Spanish Language Children’s Books Focusing on Health Literacy: An Annotated Bibliography

An efficient and economical health care system requires that patients and providers understand each other. For Latino patients, the challenges to effective communication include limited Spanish language ability of providers, limited English language ability of patients, lack of knowledge of the health system, and a generally low educational attainment resulting in general low literacy and numeracy abilities. Both literacy and public health research suggests that focusing on family systems and children is a good path to helping the entire Latino community to navigate better healthcare. This poster provides a selection of titles of readily available Spanish and bilingual (Spanish/English) children’s books that focus on health literacy as well as a series that addresses children’s health issues written for low literacy Spanish-speaking parents. The bibliography is organized into the following categories: Exercise, Healthy Habits, The Human Body, Hygiene, Nutrition, Parenting, and Understanding Difference. It is incumbent upon those in public service, including public libraries, the educational system, and literacy experts, as well as those in the medical professions to try and remedy this situation. Ideally, the titles for children should be read with parents or teachers. This bibliography should be useful for public librarians, school librarians, academic librarians collecting for education departments, literacy experts, and medical and health sciences librarians.     

Features of Islamic Children’s Books in English: A Case Study of Books Published in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to investigate the elements of Islamic children’s books that are written in English by focusing on books that are available in the Malaysian market and published in Malaysia. This study applies the content analysis method, by examining the selected books of their subject matter as well as the language. The results of the study reveal that Islamic books written for children in English are distinctive in terms of the content and language features.     

Academic library monographic acquisitions: selection of Choice’s Outstanding Academic Books

There are strong indications that academic libraries are acquiring fewer unique titles, prompting the concern that the nation’s library resources are effectively shrinking. This study examines one portion of that concern—the acquisition of particular titles by academic libraries of various sizes. The source for the titles is “Outstanding Academic Books,” as selected by Choice for several years. Holdings are taken from the OCLC/AMIGOS Collection Analysis CD-ROM products. Findings demonstrate that across all subject and for broad subject areas, there have been significant declines in holdings over time and for all groupings of libraries. The changes in holdings over time are not always significant when specific subject areas are measured, however. In general, the concern that has been expressed regarding shrinking library resources is corroborated in this study.     

Rankings of a university’s web sites on the Internet

One of the methods for the evaluation of web sites, viz., evaluation ranking, is considered. The advantages and disadvantages of this evaluation method are analyzed. The largest ranking system for the evaluation of a university web sites, Webometrics, is analyzed in detail. The causes of low rankings of the web sites of Russian universities are studied. The value of a department website as an important structural unit forming the university portal is substantiated.     

‘He’s a battler. He’s not a quitter:’ the narrative framing of Jerry Kill’s health-related organizational exit

The abrupt retirement of Jerry Kill, the University of Minnesota’s head football coach, for health reasons during the 2015 season ignited intensely emotional reactions from diverse organizational stakeholders. Our essay analyzes the public discourses surrounding Kill’s organizational exit. Specifically, we explore how audiences co-constructed multiple and conflicting narratives about his departure, concurrently praising and blaming Kill for his body management. We highlight how these discourses construct complex subjectivities for working individuals who experience chronic illness. We conclude by discussing how the narrative frames implicate broader discursive struggles between the cultural values of health and work.     

Constructing a feminist icon through erotic friend fiction: millennial feminism on Bob’s Burgers

This study engages in current scholarly debates regarding third-wave versus postfeminist media icons through an analysis of Tina Belcher, the eldest daughter in the animated series Bob’s Burgers and a paragon of what I coin “millennial feminism.” In it, I argue that Tina rejects popular postfeminist discourses and experiences a politicized feminist awakening. While Tina is significant in her own right, most remarkable is the way millennial audiences have utilized the internet to position Tina as a feminist folk hero. Ultimately, I trace how popular critics use Tina to theorize a millennial feminism that reflects the values and characteristics of the millennial generation. Revisiting Sarah Banet-Weiser’s (2004. “Girls rule! Gender, feminism, and Nickelodeon.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 21, pp. 119–139) argument that Nickelodeon’s girl power programming demonstrated third-wave feminist politics for its audiences, I argue that adult-oriented animated sitcoms lend themselves to an absurdity and disregard for hegemonic gender ideologies which have the potential to unsettle dominant ideologies of gender and sexuality and can define contemporary feminist politics for viewers.     

Let’s Clear the Air: a campaign that effectively increased compliance with a university’s tobacco-free policy

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the Let’s Clear the Air campaign, a print-based campaign guided by the theory of planned behavior, designed to increase compliance with a University’s tobacco-free policy among undergraduate student smokers. We hypothesized that individual-level compliance behaviors would increase with greater campaign exposure and that population-level compliance would improve post-intervention from baseline. To assess individual-level compliance, we collected survey data from 284 randomly selected undergraduate student smokers. To assess population-level compliance, we collected observational data by counting smokers in 10 violation locations for 10 weeks (three 30-minute periods per week). Data supported the hypotheses: Campaign exposure was related to an increase in individual-level compliance behaviors, and results from a negative binomial regression supported that population-level compliance improved from baseline to post-intervention. Implications regarding support for the campaign as an effective strategy for increasing tobacco-free policy compliance behaviors are discussed.     

