Spanish Speaking Users and Their Communities

Originally presented to a conference on curriculum reform for library science faculties, this article reflects on how public librarians can assist new Spanish speaking users. Based on various career involvements with Latino communities, the author covers aspects of library outreach, initial user contact, introduction to and tour of the public library; points to a gap between traditional library service and non-users and offers suggestions that will encourage return visits by new users.     

To Lecture or Let Go: A Comparative Analysis of Student Speech Outlines from Teacher-Centered and Learner-Centered Classrooms

During recent years, some college classrooms have moved away from traditional teacher-centered lecture pedagogies toward learner-centered strategies. Relatively little empirical evidence exists to date assessing the utility of such pedagogies. This exploratory study examined the content and structure of student speech outlines from teacher-centered, lecture-based classes and from learner-centered discussion and experiential-based classes that implement Kolb's (1984) cycle of experiential learning. The results of this examination suggest that students in learner-centered environments do create better outlines than students in teacher-centered, lecture-based classrooms. Future studies should test the generalizability of these results on larger student populations and across curricula.     

Speaking Up Competently: A Comparison of Perceived Competence in Upward Dissent Strategies

Recent dissent research indicates that employees report using several different strategies for expressing their dissent to management and supervisors (i.e., upward dissent). The purpose of this study was to compare previously recognized upward dissent strategies in terms of perceived competence. Employees completed a survey instrument that asked them to assess the competence of different upward dissent strategies. Results indicate that employees perceived solution presentation to be the most competent upward dissent strategy, followed by direct-factual appeal, repetition, and circumvention. Threatening resignation was perceived as the least competent upward dissent strategy.     

从"阅读"到"悦读"——浅谈多媒体手段在我国英文网站对外传播中的运用

本文结合我国英文网站在新媒体使用技巧上的不足,谈谈我国英文网站在对外传播中新媒体使用技巧的改进方法。     

重视科技期刊编辑工作中的沟通学

从沟通是做好编辑工作的基础,是新时期提升编辑能力的需要,沟通是一种技能3个方面分析沟通对现代科技期刊编辑工作的重要意义。认为科技期刊编辑应重点从3个方面增强沟通技能:提高语言运用能力,有效利用电话媒介,学会倾听。     

Information Skills of Librarians Working at Public Universities in Bangladesh: A Task-Based Analysis of Pre- and Post-Training Performance Scores

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to empirically examine the information skills of public university librarians and whether attending a short training on navigation to e-resources results in improvements in their knowledge base. A group of 33 librarians working at different public university libraries participated in this study. They were participants in a 90-min long training program on navigation to e-resources conducted at University Grants Commission of Bangladesh. The survey questionnaire, consisted of 12 information tasks, was distributed and answered before the training. The same tasks were repeated at the end of the training session to see the improvement of information skills. It was found that librarians did not have adequate knowledge of information skills; in fact, a major proportion of university librarians demonstrated inappropriate and insufficient knowledge before the training. The training helped improve their performance score significantly in six out of 12 tasks. The study concluded that the provision of systematic and regular training will improve the skills of librarians and it will positively affect their service outcomes.     

Social media and corporate reputation during crises: the viability of video-sharing websites for providing counter-messages to traditional broadcast news

Exemplification, or the use of highly emotional and arousing messages to elicit responses based on impression formation, has been shown to influence perceptions of events, individuals, and organizations. News coverage concerning the use of lean finely textured beef (LFTB) is one such example, and anecdotal evidence suggests that this coverage may have had a negative impact on public perception of the manufacturers producing LFTB. The current study examined the use of social media (specifically video-sharing sites) as a means of combating the negative effects of exemplars concerning LFTB. Respondents reported their perceptions of threat severity, susceptibility, behavioral intentions to avoid LFTB, and perceptions of organizational trust and reputation associated with the manufacturer. The findings are consistent with exemplification theory and indicate that message ordering can influence exemplification effects. Results are discussed in terms of implications for public relations and risk communication.     

