Is This a Serial?

Serials represent a growing proportion of published literature and budget allocations. Since serials frequently contain the most current information and latest reports of research activity, they both generate many reference questions and supply the answers. Due to the continuing and changing nature of serials, their records are more difficult to interpret than are monograph records. The philosophy underlying the creation of serial records, the variations in serial cataloging rules, and the effects of automation partially explain what appears in our catalogs. A review of the essential elements in serial bibliographic records accents the unique characteristics of serials and the problems encountered in trying to create records that are consistent and intelligible.     

Are Museums Still Necessary?

Museums today face a crisis of confidence arising from two issues: (1) the erosion of a historically unreliable funding base, and (2) a challenge for audience by entrepreneurial elements in the culture. Other issues center on a growing public idea that museum work can be shared by entities such as theme parks and exhibition halls and the perception that education should be shaped as recreation. Museum responses to these problems have exacerbated their vulnerability as unique institutions. Certain dichotomies in the museum world help to explain this situation: (1) professionalism versus the audience, (2) connoisseurship versus the public experience, (3) the centrality versus the peripherality of objects in museums, (4) museums as businesses versus museums as educators, and (5) visitor expectations versus available resources. Resolution of the conflicts requires museums to remember that they are communication systems capable of teaching hard information, to stop emulating the forces that threaten to destroy them, and to pay attention to certain lessons understood in the business world. Museums also must find stable and reliable funding, reinvigorate the museum accreditation program, and pay attention to what museums really exist for. Museums are still necessary only when they function as true museums.     

Verbal Aggression,Race, and Sex on Reality TV: Is This Really the Way It Is?

This content analysis examines verbal aggression, race, and gender presented in a composite week of popular reality TV programming on cable and broadcast television. Results show that African Americans were found to be overrepresented and depicted disproportionately as more verbally aggressive and more likely to be victims of verbal aggression than other races/ethnicities. African American women were more likely than men to be involved in verbal aggression, both as aggressor and victim. The results are discussed in terms of the potential effects of exposure to verbal aggression and the accompanying contextual factors found in reality TV programming.     

Is It Necessary to be Clear? An Examination of Strategic Ambiguity in Family Business Mission Statements

Family businesses comprise the largest portion of organizations in the United States. Although much is known about how individuals interact in these businesses, little is known about how family businesses function at an organizational level. Family businesses are likely to use strategic ambiguity in their mission statements to allow for multiple interpretations of the same message by their stakeholders. This study analyzed the mission statements of the 20 largest family businesses in the United States to explore their use of strategic ambiguity. Family businesses used strategic ambiguity for the purposes of unified diversity, promoting varied understandings of goals, and for facilitating organizational change, but not for the purposes of deniability. This research begins to provide an explanation of the potential driving factors of family business mission statements.     

This is so contemporary? Mediums of exchange and conservation

What conservation strategies can be used for Tino Sehgal's 2005 work This Is So Contemporary, and what are their relations to oral traditions? Sehgal's art leaves no material traces, as the artist resists the use of photos and videos acting as a documentary surrogate for his work. This paper will explore how Sehgal's non-written documentation strategies connect to the work of Yumutjin Wunungmurra, a contemporary artist and ceremonial leader from Northeast Arnhem Land, Australia. The connection will be tracked through the role of caretaker and custodian that features in the workflow of both artists. The paper asks whether the performance-based strategies discussed can support the notion of conservation as a social process with multiple stakeholders.     

“Why Is This Happening to Me?:” The Attributional Make-Up of Negative Emotions Experienced in Emotional Support Encounters

Weiner's (2000 Weiner , B. ( 2000 ). Intrapersonal and interpersonal theories of motivation from an attributional perspective . Educational Psychology Review , 12 , 1 – 14 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) attributional model of intrapersonal motivations suggests that attributions influence not only people's emotional experiences, but also their behavioral responses to the events that caused these emotions. The current study investigates the causal dimensions (i.e., stability, controllability, locus) of five emotions (i.e., sadness, helplessness, hurt, fear, anger) people commonly experience when they are distressed and in need of emotional support. Participants (N = 258) were asked to identify an upsetting event and subsequently talk about it with a confederate helper in a five-minute conversation. After the conversation, participants completed attribution and emotion indices scales. The events discussed were coded into nine categories (e.g., death of a relative, college performance/job problems, break-ups). Results suggested that the five emotions possess a unique attributional make-up and are uniquely tied to specific events that were discussed by participants. Implications of the results are discussed in the context of providing emotional support to people who experience distress.     

What Is Reference Publishing?

No abstract available for this article.     

Google Book Search解读

Google Book Search的推行尽管充满着质疑和争议,但不可否认的是,它为我们呈现了一个全球性数字图书馆的雏形,这个仍处于Beta试验阶段的搜索服务正日臻完善,它让我们看到了建立全球性数字图书馆并不是一个遥不可及的梦想。因此,对其发展历程进行研究,以指导我们的数字图书馆建设就变得非常必要。     

Itinerant Booksellers: Necessary Evils to the Book Trade in Ghana?

Itinerant booksellers play very significant but less noticeable role in the book trade in Ghana and many developing economies. They are the mobile booksellers who carry their collections to the doorsteps of their consumers. This paper highlights the contributions of itinerant booksellers to book distribution in Ghana. The paper makes a case for and against itinerant bookselling in Ghana. First, the paper raises issues with the quality and content of some of the reading materials peddled by the itinerant booksellers and discusses their implications for copyright and book development. The paper then argues that in spite of their shortcomings, itinerant booksellers have the potential to assist in finding a lasting solution to the book distribution problems of the country, and, need to be encouraged and assisted by book industry players such as the Ghana Development Council, Ghana Book Publishers Association, and the Ghana Booksellers Association to contribute meaningfully to Ghana??s book business.     

The Omnipaedia Is Here,But Where Is It?

Summary

Electronic access to information is transforming both the vision of future libraries and the way in which librarians today deliver information services. In reference service, especially in academic libraries, the wide availability of electronic access to periodical indexes and full-text periodical databases has raised speculation about the possibility of relying on purely electronic reference collections. A field test indicates that this is not yet a viable option and points to the continued vital role of the reference librarian as guide, interpreter, and integrator of print and electronic information sources. In the tradition exemplified by Charles Bunge's “Potential and Reality at the Reference Desk: Reflections on a ‘Return to the Field,’” this article rests on field experience and testing, and is written in part in the first person.     

"Is This a Chapter Book?": Parent-Involved Categorization in a Kindergarten Classroom Book Collection

Abstract

Many primary school classrooms have book collections. Most teachers organize and maintain these collections by themselves, although some involve students in the processes. This qualitative study considers a third approach, parent-involved categorization, to understand how people without library or education training categorize books. We observed and interviewed parents and a teacher who worked together to categorize books in a kindergarten classroom. They employed multiple orthogonal organizing principles, felt that working collaboratively made the task less overwhelming, solved difficult problems pragmatically, organized books primarily to facilitate retrieval by the teacher, and left lumping and splitting decisions to the teacher.     

Is There a New Bibliography?

Describes the position claiming that the contemporary technological, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic environment gives us pause to consider the core theory and practices of bibliography, combining bibliography of the work (in library and information science), bibliography of the text (in textual studies and scholarly editing), and bibliography of the artifact (in book history and now digital forensics), and calls for collaborative multidisciplinary research at the intersection of these fields to ask, is there a new bibliography?     

What Is a Reference Source?

Reference is the balance of employing a process to use materials to locate information. A key feature of teaching reference is to help students understand what a reference source is. This column introduces the dilemma of that seemingly easy task. It includes examples of course assignments to aid in that effort.