“Let's talk about sex”: visitor comments in Contraception: Uncovering the collection of Dame Margaret Sparrow

Contraception: Uncovering the collection of Dame Margaret Sparrow was an exhibition at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa which featured a participatory activity titled “Let's talk about sex” where visitors could answer the question: “If you could give your younger self one piece of advice about contraception, what would it be?” Over 2200 comments were written, inspiring an evaluation project. The resulting analysis provides insights into visitors’ attitudes, values, behaviours, experiences and concerns about contraception, sex, sexuality and sexual health in the early 21st century. The results also demonstrate the value and usefulness of visitor comments both as an exhibition experience and as data to complement formal evaluation methods. The paper also acknowledges the less successful aspects of the project.     

Women caught in the multi‐causal web: A gendered analysis of Healthy People 2010

This essay is a gendered analysis of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Healthy People 2010 initiative (HP 2010). HP 2010 sets national health goals and priorities for public health agencies throughout the nation with a stated goal to “reduce health disparities” (p. 2), including disparities based on “gender, race, education or income, disability, geographic location, or sexual orientation” (p. 11). Given the focus on women’s medical research since the 1990s and the continued presence of gendered health disparities, it is important to investigate how public health policy defines, depicts, and prioritizes issues related to women’s health, particularly poor and minority women. A close reading of three sets of chapters related to physical disease, health care services, and sexual health issues from the perspective of women suggests that despite renewed promises, the “multi‐causal web” approach to public health does not promote conditions that would empower marginalized groups because it fails to address sex differences in health advice and prioritize economic and political changes necessary for marginalized groups. Underlying these issues is a lack of consideration for the role of socially constructed gender roles along with race and class in health status and inequities.     

The Books Are Shelf-Ready; Are You?

Over the past 2 years, shelf-ready services, the outsourcing of cataloging and processing services, has become the hot topic in the library world. This article examines the implications of shelf-ready service, both operationally and organizationally, for both library and vendor. Using the format of a dialog between librarian and vendor, the article discusses the following questions: Why are you interested in contracting for (or providing) these services? What do you hope to gain? What are the stumbling blocks to implementing a shelf-ready program? What is the impact on workflow and staffing in your organization? How many and what kinds of jobs are affected? How do library/vendor responsibilities change when shelf-ready procedures are applied to an approval plan … to firm orders … to standing orders? How can quality control be assured? Which errors really matter? Are the same standards applied to vendor staff as to in-house staff? How are standards affected by shelf-ready? How do both library and vendor know when they’re “ready for shelf-ready” in a given situation?     

Customer Experience in Public Libraries

ABSTRACT

Public libraries today are gingerly stepping into the emerging philosophy among successful businesses around the world: customer experience. Libraries are hiring staff with “customer experience” in their title, others are curious and want to learn more. Most of the resources currently available to libraries hoping to get started take a corporate approach particularly as it impacts financial success. The bottom line is that all of us are in the customer experience business, whether we know it or not. It goes to the heart of everything we do – how staff interact with the public and each other, the value libraries provide to a community, even the cleanliness of the restrooms. Additionally, many of those companies that library users experience in their daily lives – health care, insurance, retail – have already jumped on the customer experience bandwagon, overall raising the public’s expectation of what they should experience in libraries. How and where to start? How does a library build a road map to develop a customer experience philosophy and culture, which staff will embrace and support? When building a new library how do you design that building using a customer experience lens? Columbus Metropolitan Library has spent the last 5 years mapping out a customer experience practice, which includes staff training, journey mapping, customer insights, customer engagement training, and library design.     

Who You Know in Hollywood: A Network Analysis of Television Writers

“It’s who you know, not what you know,” is a familiar phrase—often repeated by professionals in Hollywood. The present study focuses on “who knows who” among Hollywood television writers. Using network analysis, this exploratory study identifies the degree of centralization and types of connections found in this elite writers’ network. Results show a great deal of collaboration in the network, and while male writers are more connected overall in Hollywood, women are more likely to be brokers—a structurally advantageous position. The authors provide explanations for collaboration patterns, especially with regard to gender differences in network roles, and propose avenues for further research.     

Student success pocket-graphic: a mountain of data transformed

Abstract

How does a small community college library, without marketing experience or budget, advocate for its value to a campus community and its administrators? We did so by creating an engaging, bright, and easy-to-read “pocket-graphic.” In this column, we reflect on the process of shaping a multi-use product out of a mountain of data. Through research in design practices, field observations of popular information tools, and an uncomfortable step into braggadocio, we learned to articulate the successes of our library. Our “pocket-graphic” told our story, yes – but it also provoked surprise, questions (“you really have all that?”) and delight in the lesser known successes (“you really DO all that!”). In the process, we connected our students more deeply to helpful services and resources, faculty to supportive instruction, and positively changed the tone of conversation with all our stakeholders. By turning data points into selling points, we found insights and a focus that moved our own development forward, helping ourselves to define improved priorities for advancing our critical role in student success.     

