Risk Analysis: Celebrating the Accomplishments and Embracing Ongoing Challenges

As part of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis and Risk Analysis: An International Journal, this essay reviews the 10 most important accomplishments of risk analysis from 1980 to 2010, outlines major accomplishments in three major categories from 2011 to 2019, discusses how editors circulate authors’ accomplishments, and proposes 10 major risk-related challenges for 2020–2030. Authors conclude that the next decade will severely test the field of risk analysis.     

Negotiating Accessibility for Electronic Resources

Abstract

Accessibility of library electronic resources is a must. Its importance derives from professional ethics of librarianship, rising total costs of acquisition, and mounting legal challenges to colleges and universities that fail to provide resources accessible to users with disabilities. Library staff are responsible for ensuring the accessibility of vendor-licensed eresources. This column reviews the accessibility clauses of nine model license agreements for electronic resources. It describes terms that should go into an optimal accessibility clause and creates a composite model clause. It also provides guidance for library staff seeking to negotiate stronger accessibility language into vendor license agreements. Finally, it addresses the impact of accommodation requests on the total cost of acquiring library eresources, concluding with a call to redouble efforts to advocate for greater accessibility and educate both vendors and library staff about its importance.     

Young people,social media and connective action: from organisational maintenance to everyday political talk

Social media is pervasive in the lives of young people, and this paper critically analyses how politically engaged young people integrate social media use into their existing organisations and political communications. This qualitative research project studied how young people from a broad range of existing political and civic groups use social media for sharing information, mobilisation and, increasingly, as a means to redefine political action and political spaces. Twelve in-person focus groups were conducted in Australia, the USA and the UK with matched affinity groups based on university campuses. The groups were of four types: party political group, issue-based group, identity-based group and social group. Our focus group findings suggest that this in-depth approach to understanding young people's political engagement reveals important group-based differences emerging in young people's citizenship norms: between the dutiful allegiance to formal politics and a more personalised, self-actualising preference for online, discursive forms of political engagement and organising. The ways in which political information is broadcast, shared and talked about on social media by engaged young people demonstrate the importance of communicative forms of action for the future of political engagement and connective action.