Preparing for the Future: National Library of Medicine's® Project to Add MeSH® RDF URIs to its Bibliographic and Authority Records

ABSTRACT

Although it is not yet known for certain what will replace MARC, eventually bibliographic data will need to be transformed to move into a linked data environment. This article discusses why the National Library of Medicine chose to add Uniform Resource Identifiers for Medical Subject Headings as our starting point and details the process by which they were added to the MeSH MARC authority records, the legacy bibliographic records, and the records for newly cataloged items. The article outlines the various enhancement methods available, decisions made, and the rationale for the selected method.     

The Cognitive Consequences of Collaborative Problem Solving With and Without Feedback

The goal of this research was to assess the impact of feedback, partner, and shared understanding in the course of problem solving. A sample of 180 6- to 9-year-olds was pretested to discover the children's "rule" for predicting the movement of a mathematical balance beam. For the treatment they either worked alone or with a partner who was equally, less, or more competent, with two-thirds receiving feedback from the materials. They subsequently participated in 2 individual posttests. The results revealed that children receiving feedback improved significantly more than those who did not, but that the presence of a partner was only beneficial when children received no feedback. Irrespective of feedback, those children whose partner exhibited higher-level reasoning were far more likely to benefit from collaboration than those whose partner did not, provided that the pair achieved shared understanding.     

Best‐selling feminisms: The rhetorical production of popular press feminists’ romantic quest

In the past decade, an emerging group of “popular press feminists” have garnered considerable media attention for their critiques of academic feminism. Despite persistent challenges to their arguments, these authors have gained media legitimacy. Through a rhetorical analysis, we argue that the texts of Camille Paglia, Katie Roiplie, and Christina Hoff Sommers derive their powerful appeal from assuming the form of an archetypal romantic quest narrative —a compelling story that sets up rigid dichotomies and creates double binds that limit possibilities for critical assessments as well as honest debate and exchange.     

Engaging Practitioners in State School Improvement Initiatives

For most of U.S. history, local communities were the primary arbiters of school quality. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, states began assuming more and more control over school standards and outcomes. The question we seek to answer is whether and the extent to which a particular kind of local voice—the voice of education practitioners—is represented in states' current, significant initiatives to improve low-performing schools. In the article, we focus on the role that practitioner knowledge played in the development of school improvement policies across three state education agencies. We draw on interviews, surveys, and document analyses collected for a larger exploratory study of knowledge utilization. Contrary to earlier research showing weak or uneven connections between state agencies and practitioners, we found that practitioner advice networks were generally stronger than states' research advice networks. We found ample illustration of staff using this advice to make sense of research for their own contexts, and for their own approaches to school improvement. Agencies formed ties to practitioners in districts and schools, in professional membership associations, within their own agencies, or in other agencies wrestling with similar problems. Who they turned to differed depending on earlier improvement policies and institutional histories.     

Speaking of books

Disadvantaged Child, Vol. I. Jerome Hellmuth, editor. Seattle, Washington: Special Child Publications, 1967. Pp. 499. $10.00.

Federal Aid for Schools. Howard S. Rowland and Richard L. Wing. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967. Pp. 396.

Psychology of Human Adjustment. Lester D. Crow. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. xv, 613 pp. $7.95.

School Children in the Urban Slum. Joan I. Roberts, editor. New York: The Free Press, 1967. xiii and 626 pp. $7.50.

Speech Handicapped School Children, Wendell Johnson and Dorothy Moeller, editors. Harper & Row, New York, 1967. Pp. 562. $7.50.

Edward Hitchcock, M.D., Founder of Physical Education in the College Curriculum. J. Edmund Welch. East Carolina College, Greenville, North Carolina, J. Edmund Welch, 1966. 315 pp. $5.00.