A roadmap for action

This text gives a structured overview of some of the courses for action that the participants in the UNESCO IBE project worked out together as a group over several months. We went beyond identifying the barriers and difficulties together with the good practices being developed in the several countries and tried to define a broad outline for the type of school we wanted to build. We thus needed to sketch out a roadmap for action that would guide us in our work and overcome the feeling of helplessness that many of us shared. It is quite normal when writing about education to begin by saying “we must” or “we ought to”, without making it clear on whom those positive changes in education, or rather, in schools in different countries and contexts, depended in order for us to work towards accomplishing the goals of Education for All (EFA). Yet together we can, at different levels of power and responsibility, build a school for all that brings together quality and equity. This roadmap is a tool to guide our action, which in turn is itself enriched by our action, that of systematizing and analysing the progress made and the difficulties encountered.

Newspaper coverage of women's sports during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games: Belgium, Denmark, France, and Italy

In general, women are well represented among sport participants and sport audiences but not in the media. Data show that women's sport is greatly underreported and trivialized in newspapers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to measure press coverage during the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in the largest circulating Belgian, Danish, French, and Italian daily newspapers by: (a) number of articles, (b) size, (c) page placement, (d) accompanyingphotographs, and (e) photograph size. For each sport covered, the athletes' nationality and the gender were recorded. Compared to the 1996 Atlanta Games, there was an increase of 326 female athletes (+4 %), and women competed in 25 sports and 132 events (44 %) of the total 300 events. Although only 29.3 % of the articles and 38 % of photos were on women 's sports, the newspaper coverage was similar to the distribution of participating athletes and events. No significant gender differences were found with respect to article size, page placement, accompanying photographs, or photograph size. The most covered sport was track and field, independent of national achievement. Other sports received different coverage in relation to national expectations, achievement, and participation. In conclusion, there was a trend to overcome gender inequities in media coverage during the Olympic Games, which may be due to the International Olympic Committee's actions to promote increased participation of women in sport activities and to publicize their achievements. Moreover, during the Olympic Games, a nationalistic fervor might affect the equality of gender coverage.     

Knowledge Management Perceptions in Academic Libraries

Despite the increasing interest taken in knowledge management (KM) by a wide range of practitioners as well as the library and information science (LIS) community, knowledge management is not systematically applied in libraries. Due to the complexity of knowledge, as well as the multifaceted nature of knowledge management, there is no consensus among LIS professionals regarding its relation to information management. In this context, the current study aims at exploring how library employees perceive knowledge management, as well as which KM tools and techniques are adopted by academic libraries. The results indicate that although practitioners are aware of knowledge management and appreciative of its benefits not only for library performance but also for LIS professionals' future career options, there is a lack of clarity on fundamental KM issues. Finally, academic libraries take steps towards capturing the knowledge of their users and internal explicit knowledge; however, social practices such as communities of practice, which facilitate tacit knowledge and expertise sharing, are not adopted.     

The Quadruple Helix Model of Libraries: The Role of Public Libraries in Newcastle upon Tyne

This article is based on semistructured interviews with library staff members in order to explore both how they perceive the role of libraries in most deprived areas in Newcastle upon Tyne and how they relate with their patrons. We show that public libraries play a primary role in activating a virtuous cycle, in which infrastructures, skills, and increased ability of users to achieve their goals simultaneously result from and feed social inclusion strategies. However, some limits might be related to the availability of public economic resources that tends to affect the smaller libraries by reducing opening times and services provided.     

Academic Writing and Publishing: A NASIG Preconference Workshop

ABSTRACT

The goal of this preconference was to guide aspiring academic librarians in understanding how to navigate scholarly publication requirements and be successful academic writers. The presenters provided tips for beginners as well as for those already engaged in a research agenda. One of the presenters is a published book and journal author and the other is the editor-in-chief of a major peer-reviewed library journal.