REVIEWS

No abstract available for this article.     

Cosmetic surgery as a commodity for ‘sale’ in online news

A controversial but increasingly prevalent aspect of media research suggests that the media contributes to the demand for plastic surgery procedures in modern society. This study analyzes the online news content on cosmetic surgery procedures in Korea. Data were collected from ‘Naver,’ the largest Korean portal news archive, from 2007 to 2013. Based on the findings from a quantitative content analysis, the number of articles that pertain to plastic surgery has dramatically increased each year, and since 2007, more than 60% of the news articles portrayed plastic surgery in a positive light. News articles also used strategic patterns to include promotional content. The findings suggest that amid journalism in a highly market-driven environment that struggles to reconcile its role and commercial challenges, plastic surgery, which is a part of the largest advertising sector of online news, has become a commodity.     

“To Save Them from the Dangers to Their Faith”

Abstract

This article explores the history of Catholic women's colleges and former women's colleges in the United States, with specific focus on student life in the mid-twentieth century. In the peak year 1956-1957, 42,900 young Catholic (and sometimes non-Catholic) women attended about 116 colleges, a significant proportion of the higher educational sector. These colleges helped acculturate many children of Irish, German, Eastern European and Italian families to middle-class American society, at the same time creating a specifically female and Catholic culture on the college campuses. This culture, which was characterized by the ideals of femininity, religion, and service, can be reconstructed through materials in the college archives: for example, through minutes of faculty committees and student organizations, records of college events, photographs, audio-visual material, scrapbooks, catalogs, and student publications. The archives of Catholic women's colleges are important in that they document a little-studied area of American life- Catholic women's culture-and furthermore show how it has changed and evolved up to the contemporary period.     

Knowledge and Attitude of Women to HIV/AIDS in a Farming Community in Southwestern Nigeria: Challenges for Public Libraries

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the major setbacks to the achievement of the 2015 millennium development targets in Africa, generally, and Nigeria, in particular, where it is the leading cause of death. In terms of age and gender distribution, the most severely affected are sexually active females in their most economically reproductive years. A greater percentage of the Nigerian population lives in rural areas where there is low access to health information. This study assesses the knowledge level and attitudes of women in a farming community to HIV/AIDS, and suggests intervention strategies by the public libraries to bridge the knowledge gap on HIV/AIDS. This article suggests that public libraries as custodians of knowledge should play a significant role in transmitting information about how to prevent and control HIV/AIDS.     

BBC's Wednesday Magazine and Arts Television for Women

Wednesday Magazine (1958–1963) was an innovative BBC television afternoon arts and culture strand produced by the specialist BBC women's programme unit, which had been built up and nurtured by the first dedicated head of women's programmes Doreen Stephens, who was appointed in 1953. Stephens was responsible for the development of a diverse and extensive range of women's programming; highly ambitious in the offering that it presented to its female viewers. This article will examine the series Wednesday Magazine exploring the wealth of arts and culture items broadcast, whilst considering the programme's significance in critical histories of both women's programming and arts television. The article will also make an intervention into historical debates around what constituted women's television in Britain.     

PREPARING FOR AN AGE OF PARTICIPATORY NEWS

In a time of declining public trust in news, loss of advertising revenue, and an increasingly participatory, self-expressive and digital media culture, journalism is in the process of rethinking and reinventing itself. In this paper, the authors explore how journalism is preparing itself for an age of participatory news: a time where (some of) the news is gathered, selected, edited and communicated by professionals and amateurs, and by producers and consumers alike. Using materials from case studies of emerging participatory news practices in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the United States, the authors conclude with some preliminary recommendations for further research and theorize early explanations for the success or failure of participatory journalism.     

Scrapbooks: Intrinsic Value and Material Culture

ABSTRACT

Scrapbooks present a particularly challenging set of preservation issues to archivists. However, as an intriguing combination of diaries, photograph albums, and ephemera, their format and arrangement are an essential part of their usefulness as sources to researchers. The fascinating link between scrapbooks and quilts, evident in a brief history of scrapbooks and an exploration of several types, indicates that scrapbooks are a particularly rich source for researchers interested in women's history. In order to facilitate the richest understanding of these unique and fascinating sources, material literacy should be increased among both archivists and researchers. In particular, archivists should understand the important function these records have to researchers, and how their storage and preservation choices affect that function.     

Documenting the Broad Character of Student Populations in Women's Higher Education

Abstract

The three preceding articles identify the existence of a body of archival recordsof higher education institutions that can support historical investigation into the varied aspects of student life for women. Following a summary of those presentations, the author poses a series of historical questions relating to women's collegiate institutions and student life that scholars and students of women's higher education history might ask to gain a broader view of women's higher learning and “build meaningful contexts in which the evolution of women's higher learning can truly be appreciated.” An examination of the archival records of private, parochial, and public institutions of higher education for women may assist with answering specific and nagging questions and help arrive at a “fuller, more inclusive history of women's higher education.”     

“Educate a Girl?? You Might as Well Attempt to Educate a Cat!”

Abstract

This article examines how materials collected by the Smith College Archives document the official life of the College, as well as the lives of undergraduates as they participate in student organizations, athletics, musical groups, and engage in other social relationships. It explores how the material has been collected, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the primary source material. It also examines how collections have been used to interpret what it was like to educate a woman in a single-sex institution at the end of the nineteenth century, and what it was truly like for the women who came to Smith to be educated. In addition, the article discusses a collaborative digitization project between the Five Colleges in the Pioneer Valley (Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts), funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation between 1996 and 1999, that made selected records on women's education available to the research community on the World Wide Web. [     

Bridging Generations

Abstract

Since 1994, undergraduate students at Rutgers University have had the opportunity to explore broad issues in the history of women's higher education by examining issues surrounding single-sex and coeducation at their own institution, with specific concentration on social issues and student culture. Four distinct seminars and projects, two of which incorporate oral history, and all four involving historical research in archival sources, have contributed to the historical literature and have added valuable documentation on the history of women at Rutgers University. This article presents an overview of these specific courses. It further provides an assessment from the particular perspective of a university archivist who attempts to document the history of the institution, promote the use of that documentary record by a diverse audience of users, including undergraduate students, and who has had the opportunity to teach two seminars on the history of women's higher education, using Rutgers as a case study. The courses to be discussed are: “Rutgers Women: A Living History” (1993-1995), a research seminar incorporating oral history of the first women students to enter the previously all-male Rutgers College in 1972; the Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II (1994 to present), an ongoing project recording the memories of Rutgers men and women and their wartime experiences; the Douglass College Scholar's Program seminar on psychobiography (1998), a seminar which explored the life of Mary Clara Kangler, a 1938 graduate of the New Jersey College for Women whose tragic life ended in suicide; and the Douglass College Scholar's Program seminar on the history of the Douglass College and its role in the history of women's higher education in the United States (1999-2002), a research seminar based on archival research which explored the experiences of women and the controversial issues surrounding women's education at Rutgers.