Evidence for Informed Preservation Planning and Advocacy: A Synoptic View

ABSTRACT

We argue the need to demonstrate the value of preservation services to institutions, the public and funders, because it matters conceptually and needs to be supported and validated. To address this imperative, improved and focused data capture and its use by collection managers is advocated as the necessary first step towards the development of an evidence-based culture for preservation services and synoptic decision-making, where evidence enables us to optimise the outcome of planning. To do so, we need tools that enable us to evaluate diverse preservation scenarios. We demonstrate the potential of emerging cross-disciplinary tools and protocols developed in the recent years such as attitude surveys, computational modelling and demographic modelling. These offer evidence that informs prospective preservation planning and, importantly, provides a credible evidence base for advocacy. These possibilities are discussed within the wider context of well-established preservation planning protocols that have shaped collection management for three decades, broadly characterised as retrospective.     

When to say when: Using big data to support mobile communications

As a result of the current mobile phenomenon, many libraries have rushed to provide mobile-compatible services in order to remain relevant in today's quickly evolving information services market. Beginning in 2010, the Laverne and Dorothy Brown Library at the University of St. Francis (USF) launched a data tracking initiative via Google Analytics to determine the extent that mobile-specific library resources were being utilized by students for access to library materials and services. Data analysis has shown that weighing an emphasis toward future development of mobile library resources should be balanced against development costs under a pragmatic anticipation of the longevity and sustainability of any mobile resource.     

Aesthetic encounters and learning in the museum

Abstract

This article discusses how museum settings can provide opportunities for sensory and aesthetic encounters and learning. It draws on research into museum education programmes that included examinations of curatorial construction and display, observations of teaching and open-ended interviews with museum educators. The examples selected here focus on themes of display and learning to illustrate how aesthetic experiences can emerge as incidental adjuncts to learning in other fields. They also acknowledge how museums draw on aesthetic judgements to categorise or present objects and employ aesthetic artefacts and practices as representative devices of cultural engagement, especially in learning themes in the humanities. The studies show how museums can offer opportunities and skills, and cultivate dispositions to the examination of challenging ideas about aesthetic status, sensibility, interpretation or value. Examples of purposefully constructed sites for aesthetic learning show how museum educators have rethought ways of facilitating affective sensory experiences, and raising questions of aesthetic status, response and the social and cultural functions of the arts. The studies discussed here suggest that museums can provide dedicated opportunities to cultivate independent aesthetic thinking and debate about aesthetic ideas as lifelong skills and pleasures.     

The old library of the Pennsylvania Hospital

The first medical book acquired by the Pennsylvania Hospital was William Lewis's Experimental History of the Materia Medica. Dr. John Fothergill of London donated it in 1762. The next year the Managers resolved to establish a library, and the physicians assigned their fees from hospital students for the purchase of books. Books were regularly ordered from William Strahan in London, and gifts and bequests added still more volumes. From 1790 to 1810 Dr. John Coakley Lettsom of London was the hospital's principal adviser on purchases. As the library grew, it expanded beyond purely medical works to include some in natural history, many purchased in 1817 from the estate of Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton. Catalogues were printed in the years 1790-94, 1806, 1829, and 1857. At midcentury the hospital library numbered about 9,000 volumes. At that time it was the largest medical library in the United States.     

The evolution of television: 1927–1943

The fact that not everyone may like a given television program isn't news; but the fact that the demographic characteristic of race is associated with selective liking and disliking of network television programs that were designed to appeal to a “mass” audience may be surprising. The following article aroused a great deal of heated discussion when an early version was presented at the 1965 meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism, and should do so again after publication in these pages. James W. Carey is Research Assistant Professor in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Illinois.     

Impacts of contextual and explicit instruction on preservice elementary teachers' understandings of the nature of science

This mixed‐methods investigation compared the relative impacts of instructional approach and context of nature of science instruction on preservice elementary teachers' understandings. The sample consisted of 75 preservice teachers enrolled in four sections of an elementary science methods course. Independent variables included instructional approach to teaching nature of science (implicit vs. explicit) and the context of nature of science instruction (as a stand‐alone topic vs. situated within instruction about global climate change and global warming). These treatments were randomly applied to the four class sections along a 2 × 2 matrix, permitting the comparison of outcomes for each independent variable separately and in combination to those of a control group. Data collection spanned the semester‐long course and included written responses to pre‐ and post‐treatment administrations of the VNOS‐B, semi‐structured interviews, and a variety of classroom artifacts. Qualitative methods were used to analyze the data with the goal of constructing profiles of participants' understandings of the nature of science and of global climate change /global warming (GCC/GW). These profiles were compared across treatments using non‐parametric statistics to assess the relative effectiveness of the four instructional approaches. Results indicated that preservice teachers who experienced explicit instruction about the nature of science made statistically significant gains in their views of nature of science regardless of whether the nature of science instruction was situated within the context of GCC/GW or as a stand‐alone topic. Further, the participants who experienced explicit nature of science instruction as a stand‐alone topic were able to apply their understandings of nature of science appropriately to novel situations and issues. We address the implications of these results for teaching the nature of science in teacher preparation courses. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 414–436, 2011     

How do teachers in Ireland and England conceptualise dyslexia?

This paper presents the findings of a comparative study using data from questionnaire surveys carried out in England (n=57) and Ireland (n=72). The researchers examine how teachers and teaching assistants who are currently teaching pupils with dyslexia in primary schools describe dyslexia and what may have influenced their conceptualisation. The paper examines teachers' responses both in terms of how they view their pupils presenting difficulties in the classroom, and how far they link these to underlying differences in cognitive processing. The researchers suggest ways in which this might influence their teaching in terms of methodology. Findings have been mapped to the Morton and Frith causal modelling framework. The implications of these findings for the training and support of teachers are discussed in the light of recent national initiatives to improve the teaching of dyslexic pupils in both countries.     

Mired in the shadows: quiet students in secondary schools

Quiet students are a feature of the organisation of secondary schools. Using qualitative methods and Deleuzean conceptualisations of modern subjectivity, this paper explores the ways that quiet students negotiate the terrain of their school. These negotiations often seem to produce a self that is trapped rather than a subject who seizes opportunities to be inventive, creative and experimental of their self. Understanding the faciality of quiet students provides opportunities to advance debate on how schools could encourage freer selves.