Inside outreach: a challenge for health sciences librarians.

OBJECTIVE: Like medical and health sciences libraries throughout the country, the Lamar Soutter Library (LSL) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School is dealing with ever-increasing outreach needs in times of diminishing funding. With the goal of reshaping the library's outreach program to better serve our patron groups, the Outreach Study Group was formed to investigate existing models of outreach. METHODS: The group initially examined the current literature and subsequently conducted a nationwide survey of medical and health sciences libraries to identify trends in outreach. This article details the methods used for the survey, including establishing criteria for selecting participants, determining the focus, and developing and conducting the survey. RESULTS: Of the 40 libraries invited to participate, 63% completed the survey. An analysis of the data revealed successes, problems, and trends. The group's conclusions led to recommendations for the LSL's future outreach efforts. CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of the data revealed key findings in the areas of strategic planning, funding, and evaluation. A thoughtful definition of outreach ensures that outreach activities are expressions of the library's mission. Funding shifts require flexible programs. Evaluation provides data necessary to create new programs, sustain successful ones, and avoid repeating mistakes.     

TRAINING AND ORIENTATION OF CERTIFIED OMBUDSPERSON VOLUNTEERS FOR LONG‐TERM CARE FACILITIES

We report findings on learner retention and satisfaction as a result of certified ombudsperson volunteer (COV) training. Specifically, two research questions were addressed. First, did individuals who completed COV training learn the content? The result of the analysis was significant. Second, were individuals who completed COV training satisfied with its content? Survey results indicated satisfaction with the content, format, and utility of the COV training. In addition, a review of the literature was conducted, and recommendations for further research are offered.     

Middle years teacher education: New programs and research directions

Teacher education programs focussing on the development of specialist teachers for ‘the middle years’ have proliferated in Australian universities in recent years. This paper provides some insights into middle years’ teacher education programs at the University of Queensland, Edith Cowan and Flinders Universities with regard to their: philosophical underpinnings; specific educational context; scope and nature of the program. In addition, some of the research directions and efficacy strategies utilised in conjunction with the programs will be shared, along with some early findings from a longitudinal study in one of the programs. We propose that the pattern of programmatic growth heralds a new time for teacher education, and we speculate about the production of new kinds of teacher identities as graduates take their place in the profession.     

Impact of the Friendly Schools whole-school intervention on transition to secondary school and adolescent bullying behaviour

Peer bullying increases in times of school transition, influenced by changing peer and friendship groups, new schooling environments and greater stress. Covert forms of bullying, including cyberbullying, become more common in secondary school and cause considerable distress and long-term harm. The period of transition to secondary school is therefore a critical window for intervening to manage and prevent bullying. A three-year cluster randomised control trial was conducted to develop, implement and evaluate the Friendly Schools Project intervention which aimed to reduce bullying and aggression among more than 3,000 students who had recently transitioned to secondary school. Intervention schools were provided with individualised training and resources to support students’ transition and reduce bullying using a multi-level comprehensive intervention addressing classroom curriculum, school policies and procedures, the social and physical environment, pastoral care approaches and school-home-community links. Although the observed effect sizes were small, the intervention had a consistently significant positive effect across a range of outcomes, including bullying perpetration, victimisation, depression, anxiety, stress, feelings of loneliness and perceptions of school safety at the end of the students’ first year in secondary school. However, none of these differences were sustained into the students’ second year of secondary school. These findings demonstrate the immediate value of whole-school interventions to reduce bullying behaviour and associated harms among students who have recently transitioned to secondary school, as well as the need to provide strategies that continue to support students as they progress through school, to sustain these effects.     

Swapping documents and terms

Experiments were conducted to explore the impact of combining various components of eight leading information retrieval systems. Each system demonstrated improved effectiveness through the use of blind feedback, also known as pseudo-relevance feedback, a form of query expansion. Blind feedback uses the results of a preliminary retrieval step to augment the efficacy of a secondary retrieval step. The hybrid combination of primary and secondary retrieval steps from different systems in a number of cases yielded better effectiveness than either of the constituent systems alone. This positive combining effect was observed when entire documents were passed between the two retrieval steps, but not when only the expansion terms were passed. Several combinations of primary and secondary retrieval steps were fused using the CombMNZ algorithm; all yielded significant effectiveness improvement over the individual systems, with the best yielding an improvement of 13% (p = 10⁻⁶) over the best individual system and an improvement of 4% (p = 10⁻⁵) over a simple fusion of the eight systems.     

Music score approval plans in research libraries: A survey of librarian satisfaction with and without approval plans

In this study, the researchers submitted a music score approval plan survey to all ARL libraries. Two surveys were created, one for libraries with music score approval plans, one for those without. Forty-four surveys were returned. The authors' purpose was to analyze and discuss the survey results, incorporating elements of the scholarly work preceding this study. Discussions, roundtables, and listservs participated in by music librarians over the years formed the basis of the topic at hand. The goal was to ascertain whether these discussions and underlying assumptions of approval plans held true to the real world.     

Transparency and social responsibility issues for Wikipedia

Wikipedia is known as a free online encyclopedia. Wikipedia uses largely transparent writing and editing processes, which aim at providing the user with quality information through a democratic collaborative system. However, one aspect of these processes is not transparent—the identity of contributors, editors, and administrators. We argue that this particular lack of transparency jeopardizes the validity of the information being produced by Wikipedia. We analyze the social and ethical consequences of this lack of transparency in Wikipedia for all users, but especially students; we assess the corporate social performance issues involved, and we propose courses of action to compensate for the potential problems. We show that Wikipedia has the appearance, but not the reality, of responsible, transparent information production. This paper’s authors are the same as those who authored Wood, D. J. and Queiroz, A. 2008. Information versus. knowledge: Transparency and social responsibility issues for Wikipedia. In Antonino Vaccaro, Hugo Horta, and Peter Madsen (Eds.), Transparency, Information, and Communication Technology (pp. 261–283). Charlottesville, VA: Philosophy Documentation Center. Adele has changed her surname from Queiroz to Santana     

Turning the library upside down: Reorganization using total quality management principles

Professional staff at Samford University's Davis Library began to plan for vast organizational changes in the summer of 1990. This article describes their application of TQM principles to preparing for and implementing a restructuring of the Library and discusses the results of this reorganization.