Help Me Understand What I Can Expect While I’m Expecting: What Women in a Prenatal Yoga Class Communicate About Body Image,Fitness, and Health

Women experience myriad changes during pregnancy. When it comes to how women negotiate and communicate about their changing bodies, expectations, and health, the research is lacking. The current research reports the results of pilot study using an ethnography and in-depth interviews with women participating in a prenatal yoga class. The researcher observed the yoga sessions and conducted in-depth interviews with three of the participants in order to address further questions. The results indicated several themes regarding what characterizes the way women in the prenatal yoga class talk about body image, health, and fitness during pregnancy. These themes include: expressions of body image and fitness as communal, expressions of desire for relationship-building with women in similar situations, expressions of desire to maintain pre-pregnancy fitness, expressions that redefine “fitness” and “health,” expressions of concern about post-pregnancy fitness and weight loss, and expressions of self-consciousness.     

李调元“万卷楼”的藏书价值探析

李调元“万卷楼”的藏书具有“念日月之以逝,恐文献之无征”的继承理念继承、“寡闻则无约也,寡见则无卓也”的博采广集理念,“鸿才博雅,覃心著述”的创新理念,有丰富而珍贵的文献价值,包含了真、善、美的文化价值,值得后人继承和弘扬     

Rethinking “Difficult” Conversations in Communication Instruction From an Intercultural Lens: Pedagogical Strategies for “SWAP-ping” the Communication Classroom

Intercultural communication offers both theoretical and pedagogical implications for communication instruction. As such, we interweave theories and concepts of intercultural communication and instructional communication in (re)thinking “difficult,” “sensitive,” or “uncomfortable” classroom conversations that involve privilege, power, and intersecting cultural identities (e.g., racism). In juxtaposing these areas side by side, we first interrogate why intercultural and instructional communication scholars have neglected what the other takes as central: pedagogy and diversity. In particular, we ask: Why are certain conversations deemed “difficult” in the mainstream communication classroom? To whom are they difficult conversations? Why might these conversations feel “uncomfortable or risky”? Second, we crystalize how intercultural communication makes strides toward feeling/thinking/understanding difficult conversations in ways that promote social justice by proposing a pedagogy of “SWAP-ping” the communication classroom.     

Museum as Soup Kitchen

In this paper, I suggest that museums have not explored their potential opportunities enough when dealing with their communities under stressful conditions. Each reader, however, should decide when what I am talking about is no longer appropriate for museums in general or your museum in particular. While some museums have moved more in the direction of serving their communities, I am struck by how little philosophical change has actually taken place in most museums after a year into this universal economic downturn. I argue that incorporating a broader palette of social services may make institutions more useful, but at some point these institutions might cease to be traditional museums. My question would be: “Should you care?” I do not suggest that all museums become full‐service community centers, though some might explore that option. Perhaps the question might become: How do we expand our services so that we make museums’ important physical assets of safe civic space and objects useful for tangible three‐dimensional learning into more relevant programs that reach all levels of community, and are rated by many more as essential to their needs and their aspirations for their children?     

The effect of variation of rate on the recall by radio listeners of “straight” newscasts∗

A comparative analysis of the theories of Kenneth Burke and Alfred North Whitehead provides a different perspective of persuasion. The areas of comparison are: (1) the composition of the rhetorical situation and the function of the rhetor; (2) the modules: “identification” and “transmutation” and (3) the paradigms: “consubstantiality” and “concrescence.” Other perceptions of the rhetorical situation, the axiological latitude and functions of the rhetor, and the interrelations between the rhetor and the audience might, thereby, be gained.     

“I LOVE TO PLAY THE BIMBO SOMETIMES WITH ATHLETES”

This article analyses the professional interactions between female journalists and their sources, key moments in the information production process, and explores, in the context of the Swiss daily press, one of the most masculine journalistic universes: sports journalism. It illustrates that because of the specific mode of recruitment into this journalistic speciality, women are confronted with various constraints—a lack of knowledge in the domain of sports, overwhelmingly male sources, and tensions linked to the fact that they are women—and with expectations from their chief editors that they will develop a “feminine” view of sports news. They are required to adapt and adjust to their role in a way that severely constrains their interactions with their male sources. Thus, controlling their appearance, language, and attitudes, these women make intentional use of certain stereotypes associated with femininity—“women as object of seduction” and “women as weak and inoffensive”—for professional goals, when the interaction warrants. They believe that those strategies allow them to have easier access to their sources and to create interactions encouraging the exchange of information that they judge to be sincere, authentic and more private, that would permit them to write deeper and more “human” articles.     

Pushy or a Princess?

Four times as many males as females appeared as experts on flagship television and radio news programmes in the United Kingdom as of the early 2010s. This study draws on four complementary sets of data to explore the reasons behind this disparity. The findings point to a combination of journalists’ news production processes and women’s perceptions of appropriate social norms and roles. A high proportion of woman experts surveyed lack confidence, saying they fear they will be perceived as self-promoting and “pushy” for wanting to appear on air. Broadcast journalists report women need to be persuaded and wooed, acting like “princesses” and therefore making male experts less trouble to recruit.     

