© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This paper explores a major initiative where a not-for-profit organisation (NPO), government seed funding and a major private sector telecommunications company developed a smart phone technology platform people with disability and established a social enterprise directly connected to the not-for-profit. The paper's purpose is to answer questions about the ways in which the mobile technology, seen here as assistive technologies, supported the development of disability citizenship and active citizenship. Data were collected through in-depth interviews conducted at three points in the 13-week programme during which participants with disability received customised support for their phone and training in its use, at no cost. Fifteen participants volunteered to take part in the research project, along with their significant other and service provider. Key themes were identified in the preliminary analysis. Exploring these using Ragnedda's ([2017]. The third digital divide: A Weberian approach to digital inequalities. Abingdon: Routledge) three levels of digital divide, Wilson's ([2006]. The information revolution and developing countries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) categories of access and Kahn's ([1966]. Neighborhood Information Centers: A study and some proposals. New York: Columbia University School of Social Work) citizenship-oriented typology of information service provision allowed a series of philosophical, ethical and human services management questions to emerge, challenging the optimism with which the digital economy is presented as a solution to issues of inequality. Although the mobile technologies were very successful as assistive technologies for some participants, the findings reinforced the potential for such technologies to further entrench aspects of social exclusion. They also identified ways in which the shift in the role of the NPO to social entrepreneurship, and its relationshi...

The contributions of small local non-government organisations (NGOs) in countries at risk from climate change to knowledge creation and action on climate change are rarely considered. This study sought to remedy this by focusing on NGOs in member countries of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF). Analysing data from Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), NGO websites and email correspondence with NGO staff through a knowledge brokering typology, this study examines the ways in which local NGOs in five members of the CVF (Afghanistan, Bhutan, Kiribati, Nepal and Tuvalu) take action, generate new knowledge and understandings and contribute to the plans and actions of their government and the international community. The study found that local NGOs are involved in the creation of new knowledge both at the scientific and community level and engage in actions to support adaptation to climate change. However, there are differences in the approaches they take when making contributions to scientific knowledge and climate change debates. The findings of this study suggest the need to reconceptualise the role of local NGOs in small countries at risk from climate change.

As the way academics work becomes increasingly specified and regulated, the role of the public intellectual, as championed by Burawoy and exemplified by Jakubowicz, is changing. Engagement with the professions and industry is being proposed as a requirement for a research-active academic. Prescriptions for the way this might happen have the potential to remove the sense of responsibility inherent in Burawoy's notion of the public intellectual and the suggested use of social media to promote new knowledge potentially dilutes the notion of 'publics' which is fundamental to the notion of the public intellectual, substituting the individual for the collective. This in turn has an impact on the kind of informed debate that can influence policy development. This paper explores the narratives of new academics as they seek to answer the questions Giddens asserted were fundamental to the creation of identity in late modernity – What to do? How to act? Who to be? It positions these narratives of identify in a broader discourse of the role of the academic in the creation of new knowledge, perceptions of the role of the university in contemporary Australian culture and the constraints of work planning and performance management.

'Social impact' has become a buzzword as new public management and corporatisation approaches have dominated in attempts to account for non-government organisations' performance. However, social change is enabled through other manifestations of civil society, which are not effectively conceptualised or accounted for through these dominant approaches. This paper uses Anheier's manifestations of civil society as a framework to analyse actions directed towards the issue of homelessness and housing, demonstrating distinctions to be observed in how social change is enacted and impacts are conceptualised. This framework provides practitioners and policy-makers a means to understand the ideological perspectives framing different social services and programs, and establishes a potential research agenda for activists and scholars in developing understandings of the complexities of social impact.

There has been relatively little research into the information practices of Non-Government Organisations (NGOs). This study explored the relationships and opportunities for active citizenship created between an NGO and its community by analysing the flows of information which occur on its Facebook page, using Chatman's Small World Theory. The results showed how participants engaged with the NGO as active citizens and provided insight into the NGO's role in facilitating and hindering opportunities for engagement within civil society. The study concludes that the relationship between an NGO and its communities, as suggested by Dolhinow, can be both liberating and oppressive.

