AgeLine database on middle age and aging: Reflecting population diversity

TheAgeLine database brings an interdisciplinary approach to the literature on aging and older adults. Targeted to a variety of audiences ranging from researchers to consumers,AgeLine provides access to both book and journal literature. Small but steady increases in the amount of aging-related literature have been noted, especially in coverage by nonaging publications.     

Wolfgang Kasack (1927–2003): A Bio-Bibliography

ABSTRACT

A leading Slavist in Europe and North America, Wolfgang Kasack promoted a unified vision of Russian literature for the twentieth century. In addition to his prolific scholarship, he wrote over eighty reviews of reference works in Russian literature for research libraries for the print and online journal Informationsmittel: IFB between 1996 and 2003. Many of these reviews were published in English in abridged form in the journal Reference Reviews Europe Annual during that same period.     

Ethical Considerations in Classification Practice: A Case Study Using Creationism and Intelligent Design

This article re-visits a scenario from 1987: a university president required a library director to reclassify some materials into a science classification. The author looks at the prominence of the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association in the general library literature and in classification and cataloging practice literature. The issue of censorship is also discussed. The author then reviews classification for Creationism and Intelligent design and some decision-making processes one could use when deciding on the professional ethics of such a request, concluding that in some cases the ethical action might indeed be to go ahead with the reclassification.     

Multilingual Digital Libraries: A review of issues in system-centered and user-centered studies,information retrieval and user behavior

Abstract

This study aims to identify, collect and critical review the research literature on Multilingual Digital Libraries in English language from 1997 to 2012.

Design/methodology/approach: The present literature review has followed the rules of systematic review. In particular, the identified relevant papers were categorized based on their expressed aim on two core themes, that of system-centered and user-centered studies. The assigned papers were further analyzed and six sub-themes emerged for the system-centered studies and four for the user-centered studies. Additional categorization was also provided according to type of publication.

Findings: The literature concerning Multilingual Digital Libraries is vast and mainly focuses on two aspects the “System” and the “Users”. The majority of papers tried to meet the challenges raised for enabling multilingual information retrieval in Digital Libraries. Unfortunately, these efforts undertaken by a small number of researchers or research groups apparently working in isolation and therefore resulting in the development of numerous different tools and techniques. Relatively few studies have focused on the user and aimed to explore users' behavior and expectations when interacting with Multilingual Digital Libraries. As a result, further research is needed to reach to some tangible and usable findings.

Originality/value: This literature review captures the diversity of the research conducted regarding multilingual information access and retrieval in Digital Libraries. It organizes the vast literature in comprehensive themes and sub-themes enabling easy access to specific information.

Limitations: This study reviews only papers in English due to language restrictions from 1997 to 2012.     

EBSCO's Communication & Mass Media Complete: An Appreciable Improvement Over Previous Communication Studies Indexing?

ABSTRACT

In a prior edition of this study, we examined whether the established online communication studies indexes—Communication Abstracts, ComIndex, and ComAbstracts—provided a good avenue of access to the journal literature that researchers in the field cite and whether, where the current journal literature was concerned, that avenue of access might be equal or superior to that provided by large, multisubject online indexes. In this iteration of the study, we similarly address EBSCO's new product for communication studies, Communication & Mass Media Complete.     

Enhancing literary understandings through young adult fiction

Young adult literature can be used to enhance students' understanding of literary techniques and concepts, providing a “transition” between children's and adult fiction. Two young adult novels—The Pigman andI am the Cheese—are used to illustrate the use of young adult novels to teach about literary elements such as tome, point of view, characterization, motif, symbolism, style, and structure. Maia Pank Mertz areas of specialization include the teaching of young adult literature, literature study, and the impact of media on adolescents.     

The Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms:

The First Edication of The Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms was published in 1974 by the American Psycholigical Association to answer the need for controlled vocabulary to represent precissely the literature of psychology and related disciplines contained in Psychological Abstracts and the PsychINFO database. As the field of psychology has grown and evolved, five subsequent editions of the Thesaurus have improved and extended the original vocabulary of 4000 postable and nonpostable terms. In addition, several featues have been added, including a rotated alphabetical terms section, scope notes, posting notes, and, in the new Sixth Edition (1991), an index term clusters option. In maintaining the Thesaurus, PsychINFO's indexing staff seeks to reflect the ever-changing field of psychology and the literature that describes it.     

Use of Non-Social Work Journals in Social Work Research: Results of a Citation Analysis

Social work research and teaching draw on the literature of other disciplines. While the use of interdisciplinary sources has been discussed at length and citation patterns in social work literature have been studied, no research has identified specific sources from other disciplines that are important for social work scholarship. Based on analysis of citations from core social work journals, several journals from both social work and other disciplines are identified as important to social work. Interdisciplinary citing patterns are discussed, and the coverage of various subjects in PsycINFO, SocINDEX, Social Work Abstracts, and Social Services Abstracts is compared.     

Journals,Subjects, and Authors of Research Literature on Public Libraries: An Analysis

Scholarly or research-based journal articles related to public librarianship and public libraries are posited in previous literature as not being useful to the public library practitioner, and potentially less valuable to the researcher than other forms of research. Building off previous research, this article explores journal-based public library research literature to determine the trends in authorship, coverage, and venues. Publication venues are relatively static, with Public Library Quarterly and Library Quarterly publishing most public library research literature. LIS educators and public librarians dominate authorship of public library research, and the topical coverage of that research is gradually evolving in response to new technologies and a renewed focus on user services.     