“Split Screens” and “Spin Rooms”: Debate Modality,Post-Debate Coverage,and the New Videomalaise

This experimental research examines how different presentation modalities in presidential debates and post-debate spin influence the ability to form evaluations about candidates' character, shape perceptions of their incivility, and alter judgments of political trust and news credibility. Results indicate that these experimental factors work together to encourage character judgments, diminish perceptions of candidate civility, and reduce levels of trust in government. In addition, political talk conditioned experimental effects on perceptions of news credibility, with the adverse effects of split screen presentations concentrated among those who talked about the debate. Thus, the negative effects of “in your face” politics conveyed by the “split-screen” modality appear to be most pronounced among those primed to think about performance and those attuned to politics through interpersonal talk.     

NTIS: Potential roles and government information policy frameworks

Despite major technological and document capture advances in the 1990s, the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) became a privatization target again in 1995 as part of Republican efforts to dismantle its parent agency, the Department of Commerce. After examining NTIS's current operational status and its user profile, this article explores six future role options for the agency. Finally, NTIS's “fit” with four competing information policy models is examined. NTIS has become an innovative, entrepreneurial agency with the potential to assume an expanded role in government and scientific/technical information dissemination, but it is still politically and financially vulnerable in the current Washington climate.     

Influence of external factors on the longevity of information recorded on DVD±R discs

In this work, experimental results on the influence of high temperature and relative air humidity on the aging dynamics of recordable DVDs of the R+ and R? formats of the most well-known trademarks (Sony, TDK, Imation, Digitex, Mirex, Verbatim, Philips, Fujifilm) are presented. The state of disks and recorded information is estimated qualitatively and quantitatively by computer testing using special software. Relative longevity is calculated using results on the artificial aging of compact disc specimens in harsh conditions (a temperature of + 80°C, a relative air humidity of 85%), the “stability series” of DVD±R discs of different trademarks is established. Recommendations on the practical application of DVD discs of R+ and R? formats of particular trademarks for durable storage of scientific-technical information are given on the basis of the obtained data.     

Public Libraries,Dual Constituencies,and Marketing

Marketing can be a powerful tool for public libraries. However, to realize marketing’s potential, it must be understood. Unfortunately, “Marketing is a term used by librarians to mean many different things and therefore has become confusing” (Doucett 2008, 1). Replacing confusion with clarity, which is especially important if the goal of marketing is to elicit financial and other support, requires answering two questions: What is marketing, and what is required for marketing to deliver the benefits it is capable of? Answers are sought before when marketing came “to mean many different things and … become confusing.”     

跨源健康信息搜寻的动机、信息源选择及行为路径

本研究旨在探究用户面临多种健康信息源时的跨源健康信息搜寻行为,揭示这类信息搜寻行为的动机、信息源选择和行为路径。结合日记法和半结构化深度访谈法,收集并分析了26名参加者的健康信息搜寻日记及跟踪访谈数据,使用NVivo11分析数据。研究发现医生-用户交流障碍、信任缺失、用户自我调节和用户安全心理的需要是促使跨源健康信息搜寻行为产生的动机。相似病症用户的自我陈述、用户的路径依赖(习惯)、从众心理、信息源的权威性及可信度是影响用户跨源过程中信息源选择的主要因素。此外,用户跨源搜寻健康信息的过程中,其心理需求大于实际需求、凭“感觉”感知网络健康信息质量等特征较明显。本研究构建了跨源健康信息搜寻行为路径模型,研究的结果有助于提升用户健康信息搜寻行为认知,改善其跨源健康信息获取能力,提升其健康信息素养;同时,也为相关部门制定提升公民健康信息素养策略及支持跨源健康信息搜寻行为的信息系统的开发和设计提供了借鉴。     

Gender/issue interaction in political identity making: Nebraska's woman vs. woman gubernatorial campaign

An emerging area of communication study is the process by which women seeking elective office construct their political identity. This essay engages that literature examining the historic 1986 Nebraska gubernatorial race as a case study. Two interrelated findings emerged from the study including: (1) gender perceptions were a factor even in this “genderless” election, and (2) each candidate's political identity was constructed through the interaction of gender characteristics and candidate issue positions.     

Green Publishing in Germany: A Passing Trend or a True Transition?

Greening the German book industry is a large-scale task. This article, based in part on the results of a one-day conference titled “Bio im Bücherregal?” (Engl. translation: “Eco-friendly products on the bookshelf?”) that was held in Mainz in January 2013, considers different perspectives on green publishing in Germany and presents the status quo as well as an outlook. After a brief historical and theoretical overview on the media and the environmental movement, the article presents current developments such as the initiative “Nachhaltig Publizieren” (“Green Publishing”). Initiated in 2011 by the publisher Oekom, the project has become a catalyst for the green publishing movement in Germany. In addition, this contribution introduces publishers and imprints, in particular of children’s books, that strive to fulfill the highest possible criteria for green publishing in certain project areas. Finally, the close connection between green publishing and green content is discussed.