Document Type

Article

Abstract

INTRODUCTION This study analyzes the gender dynamics of the American Library Association’s SCHOLCOMM listserv in order to determine the accuracy of concerns expressed by participants in early 2016 regarding an overrepresentation of male voices on the listserv. METHODS Utilizing the SCHOLCOMM listserv archive, openly available online, the authors analyzed metadata related to individual messages in order to create a comprehensive list of participants, which was then analyzed to determine gender identity. The authors utilized this information to correlate the frequency of new messages and replies sent to the list with the gender identity of participants. RESULTS While men represented 35% of the SCHOLCOMM list’s participants, they contributed over half of the messages sent to the listserv and two-thirds of those sent as replies on existing message threads. DISCUSSION The opinion of several SCHOLCOMM participants that male voices were overrepresented in listserv discussions proved to be true. The gender identity breakdown of those most active on the list may also influence the perceptions and/or behaviors of other listserv participants, however, and should be investigated further. CONCLUSION While this study substantiates the opinion of several listserv participants that male SCHOLCOMM participants account for a disproportionately large amount of listserv discussion, we argue that the dynamics of the listserv can and should be changed in order to better represent the participant population.

Disciplines

Library and Information Science | Scholarly Communication | Scholarly Publishing

Comments

© 2017 Hayes & Kelly. This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Additional Files
SCHOLCOMM_data.csv (7 kB)
Data set used with R
Download

Share

COinS