, new media and scholarly publishing. The final chapter explores virtual libraries, and poses some interesting questions for possible futures. The book will be of particular interest to information professionals, educators, librarians, academics and I.T. and knowledge experts.
Academic work, like many other professional occupations, has increasingly become digitised. This book brings together leading scholars who examine the impacts, possibilities, politics and drawbacks of working in the contemporary university, using digital technologies. Contributors take a critical perspective in identifying the implications of digitisation for the future of higher education, academic publishing protocols and platforms and academic employment conditions, the ways in which academics engage in their everyday work and as public scholars and relationships with students and other academics. The book includes accounts of using digital media and technologies as part of academic practice across teaching, research administration and scholarship endeavours, as well as theoretical perspectives. The contributors span the spectrum of early to established career academics and are based in education, research administration, sociology, digital humanities, media and communication.
This book explores the digitization of culture as a means of experiencing and understanding cultural heritage in Namibia and from international perspectives. It provides various views and perspectives on the digitization of culture, the goal being to stimulate further research, and to rapidly disseminate related discoveries. Aspects covered here include: virtual and augmented reality, audio and video technology, art, multimedia and digital media integration, cross-media technologies, modeling, visualization and interaction as a means of experiencing and grasping cultural heritage. Over the past few decades, digitization has profoundly changed our cultural experience, not only in terms of digital technology-based access, production and dissemination, but also in terms of participation and creation, and learning and partaking in a knowledge society. Computing researchers have developed a wealth of new digital systems for preserving, sharing and interacting with cultural resources. The book provides important information and tools for policy makers, knowledge experts, cultural and creative industries, communication scientists, professionals, educators, librarians and artists, as well as computing scientists and engineers conducting research on cultural topics.
"This book provides tools to complement an organization's burgeoning information treasuries, exploring new frontiers by looking at social and economic aspects of digital libraries and their sustainability"--Provided by publisher.
The rise of digital health technologies is, for some, a panacea to many of the medical and public health challenges we face today. This is the first book to articulate a critical response to the techno-utopian and entrepreneurial vision of the digital health phenomenon. Deborah Lupton, internationally renowned for her scholarship on the sociocultural and political aspects of medicine and health as well as digital technologies, addresses a range of compelling issues about the interests digital health represents, and its unintended effects on patients, doctors and how we conceive of public health and healthcare delivery. Bringing together social and cultural theory with empirical research, the book challenges apolitical approaches to examine the impact new technologies have on social justice, and the implication for social and economic inequalities. Lupton considers how self-tracking devices change the patient-doctor relationship, and how the digitisation and gamification of healthcare through apps and other software affects the way we perceive and respond to our bodies. She asks which commercial interests enable different groups to communicate more widely, and how the personal data generated from digital encounters are exploited. Considering the lived experience of digital health technologies, including their emotional and sensory dimensions, the book also assesses their broader impact on medical and public health knowledges, power relations and work practices. Relevant to students and researchers interested in medicine and public health across sociology, psychology, anthropology, new media and cultural studies, as well as policy makers and professionals in the field, this is a timely contribution on an important issue.
With contributions from over 20 leading scholars from across the globe, this new book brings together a number of papers that have been presented at the annual International Labour Process Conference, at which the conference theme 'Working Revolutions: Revolutionising Work' provided the inspiration for many of the chapters included in this volume. Grounded in Labour Process Theory, the text examines how digital technologies impact on work and organisations and provides a rigorous account of the technological, organizational and work related changes in both the new digital industries and in the traditional service and manufacturing sectors. The book covers many of the most significant contemporary issues and subjects in the field, including the representation of women in IT, workplace cyberbulling, virtualisation and the video games industry. This book is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students studying modules related to technology and work, as well as modules in work sociology on sociology degree programmes.
Initiatives at a cross-cultural level, where libraries, museums and archives work together in creating digital libraries, and making their cultural heritage collections available online, are emerging. Leading academic researchers from the cultural heritage and the publishers sectors approach this issue: Digital library user experience: a focus on current user research; Digital library content: what users want and how they use it; Strategies for institutions: how cultural institutions and publishers respond to the digital challenge.
This book gathers new empirical findings fostering advances in the areas of digital and communication design, web, multimedia and motion design, graphic design, branding, and related ones. It includes original contributions by authoritative authors based on the best papers presented at the 5th International Conference on Digital Design and Communication, Digicom 2021, together with some invited chapters written by leading international researchers. They report on innovative design strategies supporting communication in a global, digital world, and addressing, at the same time, key individual and societal needs. This book is intended to offer a timely snapshot of technologies, trends and challenges in the area of design, communication and branding, and a bridge connecting researchers and professionals of different disciplines, such as graphic design, digital communication, corporate, UI Design and UX design.
Social welfare is riddled with ingrained problems that have already defeated all standard approaches, and reform calls for counterintuitive action. Digital Social Innovation (DSI) is primarily about promoting grassroots initiatives to address localized societal problems, and is not normally talked about in relation to welfare reform, but perhaps social innovation initiatives, with their localized and case-based approach, could help to solve the enormous structural problems faced by our welfare democracies today. This book addresses the potential and implications of DSI for the reform of the European welfare state. The 14 papers collected here focus on key issues, such as the nature of social innovation and its effects; scaling up to address structural problems and make systemic change; new social risks and challenges; the role of digital thinking and emerging technologies; public governance approaches; tolerance of institutions; integrating innovation in the welfare system; and the empowerment of marginalized citizens. These topics are examined from an integrated and multi-disciplinary perspective, taking into consideration not only current EU debate on policy trends for social protection, but also the nature of digital transformation and its effects on social change. The book also highlights barriers to adoption, as well as the potential limitations and failures of this emerging approach. Digital social innovation is an emerging discipline that deserves more attention from policy makers and more resources from government. Drawing on welfare studies, political science, sociology, psychology, law and computer science, this book will be of interest to researchers, practitioners and policy makers alike.
This book relates to the experiences and initiatives of teacher education institutions in the Southern Africa region to empower teachers to cope with teaching and learning in the digital age. The book covers the impacts of digital technologies on the teaching and learning process. Online and blended learning, digital pedagogies, the design of curricula and learning experiences to address the learning needs and profile of learners are considered in this book. Furthermore, the way in which pre- and in-service teachers learn about alternative modes of assessment will also be considered. In this regard, innovative concepts such as renewable and situated assessments, multimodal assessments, digital storytelling and e-portfolios, amongst others, were explored.