Introduction. A final-semester university subject assumes that students use research-based knowledge to solve a real-world information handling problem and, in the process, create new knowledge for themselves and their client organisation.
Method. This study analysed the reports of one cohort of students (approx. 40 students) to question these assumptions.
Analysis. The types of problem and solution were identified, as were the literature referred to and the evidence used to substantiate the solution. A thematic analysis elicited approaches to justification of the solution and revealed the students' understandings of their role in creating new knowledge.
Results. Students had no difficulty in identifying an organisation's problem in information handling terms; their solutions were varied and imaginative. They preferred to use electronic sources but no source was used by all or even most students. They justified their solution using a best practice or professional norms approach. Few students reflected on their own new knowledge.
Conclusions. Students brought imaginative approaches to common problems, based on solutions found from descriptions or recommendations of good practice. However, neither they nor their clients recognised the origin of the new knowledge which solved the problem and this 'new knowledge' from diverse contexts does not flow back into the practical knowledge of the field.

This piece suggests that although individuals can make decisions not to speak of difficult times in their lives, documents with the multiple relationships created through transtextuality can act as silent witnesses to these unspoken times.

Introduction Multi-disciplinary teams created to develop more sustainable ways of working are a focus for investigation into the practices of knowledge sharing. This study, taking a practice theoretical approach, explores the extent to which humour is associated with knowledge sharing and the roles it may play in the practice.
Method. Nine meetings of a multi-disciplinary project team in local government established to model new sustainable work practices were observed, audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed.
Analysis. Content analysis of the transcriptions of the meetings was carried out, using emergent coding. The frequency, types and themes of humour used by the team were identified and considered in the context of information activities.
Results. Among the fifty-two instances of humour, the three most frequent types were witticisms, put-downs and self-denigration. The themes of creativity, exercising control and superiority to others emerged. Humour was mostly used in discussions of administrative aspects of the project, including agenda setting, evaluation and reporting to other council committees.
Conclusion. The use of humour demonstrated a paradox between needing to act as a creative and innovative team to model a new way of working and continuing to work in the traditional reporting and communication structures of the traditional workplace.

Introduction. The study was designed to explore the information practices of a group of human rights
activists in a campaign seeking to pressure the police service and government into investigating the
disappearance of a journalist in the context of transnational advocacy networking.
Method. The social media associated with a campaign in Maldives, Find Moyameehaa, were the basis for
the case study. Tweets and Facebook posts and comments from the first 100 days of the campaign and
from the 500th day were downloaded; the website was analysed.
Analysis. Content analysis of tweets, posts and comments was carried out using a priori coding.
Results. The tactics of transnational advocacy networking proposed by Keck and Sikkink were apparent in
the campaign, however the everyday focus of the posts showed this to be a campaign of local concern. A
second potential purpose for the campaign emerged, the modelling of civil engagement in a fledgling
democracy.
Conclusions. The information practices approach, emphasising continuity and habitualisation following
Savolainen, brings additional perspectives to understanding social media activism, showing how it can
represent the behaviour of civil society and create an archive of a campaign and emphasising the
importance of social and cultural factors.

© 2015 Australian Library & Information Association Our understanding of knowledge in the field of library and information studies and its development is guided by a notion of consensus and accepted ways of working. Research findings make incremental changes to our knowledge and we have become used to acknowledging the constructivist underpinnings of scholarly knowledge by expecting differences in information behaviour and practices by people situated in different contexts and recognising the need for varied approaches to information provision to match these practices. Research thus can be seen to take a 'business as usual' model, as the ways of creating new knowledge are well established both in the consensus of the field and in the rigour of research methods. The purpose of this paper is to explore this notion of 'business as usual' in research in library and information studies, consider how it constrains the development of new understandings and to propose how the communal understanding, the consensus, can be revised. The paper concludes that moving away from a 'business as usual' model will potentially require acts of heroism, including the ability to see the creation of new knowledge as an imaginative process of discovery.

This paper takes up the challenge given at the 2015 meeting of the Document Academy to explore relationships between the conference paper being presented and the social media campaign on which it was based. Using Genette's notion of transtextuality, through which he shows that all published texts are networked to other texts, and Frohmann's argument that our understanding of a document and the justification of that understanding are to be found in the 'the stories we tell', the report of the exploration describes the way that the relationships between the two emerge from the links created between the content of the published paper and the content of the social media campaign and from the technology of online publishing; from the transformations of the social media campaign as it is incorporated into the scholarly work; and from the stories we tell directly and indirectly through our practices of scholarship.

