A hospital-based patient and family education center: if you build it, will they come?

Librarians located in a 560-bed, inner city academic medical center with 25,000?+ admissions per year planned and opened a Patient and Family Education Center (PFEC) in the lobby of a new patient care pavilion. A review of use in the first 19 months revealed that expected needs were being met while a variety of unexpected needs were identified. Ongoing use continues to be monitored by a detailed log of patron visits maintained by library staff. This article describes the evolution of the Patient and Family Education Center, outreach to the hospital community, and plans for the future.     

Leadership: A Supercomplex Phenomenon

Treating leadership as a supercomplex phenomenon and relating leadership research to the philosophical disciplines is a way to begin to understand its enigmatic and fluid nature. Its theories are living theories that change in an ever-dynamic world. Leadership is a phenomenon embedded in experience. This article examines leadership against the backdrop of the disciplines of philosophy (ontology, epistemology, politics, axiology and ethics, and aesthetics) with particular emphasis on phenomenology. I suggest that leaders and followers understand and filter subjective experiences through self-reflection until self-awareness is achieved in the moment by pausing and filtering subjective experiences before responding to people and situations. As a consequence, our intentions can be ethically focused, politically mitigated, and directed appropriately. Additionally, inappropriate intentions can be assuaged if the leader is self-aware and present in the moment.     

Change Management in Public Libraries: Research-Based Political Strategies

Abstract

This study presents seven change management strategies for public libraries: (1) specify the major issue, (2) map the decision cycle, (3) identify circuits and tessellations, (4) target receptive audiences, (5) mobilize civil society support (6) minimize resistance with win-win issues, and (7) maintain legitimizing processes. These strategies are derived from historical case study of a single US case over a 93-year span. The strategies are elaborated using qualitative data from the case. The findings build on existing literature and contribute new knowledge and new methods to the research area. The strategies have practical import for public library managers.     

What we know about nonfiction and young adult readers and what we need to do about it

Nonfiction for young adults is enjoying a rebirth of interest among publishers, librarians, and teachers with the emergence of an approach that uses facts as information to be shared with children trying to make sense of their world. Reading interest studies disclose patterns in young readers' preferences in nonfiction. Suggestions are offered to encourage the reading of nonfiction, to help teachers use these books effectively in classroom discussion, and to help select nonfiction for reading aloud. He has been president of the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly on Adolescent Literature. He and Betty Carter edited the 1988 edition ofBooks for You: A Senior High Booklist for NCTE, and the two also publishedNonfiction for Young Adults: From Delight to Wisdom from Oryx Press. Address for correspondence: Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204. Betty Carter, a former junior high reading teacher and school librarian, is now an assistant professor at Texas Woman's University in the School of Library and Information Studies, where she teaches classes in young adult and children's literature. She has chaired the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults Committee and is president-elect of NCTE's Assembly on Adolescent Literature.