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October 19, 2008
Social Constructivist Perspective on IRs
A recent article by Oya Y. Rieger titled "Opening Up Institutional Repositories: Social Construction of Innovation in Scholarly Communication" in the Journal of Electronic Publishing vol.11, no. 3, Fall 2008 "explores IRs from a social constructivist perspective in order to understand the choices made in their design and implementation." The article notes that "although the technical features of IRs are critical for user acceptance, in and of themselves they are not sufficient to dertmine the scholarly community's appropriation of IR technologies." The article goes on to explore the difference in how the crisis in scholarly publishing is perceived by the various stakeholders; and how that difference in perception leads to the creation of IRs by institutions, and the non-use of IRs by faculty. The sociological analysis of how IR's are being constructed, interpreted and used offers insight into the reasons that IR's continue to be under utilized. A very interesting look at the technical vs sociological factors in scholarly communication. (the article can be found @ http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.001.301) Deborah Job
This article may now be found @ http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;cc=jep;rgn=main;view=text;idno=3336451.0011.301 Deborah Job
Posted by colldev at October 19, 2008 03:01 PM