Search Results

Like many libraries across Canada, Manitoba public libraries have grappled with the challenges that COVID-19 has presented. Libraries have struggled to remain operational and offer a high level of service to patrons within the constraint of public health orders, all the while ensuring the safety and employment of their staff. Within the ever-changing environment of COVID-19, the Manitoba Library Association recognized the need to gather information from the library community in order to better position themselves to lend support and in an attempt to bridge information gaps. This article describes a study conducted by the Manitoba Library Association whereby fifty-five Manitoba public libraries were surveyed to identify how they were responding to COVID-19 and what their needs might be. The survey questions were divided into 6 sections (facilities, services, communications, staffing, connecting, wrap-up) and the results provide information and insight into how the Manitoba library community has dealt with the pandemic. More importantly, the results can serve to guide other libraries in decision-making and preparation for a pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, pandemic response, libraries, public libraries, Manitoba, COVID-19, Pandémie, Réponse à la pandémie, Bibliothèques, Bibliothèques publiques, Manitoba

Since 1980, several Quebec rural municipalities have turned to the local development approach to offer better living conditions to their residents. Rural communities face complex economic, social and environmental challenges requiring that the people involved have certain knowledge and skills. This research aims to discover the phenomena that contribute to the development of the ability to act for those involved in a local development process in rural areas. A case study was conducted from the local development approach in community organization and from two components of the concept of individual empowerment: participation and skills. The results reveal that the participation and the acquisition of knowledge depend on various factors such as the characteristics of the people's profile, the factors that foster the presence of people within the collective project, the readiness to learn and the learning methods.

I was born in South Africa, as were my parents and grandparents. We have descended from people who had been brought to South Africa through indenture, a colonial labour system that introduced alien agricultural methods and an alien workforce from India, to optimise monocultures like sugarcane. My very presence here is, therefore, entangled with colonialism’s domestication and mastery over land, plant, and people (Indigenous and indentured). I have never felt alien here. Why was that? What about the indenture stories of people, land and plant, beyond empire’s mastery and control—my ancestral wild places? And was there room within these wild places to heal colonial wounds across our ethnic and racial barriers? What was lost? Could my PhD2 research transcripts address some of those losses? This paper contains poems that emerged from PhD research interviews, my fieldnotes, my father's memoirs, and letters from my ancestral archives. A poetic lens gave me a decolonial language to inspect the archives and transcripts with some of these questions in mind.

Keywords: erasure, indenture, soil, women, joy, poetry

Organizational backends and logistics are often complex and many institutions set-up their workflows based on manual and tedious processes that negatively shape their interactions with stakeholders. Incorporating new technologies can be intimidating, however there exists a plethora of financially and technically accessible resources, that don’t require any coding knowledge, that institutions can utilize to enhance their organizational workflow and stakeholder experience. Guided by our own learning experiences in optimal logistical set-up and user design, we wish to highlight five effective and easily implementable tricks to aid higher institutions and student groups in healthcare accomplish their administrative duties.

This paper aims to help understand the predictors of customer satisfaction with respect to online shopping in India, by using the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). This research validates perceived enjoyment, social influence, social media interactions, reverse logistics and pay on delivery (POD) mode of payment as new predictors of customer satisfaction in online shopping. Data was collected through a self-administered and structured questionnaire targeting online shoppers in North India states. A sample of 424 online shoppers was considered validated in this research using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The findings of the paper revealed that social influence, reverse logistics and POD mode of payment had a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction. Perceived enjoyment emerged as the strongest predictor of online shopping. However, social media interactions emerged as an insignificant predictor of customer satisfaction. This research is one of initial endeavour in online shopping that empirically validated POD, social media interactions, social influence, reverse logistics, and perceived enjoyment by using the SDT. Through this study, online retailers preparing to expand their operations in India have important insights regarding the drivers of online shopping leading to customer satisfaction. This in turn will help in developing marketing strategies and their implementation to target the huge untapped market.

Through the analysis of the motivations for participation in collaborative platforms as an obtainer or as a provider, the paper provides new evidence on the collaborative economy in Europe. For that purpose, we analyze a pan-European sample of 14,050 citizens from 28 countries. The study, which applies an empirical prediction methodology through a structural equation modelling (SEM), provides two main contributions to the literature. Firstly, economic and usefulness motivations predict the obtaining and provision of goods and services through collaborative platforms in Europe. Secondly, non-monetary exchanges also predict the provision of collaborative platforms. Our results also have implications for territorial development. Understanding the motivations between obtainers and providers can foster collaborative exchanges of essential resources, especially at a small-scale and at local levels.

This article presents audio found poetry as an approach which positions participants’ voices in the heart of the inquiry. The methodology was influenced by radio autoethnography and audio papers where theory, voices, and sound are combined to create a new aural experience—an approach that argues that it is essential that the audience listens rather than reads. These two audio found poems share the voices of 14 participants from Australia, United Kingdom, North America, and Mainland Europe, interwoven with the author, talking about their relationship with underwear. Participants recorded their own story. Each voice was edited using Audacity (a software program) and then different voices were joined together. Two poems emerged. Audio 1: Practical Underwear shares stories from day-to-day underwear preferences and stories of those who do not wear underwear. The stories in Audio 2: Dress Code Red are connected to sexuality and political aspects of underwear. Framing the work through the lens of new materialism creates a space of agency for an entanglement between the underwear and the human voices speaking about it, which in turn affects the embodied experience of the listener. What stories could your underwear tell? 

Keywords: radio autoethnography, audio found poetry, underwear, arts-based research, new materialism