Characterizing Work-Life for Information Work on Mars

We present a design fiction, which is set in the near future as significant Mars habitation begins. Our goal in creating this fiction is to address current work-life issues on Earth and Mars in the future. With shelter-in-place measures, established norms of productivity and relaxation have been shaken. The fiction creates an opportunity to explore boundaries between work and life, which are changing with shelter-in-place and will continue to change. Our work includes two primary artifacts: (1) a propaganda recruitment poster and (2) a fictional narrative account. The former paints the work-life on Mars as heroic, fulfilling, and fun. The latter provides a contrast that depicts the lived experience of early Mars inhabitants. Our statement draws from our design fiction in order to reflect on the structure of work, stress identification and management, family and work-family communication, and the role of automation.

CITATION DATABASES: THE ROLE OF THE ACADEMIC LIBRARIAN

Objective. Indicators of citation databases are widely used as a tool for evaluating academic productivity and decision-making in science and technology. Academic libraries organize services to work with such resources. Methods. Based on the analysis and description of the work of the Information Monitoring Service, the role and type of support that academic libraries can provide in the process of their use are considered. Results. The portfolio of services for the use of citation databases provided by the employees of the Service consists of administration and organization of access, consulting, and information work, monitoring and analysis of publishing activity, organizing information, information support of journal’s editorial boards. Conclusions. Such services of academic libraries are diverse and require the development of theoretical and methodological basis for their quality implementation, continuous training of staff, their more active involvement in research processes.

‘It is a disease which comes and kills directly’: What refugees know about COVID-19 and key influences of compliance with preventive measures

Background Refugees are at increased risk for COVID-19 infection in part due to their living conditions, which make it harder to adopt and adhere to widely accepted preventive measures. Little empirical evidence exists about what refugees know about COVID-19 and what they do to prevent infection. This study explored what refugee women and their health care workers understand about COVID-19 prevention, the extent of their compliance to public health recommendations, and what influences the adoption of these measures. Methods In October 2020, we conducted 25 in-depth interviews with facility and community health care staff (n = 10) and refugee women attending antenatal and postnatal care services (n = 15) in Eastleigh, Nairobi. Findings While researchers found a high level of awareness about COVID-19 and related prevention and control measures among refugee women, various barriers affected compliance with such measures, due in part to poverty and in part to rampant misconceptions informed by religious beliefs and political narratives about the virus. Conclusions These findings indicated that Kenya’s Ministry of Health needs to institute a concerted and continuous education program to bring refugee communities up to speed about COVID-19 and its prevention. In addition to disseminating information about the need to wear masks and repeatedly wash hands, supplies—masks, soap and access to water—need to be made available to poor refugee communities. Future research could explore which measures for disseminating factual information work best in refugee populations with different cultural norms and how best to target interventions to these groups.

Time and temporality in library and information science

PurposeThe article introduces selected theoretical approaches to time and temporality relevant to the field of library and information science, and it briefly introduces the papers gathered in this special issue. A number of issues that could potentially be followed in future research are presented.Design/methodology/approachThe authors review a selection of theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of time that originate in or are of particular relevance to library and information science. Four main themes are identified: (1) information as object in temporal perspectives; (2) time and information as tools of power and control; (3) time in society; and (4) experiencing and practicing time.FindingsThe paper advocates a thorough engagement with how time and temporality shape notions of information more broadly. This includes, for example, paying attention to how various dimensions of the late-modern time regime of acceleration feed into the ways in which information is operationalised, how information work is commodified, and how hierarchies of information are established; paying attention to the changing temporal dynamics that networked information systems imply for our understanding of documents or of memory institutions; or how external events such as social and natural crises quickly alter modes, speed, and forms of data production and use, in areas as diverse as information practices, policy, management, representation, and organisation, amongst others.Originality/valueBy foregrounding temporal perspectives in library and information science, the authors advocate dialogue with important perspectives on time that come from other fields. Rather than just including such perspectives in library and information science, however, the authors find that the focus on information and documents that the library and information science field contributes has great potential to advance the understanding of how notions and experiences of time shape late-modern societies and individuals.

Information work of hospital librarians: Making the invisible visible

The aim of this paper is to explore and to make visible how the information work of hospital librarians is enacted in key practices where services of the hospital library are employed to support evidence-based practice. The empirical material was produced at three hospital libraries in three different regions in Sweden between January and March 2020. A practice-oriented approach using the theoretical lens information work is employed to analyze nine semi-structured interviews with hospital librarians and hospital library managers, together with field notes from observations of interactions between hospital librarians and healthcare practitioners. The analysis investigates the conditions for information work performed by hospital librarians as they participate in three key practices: clinical practices, information seeking practices, and HTA-practices. The results of the analysis are related to four categories of invisible information work, and the nature of the information work done to counter different types of invisibilities within the key practices is discussed. The findings suggest that a substantial amount of the information work of hospital librarians is invisible to clinicians. At the same time, considerable efforts are made by hospital librarians to counter different types of invisibility, for example through building relationships with healthcare staff and to develop and make specialized competencies visible. In particular, the importance assigned to evidence-based practice in healthcare allows for the librarians to be regarded by clinicians as legitimate partners with clearly defined competencies in specific situations.