Purpose
The practices used by Australian re-enactors to achieve authenticity, a communally agreed measure of acceptability in the creation of an impression, the dress, behaviours and accoutrements of the period are explored in this study, through the concepts of serious leisure and information practices.
Design/methodology/approach

Re-enactment is a practical, information-based performative activity. In this article, the research styles and decision-making processes developed and employed by its enthusiasts to create authentic impressions are examined through an ethnographic case study.
Findings

The re-enactors are identified as 'makers and tinkerers', in Stebbins's categorisation of serious leisure. Research, documentation and the sharing of information, knowledge and skills are common practices among re-enactors and acknowledged as integral to the processes of creating an impression to a collectively agreed standard of authenticity. Re-enactors' 'making' includes not only the creation of the impression but also the documentation of their process of creating it. They prize individual knowledge and expertise and through this, seek to stand out from the collective.
Originality/value

Although communities of re-enactors are often studied from a historical perspective, this may be the first time a study has been undertaken from an information studies perspective. The tension between the collective, social norms and standards that support the functioning of the group in understanding authenticity, and the expert amateur; the individual with specialist skills and talents, encourages a fuller investigation of the relationships between the individual and the collective in the context of information practices.

Embedded in literature about the personalisation of search engine results, one can see the sociological idea that institutionalised ideas and practices, filtered down from expert knowledge, have constructed the way that people understand information search, that personalised search engines have become acknowledged as socially accepted sources of knowledge and that their discursive practices are becoming dominant. This interpretivist study of 13 Google users sought to investigate how young people perceive personalisation of search results by Google and includes a focus on the information search strategies they used to identify quality and authority in personalised information. Through this, it explores processes of the institutionalisation of expertise. The results from this study demonstrate that although Google is becoming institutionalised as a source of expertise, users significantly control the way they use search results and conceptualise the authority of these results.

Introduction. This paper explores reasons why the information practices of a group of young Rwandan activists online differed from those of a similar group of young Australians, in particular, why they did not use the Internet to interact with people they did not already know.
Method. The study uses abduction, a research method which is discovery-oriented. Data intended to shed light on the development of social capital through the use of information and communication technologies were collected in 2011 through a series of interviews and analyses of Websites and blogs. The data were supplemented in 2013 by data gathered from e-mail correspondence.
Analysis. These data were systematically combined and matched against the theoretical positions of Chatman's concept of the small world to make sense of what had been observed.
Results. Young Rwandan activists can be seen to exist in four small worlds, each with its own norms. There are tensions among these norms so that the practices of the world of young activists are not developed.
Conclusions. The small world nature of embodied social interactions may give rise to intense local information flows but may hinder engagement in globalised actions for social change.

Womens knowledge has often been seen as a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity." (Foucault 1980, p. 82). In this description, scientific knowledges are seen to be hierarchically more important, with traditional knowledges ranged beneath them. In this hierarchy, womens knowledges are found wanting. The purpose of this paper is to explore the assertion that womens knowledges are inadequate and to document ways in which they are marginalised. Revaluing womens knowledge is recognised as one of the most direct methods of changing the way a society works. A vast literature has argued that is a key factor in development and has been shown to lead to poverty alleviation, to the development of active citizens and to the creation of a more open and democratic society. Possibilities for the revaluing of womens knowledge using information and communication technologies are considered, focussing on the concepts of open access and the information commons

This paper reports on an exploratory action research study designed to understand how grassroots community organisations engage in the measurement and reporting of social impact and how they demonstrate their social impact to local government funders. Our findings suggest that the relationships between small non-profit organisations, the communities they serve or represent and their funders are increasingly driven from the top down formalised practices. Volunteer-run grassroots organisations can be marginalized in this process. Members may lack awareness of funders strategic approaches or the formalized auditing and control requirements of funders mean grassroots organisations lose capacity to define their programs and projects. We conclude that, to help counter this trend, tools and techniques which open up possibilities for dialogue between those holding power and those seeking support are essential

This paper examines the activities and motivations of activist academics who choose to engage in teaching and research programs that are community-based and that, at their core, seek to contribute to the public good by building cohesive and vibrant civic societies. We discuss several cases studies that highlight the motivations of activist academics, exploring key questions of their life politics and their relationships with the academy. We consider how the work of activist academics may be at odds with the expectations of the academy, and consider the implications of this for an approach to higher education that aims to create decent world citizens

There have been many calls to conceptualize or reconceptualize key concepts that have been affected by the changes to ways of living, especially for young people in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Community is one such concept. The eth

Starting from the classic view of cosmopolitanism, this paper uses personal experiences gained during a six-week stay in Rwanda with a family affected by the genocide to explore the disjuncts which emerge in trying to understand the concept. In this process of exploration, it considers conceptions of the guest, the stranger and what Geertz terms the `cosmopolite. Taking a reflexive position, it explores what it means to be a witness to events in someone elses life, with a focus on post-genocide reconciliation that took place in the family in January and February 2011. In this context, it introduces the notions of cosmopolitan curiosity (Appiah) and cosmopolitan tolerance (Beck) and finds each of them affected by structural imbalances which render them potentially inadequate in practice. The paper concludes that, from a reflexive point of view, an understanding of cosmopolitanism is a work in progress, and that it is much more difficult to sustain as a lived reality than it is as an abstraction.

