How Much Do Librarians Know About Stress Management?

The purpose of this study is to attempt to determine how much librarians know about stress management and how they handle stress. The needs of the individual librarian are highlighted, and stress management training is recommended as a response to these needs. An increasing number of articles is appearing in library literature on the topic of stress/burnout and librarianship. However, only a few are empirically based, and still fewer report efforts made by libraries to address the issue. The survey found that 28 percent of responding librarians know little or nothing about stress management and that 82 percent think it would be beneficial to learn about it. Reinforcing the need to learn about it are the results of the present survey. These indicate that only 11.1 percent of the respondents practice stress management preventively at this time. While 60 percent do not think that stress management is a necessary part of librarianship training, an overwhelming 88.8 percent feel it should be part of one the job in-service training or of staff development programs. Supporting this indication of desire for such training is the finding that the subjects' responses to how they presently react or respond to stress indicate that 72 percent of the behaviors and feelings engaged in or experienced are destructive in nature.     

Educating Zoo Visitors about Complex Environmental Issues: Should We Do It and How?

Modern zoos are committed to environmental education and thus have a mandate to inform the public about biodiversity and conservation. Historically, zoos have avoided complex topics like biodiversity loss from overpopulation and overconsumption in their educational materials, for fear of being offensive or creating a sense of hopelessness. To measure visitor attitudes towards educating about such topics and to help determine effective presentation techniques, we assessed people's knowledge of and attitudes towards the commercial hunting and consumption of wildlife in West and Central Africa (the bushmeat crisis) and examined how the use of different types of images affected these variables. Zoo visitors were exposed to one of six series of photographs, each accompanied by the same text. Photos in three of the series contained explicit, disturbing images of dead animals. The other three series presented benign images related to the bushmeat crisis (i.e., logging, changes in hunting practices). While 83 percnt of visitors had never heard of the bushmeat trade, 98 percent felt zoos should be educating about the topic. Ninety‐seven percent felt the disturbing images were appropriate for zoo visitors except for children under the age of 12. While people spent significantly more time looking at the disturbing images, this did not lead to increases in knowledge (factual or conservation‐related) on the topic. However, visitors who saw the disturbing images were significantly more likely to report being influenced by the images. While the type of image did not affect the frequency of conservation‐related behaviors, significantly more people engaged in a conservation‐related behavior when an opportunity was provided on‐site rather than off‐site. The results demonstrate that the public believes zoos should educate about bushmeat, and that realistic images influence people's perception of an issue. However, visitors' lack of knowledge gains, even when disturbing images are used, suggests that a static display of text with photographs may not be the most effective method for educating about complex issues like bushmeat. Finally, the results show that zoos should provide on‐site opportunities for people to turn their conservation interests into action.     

Private Lives in Public Places–Oral Histories of Performing Artists: How Much Do You Really Want to Know?

ABSTRACT

This article is an exploration of oral history practice within the context of a performing arts archive. It addresses the deceptively simple question of what oral historians should actually ask their respondents and, ultimately, how much do we, as researchers, really want to know. The use of oral history material is discussed from a historical point of view in relation to archival collecting and the needs of scholars and researchers. The notion that oral history practice must both respond to and transcend this history is set forward. The article concludes by advocating an expansive approach to oral history as a means to more fully understand and preserve our pasts.     

Let’s Talk About Men: Some Suggestions on How We Can Include Men in Conversations About Gender Roles in Librarianship

Nine years ago, I did not imagine listing gender issues as one of my core research interests. Now I cannot imagine my research revolving around anything else. The way I study gender though, has taken a rather startling turn away from women to focus (sometimes uncomfortably) on men. What follows is an argument about why studying men and masculinities can make us better librarians. I argue that studying men broadly is important, and librarians should explore methods and strategies for studying a specific type of men: well-educated, white men with established careers in libraries. While my narrative is highly personal, it is based on 9 years of research and reflection about how librarians discuss gender and professional identity.     

How Do They Research? An Ethnographic Study of Final Year Undergraduate Research Behavior in an Irish University

The objectives of this study were to identify how, when, and where students research; the impact of learning environments on research productivity, and to recommend improved supports to facilitate research. An ethnographic approach that entailed following five students in the final six weeks of their program enabled deep level analysis. The study examined the practice of undergraduate research inside and outside the library walls and found that the research process can be influenced by a number of factors including age, experience, work commitments, family, peer, academic, and library support. Mobile research is continuing to grow among undergraduate students, particularly those juggling family and work commitments. The research suggests a correlation between intercultural issues such as ethnicity and language with library anxiety. Until they had immersed themselves in the research process, most of the students in this study believed that research was a linear process.     

How Much Should a Corporation Communicate About Corporate Social Responsibility? Reputation and Amount of Information Effects on Stakeholders’ CSR-Induced Attributions

This study investigates how much corporations should communicate about their corporate social responsibility (CSR) to stakeholders. It is important to know how much a corporation should communicate about its CSR, because over-communicating CSR may cause stakeholders to question the motivations (CSR-induced intrinsic and extrinsic attributions) of the corporation’s CSR engagement. Through an experiment (N = 372), the effects of corporate reputation and the amount communicated about CSR on CSR-induced attributions are investigated. Findings show that neither the amount of CSR communication nor corporate reputation influences stakeholders’ CSR-induced attributions. The findings of this study suggest that corporations may choose to spend less time and money trying to communicate about their CSR engagement, because it does not influence stakeholders’ CSR-induced attributions.     

Do Individual Perceptions Matter in Pornography Effects? How Perceived General Acceptance and Influence of Pornography May Impact Agreement With Sex-Role Attitudes

Pornography use is often associated with less-progressive sex-role attitudes, such as endorsement of a sexual double standard between heterosexual partners, but the process by which this relationship occurs is still largely unexamined. The present study was conducted to examine how perceptions about pornography may play a role in the relationship between pornography use and sex-role attitudes. Perceived general acceptance and perceived influence of pornography on most people partially mediated the relationship between pornography use and sex-role attitudes. The more participants reported using pornography, the more they believed pornography was generally accepted and had a positive influence; however, conversely to what was hypothesized, the more positive they perceived pornography’s influence, the less likely they were to report sex-role attitudes that endorse a sexual double standard.