Psychological Characteristics of Information Workers

В статье выявляется психологическая специфика труда информационного типа, отличающая его от объектного и субъектного типов структурно-функциональной организацией деятельности. Актуальность исследования обусловлена противоречием между наличием класса специфических форм профессиональной деятельности, основанных на применении различного рода программных продуктов и телекоммуникационных технологий, включающим специальности информационного типа (программист, IT-специалист, специалист по анализу больших данных, специалист по облачным сервисам, разработчик интеллектуальных систем, оператор банковской сферы, бизнес-аналитик, экономист-кибернетик и др.), и фрагментарностью исследований особенностей психических процессов, свойств, состояний субъектов труда в данных профессиях. Исследования конкретной психологической специфики субъектов труда в профессиях информационного типа до настоящего времени встречаются относительно редко, а их результаты остаются разрозненными. Цель исследования состояла в систематизации и обобщении психологических особенностей субъектов труда в указанных профессиях. Ключевым методом исследования являлся анализ научной литературы по рассмотрению теоретического и эмпирического изучения психических процессов, состояний и свойств субъектов труда в профессиях информационного типа. Доказательную базу исследования составили научные публикации, размещенные в таких русскоязычных базах данных, как Elibrary, электронные ресурсы Российской государственной библиотеки, сайт Высшей аттестационной комиссии, сайты ведущих российских вузов. В результате сравнения, систематизации и обобщения разнородных психологических характеристик представителей профессий информационного типа была описана структурно-функциональная организация деятельности информационного характера и выделены обобщенные психологические особенности субъектов труда в профессиях информационного типа, проявляющиеся в различных сферах психики: когнитивной, потребностно-мотивационной и ценностно-смысловой, коммуникативной, эмоционально-волевой и отвечающей за социальное взаимодействие. Полученные и представленные в статье результаты определяют перспективы и необходимость более широких психологических исследований специфики субъектов труда профессий информационного типа, сфокусированных на выявленных проблемных зонах. The article analyzes unique psychological characterises of information work which make it different from objective and subjective dimensions of work. The relevance of the research is accounted for by the fact that even though there are specific forms of professional activities which involve the application of software products and telecommunication technologies (programmer, IT-specialist, data analyst, cloud infrastructure specialist, intelligent system developer, proof operator, business analyst, cyber economist, etc.), the psychological processes underlying information workers’ performance characteristics are underinvestigated. There is a paucity of research dedicated to the investigation of psychological processes that impact the performance of information workers. Moreover, there is a rather inconsistent set of results. The aim of the article is to systematize and generalize the psychological peculiarities of information workers. The key method of investigation is research analysis, theoretical and empirical investigation of psychological processes underlying information workers’ performance. The article is based on research published in Russian full-text databases, such as eLibrary, electronic resources of the Russian State Library, the site of the Higher Attestation Commission, sites of leading Russian universities. The authors compare, systematize and generalize various psychological characteristics of information workers, they describe the structure and functions of information work, they single out general psychological processes underlying information workers’ cognitive, value-related, motivational, volitional, communicative performance and social interaction. The results of the research open up diverse avenues for further research and underline the necessity to scrutinize the problems related to information workers’ performance.

Extractable quantum work from a two-mode Gaussian state in a noisy channel

We study a Szilard engine based on a Gaussian state of a system consisting of two bosonic modes placed in a noisy channel. As the initial state of the system is taken an entangled squeezed thermal state, and the quantum work is extracted by performing a measurement on one of the two modes. We use the Markovian Kossakowski-Lindblad master equation for describing the time evolution of the open system and the quantum work definition based on the second order Rényi entropy to simulate the engine. We also study the information-work efficiency of the Szilard engine as a function of the system parameters. The efficiency is defined as the ratio of the extractable work averaged over the measurement angle and the erasure work, which is proportional to the information stored in the system. We show that the extractable quantum work increases with the temperature of the reservoir and the squeezing between the modes, average numbers of thermal photons and frequencies of the modes. The work increases also with the strength of the measurement, attaining the maximal values in the case of a heterodyne detection. The extractable work is decreasing by increasing the squeezing parameter of the noisy channel and it oscillates with the phase of the squeezed thermal reservoir. The efficiency mostly has a similar behavior with the extractable quantum work evolution. However information-work efficiency decreases with temperature, while the quantity of the extractable work increases.