One of the key questions of contemporary society is how to foster and develop social interactions which will lead to a strong and inclusive society, one which accounts for the diversity inherent in local communities, whether that diversity be based on differences in interest or diversity in language and culture. The purpose of this paper is to examine three concepts which are used in the exploration of social interactions to suggest ways in which the interplay of these concepts might provide a richer understanding of social interactions. The three concepts are everyday cosmopolitanism, complexity theory and social capital. Each provides a partial approach to explanations of social interactions. Through focussing on social networking as a significant example of social interactions, we will demonstrate how the concepts can be linked and this linking brings potential for a clearer understanding of the processes through which this inclusive society may develop.

One of the key questions of social entrepreneurship is how one would recognise a social entrepreneur. This paper reports on a small-scale study conducted in Sydney, Australia, which aimed to determine whether the sociological perspective is an effective approach to understanding the identity of social entrepreneurs, and whether - as a result of using this perspective - new questions for research might emerge. Participants included a combination of young and more established social entrepreneurs and two staff members from organizations which seek to develop the skills of social entrepreneurship. The study is significant because it is one of the few empirical studies which focuses on social entrepreneurs from a sociological perspective, noting their views on identity and motivations. The findings suggest the importance of mentors, the merits of the planned activity and the support of networks. New research questions emerged on the importance of social resources in social entrepreneurial activities and on the paradoxical relationship between the perceptions of being ordinary and being extraordinary.

An ethnographic study of members of generations X and Y which explored participants' perspectives on the creation and understanding of identity, found that young people have a strong sense of self, and value authenticity in themselves and others while recognising that it is possible to create multiple identities. Information and communication technologies were seen to both support and threaten their sense of self. Participants approached the question of 'who to be' in many ways, each of which revealed tensions between the freedom to create one's own identity and the desire for authenticity, and between the need for a sense of security and recognition of the possibility of experimenting with something challenging or different

This article investigates whether members of Generation X and Generation Y sought to create social capital through the Internet. Using an ethnographic approach, 24 people were interviewed and their public interactions with the discussion forums of organizations in civil society were analyzed. The findings both confirm and challenge previous findings about young people and the creation of social capital. In particular, the participants in this study are not apathetic and uninterested in participating in civil society. However, they do not necessarily express their interests and action in ways that are acknowledged by mature adults. They actively seek to create social capital, but not necessarily according to recognized measures. Social capital seems to have two manifestations, the first being related to the creation of a secure personal environment which they feel comfortable to inhabit and the second being related to making the world a better place, in a wider societal sense. When they consider social capital something that relates to their own well-being and support, most young people require at least some face to face interaction or the possibility of meeting the other person or people and believe that online interactions alone are inadequate for creating social capital. However, when they consider social capital a good in society at large or in a wider community, these young people acknowledge that social capital can be created through the online interactions, using the internet to interact with people they do not know and may never meet. Further research is proposed to explore whether differences with previous findings are merely another example of young people yet to adopt the thoughts and customs of the generations before them or whether they signal a fundamental shift in the way social relations and involvement in civil society are conducted.

This ethnographic study of members of Generation X and Generation Y seeks to explore the ways they understand and experience community. Their comments and stories were gathered through interviews collected towards the end of 2006 and the early part of 2007. These provide richly textured evidence of their need to belong, to maintain everyday relationships and to collaborate with others at the same time as they commodify relationships or share information but not necessarily beliefs and values. Consequences of globalisation such as individualisation, transience in relationships, immediacy in communication, the blurring of boundaries between work and leisure, between public and private and the reliance on information and communication technologies are part of their everyday lives. Some study participants feel dis-embedded from their traditional social relationships and seek to establish new ones, whereas others feel comfortable joking with anonymous others. Their intellectualised constructs of community and descriptions of the lived reality of community find reflections in a range of theoretical constructs in the literature, both reinforcing and shifting scholarly understandings of the concept of community.

Considers how the role of the librarian in the research library has changed during the past century and asks how it needs to develop to meet the demands of the next century. Identifies seven roles performed by research librarians at various stages: the scholar librarian; the librarian-service provider; the librarian-manager; the librarian-project manager; the librarian-researcher; the librarian-publisher and distributor; and the boundary-crossing librarian. Concludes that there is a need to re-conceptualise the role of the librarian and the research library itself.

