The initiative plan for this research project came from the idea of working along the lines of my interest areas, especially the classical Shan manuscript literature that I have been working on for the last ten years. The purpose of this research project is to do a survey on Shan manuscript literature, by examining collections of Shan manuscript…[Read more]

Tools of digital information management are being used to preserve and make accessible the cultural heritage of marginalised groups traditionally excluded from mainstream cultural heritage institutions, such as LGBTQ and communities of colour. Alongside the explosion of digital collections, critics are now questioning the extent to which these…[Read more]

The author examines a choice of the conceptualisations of the ‘musical work’ within the domain of music in the context of bibliographical control and information retrieval. The study uses the principles of domain analysis proposed by Hjorland (Hjorland 2002) as a framework. The scope is wide and does not claim to be comprehensive. The phi…[Read more]

Abstract What is a Health Library? What categories need to be met so that a library can be referred to as a Health Library, and not just a library with health material? A literature review was carried out, looking at the history of health libraries in the UK, various organisations linked to those, the staff that work in them, the services they…[Read more]

This study aimed to examine in depth a newly-built modern public library to gain insight into attitudes to and perceptions of a modern library space in 2014. It used as a starting point a previous study carried out in 2005 and published by Black (2011) which gathered Mass Observation Archive data on public perceptions of public library buildings…[Read more]

Purpose – The paper seeks to reconsider open access and its relation to issues of “development” by
highlighting the ties the open access movement has with the hegemonic discourse of development and
to question some of the assumptions about science and scientific communication upon which the open
access debates are based. The paper also aims…[Read more]

Purpose – To provide an analysis of the notion of “information poverty” in library and information
science (LIS) by investigating concepts, interests and strategies leading to its construction and thus to
examine its role as a constitutive element of the professional discourse.
Design/methodology/approach – Starting from a Foucauldian notion…[Read more]

Powerpoint slides for a lecture on Area Studies, given for the #cityLIS Information Domains module (#INM307), 2015-16 cohort.

The study sets out to examine in detail a Carnegie Shadowing Group in a large urban comprehensive school, questioning what the impact may be of participation in such a group. This piece of action research takes place in the context of a wider literature-based enquiry into the nature and benefits of reading for pleasure and what may motivate young…[Read more]

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate, firstly, the availability of LGBTQ materials in public high school libraries in the U.S. state of North Carolina and, secondly, how LGBTQ students use these materials. The availability of LGBTQ materials was researched via querying schools’ remotely accessible OPACs for both checklists and r…[Read more]

This case study aims to increase knowledge of working with digital image collections, including issues related to information organisation, information behaviour, digital asset management and user experience.
The research begins by reviewing the academic and professional literature, which in turn informs the way in which particular issues are…[Read more]

A multidisciplinary approach is employed to study informational processes that may occur on subliminal physical (quantum) and subliminal cognitive (unconscious) levels, with a focus on assessing how these processes may be influenced by and in turn exert influence on human concepts and perceptions of information and reality. The unconscious is…[Read more]

This work presents a brief overview on the history of Web archiving projects in some English speaking countries, paying particular attention to the development and main problems faced by the UK Web Archive Consortium (UKWAC) and UK Web Archive partnership in Britain. It highlights, particularly, the changeable nature of Web pages through constant…[Read more]

This dissertation describes the current pressures on archive funding and their historical reliance on non-earned sources of funds. It explores the different ways in which archives can generate income and their respective success factors. In particular, it considers the role of digitisation and how archives might organise themselves to maximise the…[Read more]

The New Handbook of Syriac Literature (NHSL) is a born-digital TEI-encoded reference work for the study of Syriac literature. The first volume, Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica, was published by Syriaca.org in 2016 using a simple TEI schema to describe a single genre (hagiography) (Saint-Laurent et al. 2016; see also Saint-Laurent…[Read more]

Live performance lacks the durability of art practices such as photography, film and
painting, and so definitions of ‘live’ acts have traditionally been formulated in terms
of ‘transience’ and ‘disappearance’. In this context the archive and archival documents
are often described as the antithesis of performance’s ontology. An archive’s pri…[Read more]

According to Charles Taylor, faith in a secular age is cross-pressured; that is, it is contested by the presence of multiple accounts of belief and unbelief in contemporary Western culture. According to Taylor, these multiple accounts fragilize our own accounts of faith. This fragilization is what nurtures the conditions for believing today and…[Read more]

The new economic realities that arose from the Spanish presence in America produced a lively debate as part of the Indian Controversies of the sixteenth century. Two important theoreticians, the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) and the Jesuit José de Acosta (1540-1600) differed from one another in important ways, but n…[Read more]

Review of a book by Giuseppe Marcocci on politics and culture in the Portuguese Empire in the long 15th century.