This dissertation consists of a qualitative study undertaken to investigate digital literacy from a user perspective. I examine how users’ digital literacy skills interact with their sharing of infographics, how they use infographics for activism, and the social and visual affordances of Instagram which help to dictate this relationship.

Patron-perpetrated sexual harassment (PPSH) towards librarians is an under-researched but indicatively critical area of sexual harassment studies and library studies. Preliminary research indicates that PPSH results from numerous overlapping social structures. These social structures include but are not limited to patriarchy and rape culture, white supremacy, feminised labour and service work. This dissertation is the first study on PPSH towards librarians in the United Kingdom (UK) and focuses on public librarians. 143 UK public librarians were surveyed about their experiences of PPSH over the past five years. The results of this survey indicate that PPSH is ‘part of the job’ for UK public librarians.

Academic libraries are served as important information centre in higher education institutions and in academia. Information literacy competency are vital for academic and scholar success in higher education. Chinese students, as one of the most populated ethnic groups of international students admitted by UK higher education institutions, are experiencing multiple challenges in academic environment. It is worth assessing their information literacy competency in order to reveal potential barriers presented and discrepancies of our library services. This study intends: - To design and present an individualized and non-standard method to assess information literacy competency of Chinese international students. - To conclude a result of how Chinese international students performed in the assessment of information literacy skills, and to validate whether Chinese international students’ self-perceived information literacy skills have potential correlation with variability in language skills, and cultural assimilation, educational backgrounds. - To investigate whether there are barriers that prevent Chinese students from performing better in the assessment, in order to provide suggestions and guidance for institutions and library to assistant them well.

While significant progress has been made in broadening information literacy’s scope, its conception of the user and their relationship to information remains painfully limited. This is particularly evident when the affective or emotional factors of information seeking behaviour are considered. Thus far, information literacy’s models and discourses have failed to acknowledge emotion’s fundamentally non-cognitive, and disruptive nature and have either ignored, repressed, or misrepresented users’ emotions. This has resulted in a deeply limited and inaccurate conception of the user’s information needs, and this has a particularly harmful impact on marginalised users and users engaging with affectively fraught information. This article seeks to address this oversight, initially by outlining the origins of information literacy’s repression of emotion and then examining the consequences of this repression in the standardised information literacy models; specifically in Carol C. Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process and the ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Subsequently, this essay will examine several critical models of librarianship and information literacy - including Holocaust librarianship and Indigenous conceptions of relationality - in order to illuminate models of information literacy that adopt a relational perspective that enables an engagement with the affective elements of user’s information needs. Finally, this essay will suggest that these relational perspectives facilitate the adoption of an ethics of care that helps address the insufficiencies inherent to our current conceptions of information literacy.

A qualitative study examining the information practices of the homeless, and the information literacy interventions of homeless service staff.

Low employment statistics of adults with autism spectrum disorder in the UK, the low number of academic studies about supporting autistic library staff in Library and Information Studies academic literature and the indication within the relevant literature that autistic library staff may face barriers to receiving support because of the lack of understanding and negative stigma associated with autism, has prompted this investigation into whether libraries in the UK are providing effective support for autistic library staff. A mixed methods approach was employed to gather quantitative and qualitive data to represent the thoughts and opinions of autistic library staff about the support offered in their workplace. Two surveys were sent out to various library staff listservs, networks and social media groups and a few survey respondents were invited to take part in follow-up interviews which were provided in different formats. Results from both surveys and the interviews indicated that there were issues with disclosure, masking/hiding autistic traits, discrimination due to lack of understanding about autism by some line managers and staff, barriers to requesting reasonable adjustments at work and during job interviews, lack of provision of support services in UK libraries and the lack of provision of autism awareness training. Results have also positively indicated that some autistic library staff have certain traits and skills which enable them to carry out their library work. Although some of the participants have indicated that they have some level of support and face less discrimination in their workplaces, there is still more that can be done in UK libraries to support autistic library staff. Further recommendations are made about different types of support and providing special training for library managers and non-autistic staff to improve understanding about adjustments that autistic library staff may need. Further studies would be useful to understand about prevalence of autism in different sectors and understand the needs of staff working in different library sectors.

The purpose of this paper is a call of action for Academic librarians to review their approach and definition of ‘Digital Inequality’. The paper argues for new definitions to be developed by Academic Libraries, within their digital policies, which incorporate Critical theory based, intersectional, non - techno deterministic approaches. Academic librarians, especially those from the Global North must recognise the role Higher Education and Librarians have in upholding digital inequalities through their current lack of critical awareness and critical approaches. Only by asking ourselves difficult questions about what we understand about ourselves and the institutions we work in can radical digital equity truly begin

The main objective of this research is to investigate women’s careers in tech. The purpose of the dissertation is to identify the factors that influence women’s persistence and advancement in the tech industry. With the ultimate goal of feminist research in mind, identifying, documenting, and collecting data on these issues is crucial to bring about social change in the industry and achieve equality. This dissertation attempts to understand and record the gender inequality in the tech industry and does so by conducting an extensive literature review informed by intersectional liberal feminism. The literature review discusses three major themes, namely: individual experience, culture, and career progression. This research underpins the design and agile development of the Binary in the Binary project, a proposal for a research tool used to test people’s perceptions on how gender affects career progression in the tech industry. The Binary in the Binary is a PostgreSQL database-driven responsive web application coded in PHP and JavaScript and run on the open-source Apache HTTP Server. The dissertation explains the development of the Binary in the Binary web application that uses the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern.

This dissertation explores the management and development of libraries at women’s colleges in Oxford This study examines the colleges established for women students between 1879 and 1920: Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; Somerville College, Oxford; St Hilda’s College, Oxford; and St Hugh’s College, Oxford. These colleges were founded to allow women to study in Oxford, but women were not permitted to become members of the University of Oxford until 1920. Consequently, most of the academic provision for students, including library access, was provided by colleges and the Association for Promoting the Education of Women. This study analyses contemporary documentary evidence to learn how the libraries were staffed and their collections developed, allowing us to gain a greater understanding of the history of women’s college libraries.

The dissertation identifies the ethical attributes that AI systems, in particular chatbots and text-generating applications should have, designs a prototypical ethics evaluation framework and employs it – to evaluate select systems. It goes on to reflect on the effectiveness of the framework and discusses its limitations.