This study replicates an investigation by Professor A. Bookstein, University of Chicago. Its purpose was to determine what library users understand by words such as 'use'and 'read'. The respondents were students in graduate diploma in librarianship programmes. As expected, there was considerable variation in the answers. The term 'use' seemed to be linked with the concept 'useful' in the minds of some respondents. Most of the respondents stated that they would describe as 'library use' actions which they might not have considered 'book use'. The results indicate a need for care on the part of those designing library user studies. © 1984 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Much of the literature concerned with the politics of rising tides is about the involvement of states and others in the processes of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its annual Conference of the Parties (COP). Although non-state actors, including international non-government organizations (NGOs), are acknowledged as being part of these processes, it has often been claimed that the voices of local NGOs are absent from debates on vulnerability and resilience, as though there were no debates taking place elsewhere. This chapter addresses this absence by explicitly acknowledging that rising sea levels and the consequent changes to local lives are the focus of discussions beyond the UNFCCC. It shows how the politics of vulnerability is clear in messages around mitigation of climate change, where the audiences are foreign governments, institutions at a transnational level, and activists and interested citizens from around the world. It explores the politics of resilience in messages about adaptation to climate change, disseminated by and through local NGOs, sometimes in collaboration with international NGOs, where the key audience is the population of island states.
The focus here is on small island developing states (SIDS) in the Pacific, the engagement of their local NGOs with issues of sea level rise and their involvement with other organizations and alliances, including the international NGOs, specifically the Pacific Calling Partnership (PCP) and the Climate Action Network (CAN). CAN is a worldwide organization that aims to promote government and individual actions on climate change, through information flow and the coordination of strategies on climate issues from local to international levels. It operates at the regional level through hubs such as the Pacific Island Climate Action Network (PICAN) and through coordinating local NGOs, through organizations such Kiribati Climate Action Network (KiriCAN) and Tuvalu Climate Actio...

Western culture has developed based on notions that truth, by overcoming falsehood, underpins democracy. Libraries and librarians have played an important part in the provision of information to support democratic processes. This study explored information services offered by the small number of public librarians whose role is to provide information services to employees of local governments, elected representatives and to the general public in Sydney, Australia and their perceptions of their role in supporting the potential for civic literacy to contribute to the quality of public policies and democracy. In the interviews, librarians emphasised the importance of awareness-raising of their role in providing information; some perceived opportunities to highlight existing partnerships or to develop new ones; and community discussions of fake news were seen to give scope for repositioning the services of librarians. The regime of truth relating information access to democratic principles has not yet been replaced.

Sustainability goals are at the center of a range of local government
initiatives in Australia. Such initiatives are often developed in response to community needs and to the broader needs of urban greening. This study takes a sociocultural approach to two such initiatives, one involving intra-organizational and the other inter-organizational knowledge sharing and applies a framework of information literacy activities to the analysis of participant's knowledge sharing
experiences. This framework was supported by the findings though Influencing and Sharing were more prominent than Information work and Coupling activities. Sharing activities became the norm in the study, underpinned by the expectation that the expertise of participants would be validated and incorporated into the collaborative endeavor. Expression of emotion was minimal when the normative nature of this activity was highlighted however emotions were experienced when the norm was not being followed and when participants believed that their contribution was not being validated.

This study explores the social media campaign related to the disappearance of a journalist in the Maldives in August 2014. At a simple level, this study asks whether the Facebook and Twitter hashtag postings meet the standards of a human rights document. At a more complex level, using Genette's concept of transtextuality, it explores the relationships between the social media campaign and its relationships to statements made by human rights NGOs, by UN agencies and in foreign parliaments. Although the social media campaign does not meets the standards of a human rights document, contributions from other agencies would unquestionably be recognised as human rights documents. The postings and tweets give rise to memes may be considered ephemeral and trivial, but in the absence of witnessing, in this context they are the mechanism through which information is shared beyond the immediate location in Maldives. This study has shown how one form of textuality, statements about lacks – a missing journalist and police inaction – can evolve into others, including press releases, formal statements and speeches in foreign parliaments among others, as authors and audience merge into a collectivity concerned with the re-working and dissemination of a particular message.

Active Citizenship and Knowledge Management: A Practice-based Perspective

Paper outlines research conducted with social entrepreneurs documenting their motivations, how they see themselves and how they implement their ideas,visions.

A 'tool kit' for small grass roots organisations seeking to report their social impact to their funding organisations