An international children’s literature network: a position paper

This study investigates how Chinese students make credibility assessments of web-based information for their research, and what evaluation criteria they employ. Our findings indicate that presumed credibility, reputed credibility, and surface credibility have a stronger impact on undergraduate students than on graduate students in credibility assessment. Graduate students tend to value experienced credibility more than undergraduate students. Undergraduate students predominantly rely on author's name/reputation/affiliation as well as website reputation for their credibility evaluation. In contrast, graduate students focus more than undergraduate students on information accuracy/quality. Similarities and differences in credibility assessment between American students and Chinese students are also discussed.     

Managing a Biomedical Library’s Instruction Program: Redefining Scope

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) library instruction program provides training services to staff, clinicians, and researchers across NIH and several Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) operating divisions. The audience, training needs, and training topics are diverse and constantly changing. The NIH library has developed several new services and class topics to meet the needs of its NIH and HHS communities. Context, strategies, and future directions for the NIH library instruction program are described.     

Taking Care of Authenticity on the CBC’s Randy’s Vinyl Tap

This essay explores the radio program Randy’s Vinyl Tap, which is hosted by Randy Bachman and airs on CBC Radio 1 (2005-present). I argue that the show’s complex reception can be explained, in part, by the fact that it transgresses dominant conceptions of authenticity in both rock music and public broadcasting discourses. Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, I explore ways in which Bachman evokes a “carnivalesque” approach to public communication.     

Expanding the Unidirectional View on Parental Television Mediation: Children’s Guidance of Their Parent’s Television Use

Compared to parental mediation research, much less is known about how children influence and guide their parents’ media use. This study examined whether children also mediate the television use of their parents. Measures of an existing television mediation scale were reversed to the perspective of the child guiding the parent’s television use. A sample of 187 parent-child dyads completed a cross-sectional survey in Flanders (Belgium). Factor analyses showed that the original subscales were reproduced with high internal validity. Both parents and children had congruent views about children’s television mediation; television mediation and children's restrictive mediation was positively associated with conflict in the family.     

What’s in a Word: Coming to Terms With Reference

Information literacy has gained ascendency in the reference world to the detriment of the practice of reference librarianship itself. Libraries seem more interested in having librarians teach with technology than in having them engage in thoughtful reference work. Major library associations seem more interested in touting the benefits of information literacy than in supporting traditional reference work, and they define reference in overly simplistic, tautological terms as the practice of answering reference questions rather than attributing to it the subtlety and expertise that make it so valuable. These associations need to rethink the hierarchy and give reference its due.     

That’s Entertainment: Crafting a Creative Ecology within Public Television

ABSTRACT

Television has gone through a period of rapid disruption in the last few years. New technologies, increased globalization, shifting demographics, and evolving consumer demand have impelled widespread change to business models. Consequently, Broadcasters have been forced to re-examine their approaches to creativity and ideation including capacities and enabling methods. Following analysis of recorded interviews with key personnel behind three recent television productions a better understanding of the cultural ecology surrounding creativity was developed. Findings emphasized the decisive influence that internal sense of community, tacit realization practices, and quality leadership – all working together – play in delivering a distinctive production to a mass-market media audience.     

A Cataloger’s Perspective on Cataloging Backlogs

Abstract

Backlogs in cataloging are an unpleasant fact for many library technical service departments. While backlogs may be strategic in nature and smooth out the workflow from acquisitions to cataloging, many are simply uncataloged gifts, unfinished retrospective conversion projects, or low-priority uncataloged collections—all waiting to be addressed when everything else is caught up. Catalogers are often stereotyped as perfectionists; in reality, the nature of our work requires us to be very pragmatic. By substituting a less than full record, progress on reducing backlogs is possible.     

Documentality as a document’s attribute feature

A methodology for studying document characteristics and attributes is described. The conceptual view of a document as an integrity of a tangible medium, information, and form that was proposed by Dvoenosova, is analyzed. The effectiveness of using the document-information approach is validated, which allows one to distinguish the document attribute of documentality.     

The Dynamic Landscape of Marketing Children’s Books: Publishers Find Consistent Success Through a Combination of Online and Traditional Marketing to Adults and Children

There are a number of challenges unique to the children’s book sector faced by publishers in today’s digitally-dominant business market, making it more crucial than ever for children’s book marketers to create multifaceted marketing plans that include differing but complementary approaches. Among the common marketing challenges specific to children’s books are overabundance of content, competition, access to the library market, the digital versus print dichotomy, difficulty of marketing directly to young readers on the Internet, and the dual (child and adult) target audience. While some marketing tactics must effectively attract the attention of the child reader, it is of fundamental importance (with some exceptions) for publishers, authors, and marketers of children’s books to also ensure their marketing techniques target the adult gatekeepers who are likely to purchase those books. Depending upon various factors, including age range of the reader and subject matter, marketers of children’s books are most successful when applying a mix of traditional and digital marketing techniques.