A Systematic Review of Financial Literacy as a Termed Concept: More Questions Than Answers

Financial literacy, as a concept by that name, has only been explored in library science literature for a little over a decade. The concept, and especially the role of libraries in furthering this literacy, is still evolving. This systematic literature review examines the current definition of financial literacy, why financial literacy matters, where the public has been accessing financial literacy education to date, the difficulties encountered, by libraries and others, in providing this education, and how these challenges might be addressed moving forward.     

Government Publications and Gray Literature in Turkey

This paper investigates bibliographic control of government publications and gray literature in Turkey, in order to determine what further measures are needed to support researchers in both Turkey and abroad. It reports the circumstances surrounding the creation of The Bibliography of Government Publications prepared in 1971, and outlines how gray literature was collected in various bibliographies and thesis centers according to types and made available to researchers. The development of systems for publication and access to government publications and gray literature are evaluated in the context of current studies and past endeavors to provide for bibliographic control and access to these sources.     

Rope Sluts,and Bottoms,and Subs,Oh My: 50 Shades of Grey and the Shifting Discourse on Female Submission in Feminist Kink Porn

To date, feminists have conflated (and continue to conflate) historical understandings of bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism (BDSM) as pathological and representations of BDSM in literature and popular media with the lived experiences of feminist BDSM practitioners. Feminist BDSM practitioner Madison Young’s pornographic film 50 Shades of Dylan Ryan (2012) takes the recent resurgence of the ongoing debate on women, submission, and popular literature as a starting point for reconsideration and possibility. By adapting the discourse surrounding 50 Shades of Grey, Young’s pornographic film points to the ways in which feminism also contributes to that which makes pleasure possible. Young’s film reimagines the dualities that have traditionally dominated feminist cultural critique through concepts the author calls “mediated authenticity” and “formal simultaneity.” Beginning with a brief, rigorous examination of the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon, this article analyzes Madison Young’s 50 Shades of Dylan Ryan and seeks to provide a critical intervention in feminist studies of pornography and popular culture.     

Growth and nature of international LIS research: An analysis of two journals

The study explores the publication trends of scholarly journal articles in two core Library and Information Science (LIS) journals indexed under ScienceDirect Database during the period for the period 2000–2010, and for the “Top 25 Hottest Papers” for 2006–2010. It examines and presents an analysis of 1000 research papers in the area of LIS published in two journals: The International Information & Library Review (IILR) and Library & Information Science Research (LISR). The study examines the content of the journals, including growth of the literature, authorship patterns, geographical distributions of authors, distribution of papers by journal, citation pattern, ranking pattern, length of articles, and most cited authors. Collaboration was calculated using Subramanyam's formula, and Lotka's law was used to identify authors' productivity. The results indicated that authors' distributions did not follow Lotka's law. The study identified the eight most productive authors with a high of 19 publications in this field. The findings indicate that these publications experienced rapid and exponential growth in literature production. The contributions by scientists from India are examined.     

Writting for today’s child

Judy Delton, who has written numerous children's books, provides an author’s view of trends in children's literature, the role of series books, the importance of timing, the need for honesty in writing for children, and the rewards of being a children's book author. Judy Delton is the author of more than one hundred books for children and adults, among them thePee Wee Scout series,The Condo Kids, andAngel. She has four children who are also writers and artists.     

The Libraries They Are A-Changin': How Libraries Reorganize

This article will report on the results of a study of library reorganizations in the literature. The authors identified five steps common to all library reorganizations, and this article describes those steps as well as two management change theories most mentioned in the literature—the eight-step process of change by John Kotter and Reframing Organizations by Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal. The article will draw conclusions formed by a comparison of these theoretical models to the practice and real-life experience of reorganizations as described by libraries in the literature.     

Classifying The Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle

This study focuses on the library classification practices of The Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle. The Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle has been called an enigmatic work by scholars, and the mystery has carried into library classification. The work's language of origin is not its national language. The work's varied acceptance as fact and fiction also plays into its classification practices. For many years, The Pseudo-Turpin was believed to be a true account, so it was classed as history. While the work has standard literature classification numbers, even its literature classification practices are varied.     

The Slavic Humanities Index: Current Developments and Future Plans

The author describes the Slavic Humanities Index, a bibliographic database of scholarly and cultural articles on subjects including history; literature; language teaching; linguistics; philosophy; ethnology; performing arts; and cultural, borderland, and regional studies. She discusses its development, its current form and functionality, and plans for the future.     

RESEARCHERS AND THEIR INFORMATION NEEDS: A LITERATURE REVIEW

This literature review was prepared as an exercise during the co-authorship of the book Providing Effective Library Services for Research. The intention was to explore what was already known about researchers from the literature, and the exercise was conducted prior to interviews with researchers worldwide to develop case studies for the book. In the event, the literature review did not appear in the book although it informed the text and the case studies. The methodology used in preparing the review is discussed and then some of the retrievals are discussed. It is hoped that this review will help information professionals to identify some resources that may help them in their role of supporting researchers in their own disciplines, institutions and countries.     

Characteristics of the Literature Used by Arab Authors in Library and Information Science

Abstract

This paper attempts to shed some light on the scientific communication behavior of Arab authors in library and information science by studying the characteristics of the literature used by these authors. A bibliometric study by way of citation analysis was conducted on the articles published from 1978 to 1988 in Maktabat Al-Idarah, an elite Arab scholarly journal in the field. It was concluded from this study that English literature is the main source of information for Arab authors in library and information science. They rely on English literature that is between 5 and 15 years of age more than on their own literature and use books more than any other form of publication. They cover almost all areas of the field with special emphasis on technical services as represented by cataloging, classification and aquisition, library administration and library education. Local materials published in their own country were also important.