The Agency Myth: Persistence in Individual Explanations for Gender Inequality

We leverage a unique longitudinal dataset—98 interviews with 30 college students—to investigate young people’s explanations for gender inequality over time and the implications of those explanations. Through five waves and four years of interviews, we show that young people struggled to internalize structural explanations, instead favoring explanations that conceptualized gender as an individual attribute. Individual perspectives were so intransigent because of respondents’ adherence to what we call the agency myth, the latent cultural idea that individuals, particularly women, have the power to overcome gender inequality through strategic behaviors. The agency myth offered young people a sense of self-efficacy, but prevented their imagining broader solutions for social change. Those who were able to think structurally did so only after rejecting the agency myth. This article shows how the durability of individualist perspectives contributes to persistent gender inequality by privileging individualized solutions over more effective structural ones. We discuss how individual subscription to the agency myth is structured by young people’s intersecting identities, and how the agency myth can be applied to other axes of inequality.

Analysis of Static and Dynamic E-Reference Content at a Multi-Campus University Shows that Updated Content is Associated with Greater Annual Usage

A Review of: Lamothe, A. R. (2015). Comparing usage between dynamic and static e-reference collections. Collection Building, 34(3), 78-88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/CB-04-2015-0006 Abstract Objective – To discover whether there is a difference in use over time between dynamically updated and changing subscription e-reference titles and collections, and static purchased e-reference titles and collections. Design – Case study. Setting – A multi-campus Canadian university with 9,200 students enrolled in both graduate and undergraduate programs. Subjects – E-reference book packages and individual e-reference titles. Methods – The author compared data from individual e-reference books and packages. First, individual subscription e-reference books that periodically added updated content were compared to individually purchased e-reference books that remained static after purchase. The author then compared two e-reference book packages that provided new and updated content to two static e-reference book packages. The author compared data from patron usage to new content added over time using regression analysis. Main Results – As the library acquired e-reference titles, dynamic title subscriptions added to the collection were associated with 2,246 to 4,635 views per subscription while static title additions were associated with 8 to 123 views per purchase. The author also found that there was a strong linear relationship between views and dynamic titles added to the collection (R2=0.79) and a very weak linear relationship (R2=0.18) with views when static titles are added to the collection. Regression analysis of dynamic e-reference collections revealed that the number of titles added to each collection was strongly associated with views of the material (R2=0.99), while static e-reference collections were less strongly linked (R2=0.43). Conclusion – Dynamic e-reference titles and collections experienced increases in usage each year while static titles and collections experienced decreases in usage. This indicates that collections and titles that offer new content to users each year will continue to see growth in usage while static collections and titles will see maximum usage within a few years and then begin to decline as they get older. Fresh content is strongly associated with usage in e-reference titles, which mirrors the author’s previous work examining static and dynamic content in e-monographs.

Part 4: Social dimensions of interagency collaboration—Joining the collaboration: Individual subscription

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Economics of scientific and biomedical journals: Where do scholars stand in the debate of online journal pricing and site license ownership between libraries and publishers?

The emergence of e–journals brought a great change in scholarly communication and in the behavior of scholars. However, the importance of scholars’ behavior in the pricing of scientific journal has been largely ignored in the recent debate between libraries and publishers over site license practices and pricing schemes. Stanford’s survey results indicate that sharply increasing costs are the main reason for individual subscription cancellation, driving users to rely on library or other institutional subscriptions. Libraries continue to be a vital information provider in the electronic era and their bargaining power in the market and the importance of roles in scholarly communication will be increased by branding and a strong relationship with users. Publishers’ strategy for thriving in the electronic era is not to lose personal subscribers. Cooperation among the three sectors — scholars, libraries, and publishers — promises optimal results for each sector more than ever.