For public (and recontextualized) sociology: The promises and perils of public engagement in an age of mediated communication

This article argues for the analysis of public engagement as an essentially mediated activity. Although recent studies note that academic knowledge is increasingly available for consumption by nonacademic audiences, they tell us little about how it gets recontextualized while passing through the hands of media professionals on its way toward such audiences. In Burawoy’s (2005) influential call for the rebirth of public sociology, as in the debates his work provoked, the media is treated solely as a means for the transportation of knowledge. But as this article demonstrates, the media does not simply transport knowledge; it also, and at the same time, translates that knowledge in various, rhetorically consequential ways. Focusing on the mediated trajectory of an attempt by a group of academics to connect with audiences beyond academia, their initial contribution is compared to its subsequent translation(s) across various British newspapers. A discursive analysis reveals the techniques via which a classic form of public sociology came to be recontextualized such that, remarkably, these authors were left appearing to voice nothing but their own petty prejudices. The article concludes by noting that where public engagement involves mediation, public sociology should pay more attention to the recontextualizing affordances of media discourse.     

PharmGuide: Your Guide to Free Online Drug Information

PharmGuide <http://goo.gl/f14Me>is an annotated directory of high quality, freely available, online drug information resources intended for use by librarians, pharmacists, and the public. Given the plethora of drug information websites with varying levels of authoritativeness and accuracy, PharmGuide is intended to facilitate the search for resources by providing links to only those sources that have been critically appraised and that meet specific quality criteria. Methods used in developing the site, evidence of its utility based on usage statistics, and examples of its application in practice are presented within the context of the drug information landscape.     

Personal Branding: Building Your Pathway to Professional Success

Personal branding is an introspective process by which you define yourself professionally, and it can serve as your pathway to professional success. There are six steps to building your personal brand: (1) taking an introspective look, (2) understanding the brand that may already exist, (3) developing your personal brand mantra, (4) crafting your physical footprint, (5) creating your digital footprint, and (6) communicating your message. Your personal brand is a promise of value and performance, and it is necessary to meet the expectations of your audience. Effective brand management is a key component to maintaining a positive brand reputation.     

弘扬地方文化提升图书馆品质——泰州市图书馆举办地方人士著述展牌展览八年来的实践

论文以泰州市图书馆的具体实践为例，阐述了公共图书馆在地方文献工作中制作展牌开展宣传工作，扩大图书馆社会影响的举措。     

Minding the gap: Applying a service marketing model into government policy communications

In order to bolster the emerging but still underdeveloped conceptualization of public communication over potential policies, we apply a framework primarily used in business service marketing to improve service quality (“gap analysis”). We argue that this model has strong heuristic qualities that can alert practitioners who are interested in improving communication regarding potential policies. While we recognize problems implementing the model, we suggest some ways that both practitioners and the public ameliorate the identified issues. Seeing communication about potential policies as a crucial part of the political process, we argue that such efforts have democratic merit.     

Librarian Like a Rock Star: Using Your Personal Brand to Promote Your Services and Reach Distant Users

ABSTRACT

The business world has been using corporate branding and relationship marketing to build customer loyalty and satisfaction. In recent decades, individuals have applied the tenets of branding to themselves to create the idea of personal branding—marketing yourself as your own brand. By thinking in terms of personal branding and relationship marketing, distance education librarians can more effectively reach out to remote students and build long term relationships that are beneficial to both students and librarians.

This article originally published in Journal of Library Administration, Vol. 50, Issues 5–6, pages 628–637, 2010. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2010.488928.     

Ditching Dewey: Take Your Collections from Enraging to Engaging and Position Your Library for 21st Century Success

In the digital age, the Dewey Decimal System is pushing library users toward easier information finding aides such as Google. If the profession does not find a way to maximize the collections and the library as third place, patrons will never embrace the newer technologies and services available through their local public library. This paper explores a possible free replacement to Dewey and discusses the benefit of making the stacks more accessible for moving the profession into the 21st century.     

Speaking Like a State: Listening to Benjamin Franklin in Times of Terror

This essay reconstitutes Benjamin Franklin's characteristic political style as a particular inflection of liberal irony, arguing for a way of speaking today that checks arrogance with humility and attempting to unlock the psychosocial economy of political enjoyment implicit in this rhetoric. To do so, the essay traverses four bodies of discourse (including recent political thinking about civic character, Franklin's oratory in 1787 at the constitutional convention, passages from his letters, and an excerpt from his autobiography) in order to extract strategies for managing situations in which democracy becomes prone to the enjoyments of terror and tyranny.