Now What?

Abstract

Moving from graduate school into an academic reference position can be a difficult transition. A new environment, a variety of new people and the challenge of meeting expectations can quickly become overwhelming. This article reviews the pertinent literature and relates the relevant experiences of two reference librarians during their first three years in professional positions. Topics addressed include: reference service, collection development, committee work, relating to faculty and colleagues, professional development and understanding set procedures while striving to be innovative in the workplace.     

What is BioOne?

BioOne is a Web-based aggregation of full-text, high-impact bioscience research journals. Most of its titles are published by small societies or non-commercial publishers and have not been previously available in electronic format. This column describes the BioOne database and gives some basic information about the best ways to search its content.     

What is political incivility?

Using 23 novel indicators and a 1,000+ sample representative of a full undergraduate population we examined: how much consensus there was about perceptions of the incivility/civility of various categories of speech/behavior; and whether political incivility is a unidimensional or multidimensional latent construct. Confirmatory factor analyses suggest perceived political incivility is a multidimensional construct. Insulting utterances, deception, and behaviors tending to shut down inclusive ongoing discussion can be treated as distinct, underlying aspects of incivility. More than 75% of respondents viewed all 23 indicators, except issue-oriented attacks, as very, mostly, or somewhat uncivil. If replicated on a representative national sample, standardized indicators of political incivility should be constructed and routinely employed in national surveys of political attitudes and behavior.     

What Do Faculty Want?

The academic reference librarian needs to know what the college faculty expect from their library. These needs seem often to be idiosyncratic if they do not fit the librarian's conception of the generalized user, but these needs must be identified and met in order to serve the faculty appropriately. Librarians need to be as aware of information acquisition patterns as they are of information sources.     

What Is Reference Publishing?

No abstract available for this article.     

What About the Hyperlocals?

Using a survey of a sample of hyperlocal actors in Sweden (N?=?178), this article examines preconditions, motivations and sustainability for hyperlocal media operations, outside the traditional media chains, in order to provide a picture of their function in the current media landscape, and to further build on the understanding of the hyperlocal business model. This study extends the hyperlocal definition by including media platforms other than websites. The results show that the operations indeed aim to support and foster citizenship, strengthen democracy and mirror the local community. At the same time, as shown by other studies, the fact that they are not large-scale, highly profitable operations may challenge their sustainability. Nonetheless, most of them claim to be profitable, largely because of the print platform, and have a positive outlook on the future. Revenues from advertising and readership are currently less substantial for Web-based operations, which reinforces the need to broaden the definition of hyperlocal publishing platforms when talking about financial sustainability. Currently, hyperlocal media in Sweden, with small resources and a lower publishing frequency, cannot be viewed as a replacement of established media, but play important roles as complementary alternative voices and contribute to media plurality in the local community.     

What is Slow Journalism?

In an era of fast and instantaneous journalism and concerns about the deleterious effects of speed, it can be easy to lose sight of the other kinds of journalism being practiced, other temporalities for its production. There has been little scholarly work on slow journalism, so the first aim of this article is, if not to define, then at least to describe some key characteristics of what slow journalism might be. It will look at how the term has been used on blogs, websites, public forums, and in the minimal scholarly literature available. It will also explore some examples by producers who identify with the term to see what slow journalism looks like in practice. The proliferation of independent journalism using Slow as a way of thinking about production suggests that we are witnessing a new alternative emerging in the mediascape.     

What Happened to Colonial Statutes?

Abstract

The legislature of the Province of New York, like other pre-revolutionary colonial legislatures, enacted a large number of statutes. No one, however, has systematically examined how the post-revolutionary states dealt with their inheritance of colonial legislation.In New York State, colonial statutes remained in effect after the Revolution, but they were, to a large extent, gradually subsumed into the State's statute law by a process of enacting superseding legislation that carried forward the substance of the colonial enactments.     

What Is a Reference Source?

Reference is the balance of employing a process to use materials to locate information. A key feature of teaching reference is to help students understand what a reference source is. This column introduces the dilemma of that seemingly easy task. It includes examples of course assignments to aid in that effort.     

What Makes a Library Great?

Abstract

The author discusses seven measurable criteria that he accepts as defining a “great library”: Great libraries provide measurably superior service; have great funding; train and retrain their staffs; integrate their virtual, place and outreach services marketing; serve both the weakest and the strongest among their constituents; provide constituents with education and entertainment; and use virtual tools to offer a full range of timely information and services. These measurable characteristics define a modern library, the library that users want.     

What makes a good title?

The chances are the first thing you when you set out to write an article is the title. But what factors transform a mediocre title into a good title? Firstly, it should be both informative and specific, using words or phrases likely to be used when searching for information, for example ‘nurse education’ rather than simply ‘nurse’. Secondly, it should be concise yet convey the main ideas clearly; articles with short titles reporting study findings have been found to attract higher numbers of viewing and citations. Thirdly, provide details of the study design to assist the reader in making an informed choice about the type of project your article is reporting. In taking these small steps when developing your title, your title can present a more concise, retrievable and clear articulation of your article.     

What are the Read Codes?

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Nigerian University Libraries: What Future?

The future of Nigerian university libraries is threatened by gross underfunding, inadequate collections and facilities. These worrysome problems which have bedevilled the libraries since the 1980s persist due to the continued low level of book production, scarcity of foreign currency to import books and journals, and the continued proliferation of universities despite the economic recession in the country. The Nigerian federal and state governments, which are the sole financiers of the 38 universities in the country, lack the financial resources to fund them adequately. To prevent the collapse of the universities and their libraries, organizations such as the World Bank, oil companies, and banks, are being brought in to assist the governments. The federal government and its central co-ordinating body for the universities, the National Universities Commission (NUC), are encouraging the universities to seek and achieve sustainability by prudent spending and vigorous diversification of their revenue bases and investments in order to survive. This article examines the issues involved.     

Online scholarly publishing in China: Who? What? How?

This overview describes the general situation of online scholarly publishing in China from both the supply and demand points of view. Based on desk research, online survey, and face‐to‐face interviews, we identify scholars' perceptions as well as expectations of the current online publishing system. We offer some personal recommendations for change. We then provide a list of business models for stakeholders.