The image of the library through the eyes of immigrant and migrant readers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose Drawing on the survey of Spanish-speaking immigrant and migrant readers in Canada and the US, this study pursues three goals: (1) examine the image of the library held by these readers and trace the change of this image after the international migration; (2) use the study findings to revise and update the currently existing typologies of the image of the library; and (3) understand ethical and effective research practices in the studies of immigrant/migrant communities whereby researchers are external to communities in question. Design/methodology/approach The data about immigrant/migrant readers were collected through a self-administered survey questionnaire that was available both in print and electronically, both in Spanish and English. The data analysis was guided by hermeneutic phenomenology, as explicated in the article. Theoretical examination of the image of the library relied on the earlier typology developed by V. Stelmakh. Findings The study elucidates perceptions of libraries and librarians in both North America and countries of origin held by Spanish-speaking immigrant/migrant readers, and highlights changes that occur in the image of the library as readers move across geographic borders. Building on the empirical data, the article develops a new typology of the image of the library. It also offers insight into ethical and effective ways of engaging with immigrant communities that should be upheld by researchers from outside the communities in question. Originality/value It is the first known study that systematically traces the changes in the image of the library which occur alongside geographic and sociocultural migrations. It is also the first known study that focuses specifically on readers rather than library users in general. The new typology consists of four different elements – the cultural image; the functional image; the humanistic image; and the ideological image of the library – and is accompanied by detailed definitions of each.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".