The National Enquiry Into Scholarly Communication—Twenty years after

The National Enquiry into Scholarly Communication was organized under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Its report was published by Johns Hopkins University Press after three years of research, 1n 1979. Why was it undertaken, who was involved, what did it recommend, and what was the result?     

Readers are very important people

Reading groups for visually impaired people (VIPs) are a relatively recent phenomenon. This article reports on an ethnographic study of a VIP reading group. It provides a brief overview of the history of alternative formats and then focuses on reading autobiographies which have been constructed with members of this group. It concludes by suggesting that VIP reading groups present interesting opportunities for exploring ideas of reading and readers.     

Gender-fair psychotherapy in the United States: A possible dream?

Since Freud's era, women have been counseling and psychotherapy's largest consumers. White Freud talked and wrote almost exclusively about men, his patients were primarily women. This practice of treating women as patients, while perceiving men as the prevailing standard for percept and practice has resulted in the largely androcentric or mate-determined psychology of human behavior which we have today (Denmark, 1980; Hare-Mustin, 1983).A number of studies commencing with the Broverman's work in the 1970(s) has demonstrated that psychotherapists, for the most part, share the same sex role biases toward women as the rest of society (Broverman et al., 1970; Fabrikant, 1973, 1974; Nickerson, 1978; Orlinsky & Howard, 1980). Most disconcerting, however, is a recent extensive replication of the Brovermans' study (O'Malley & Richardson, 1985), using 249 counselors, which found that they still described males and females in stereotypic ways, though they did attribute some female designated traits to healthy adults.The evidence regarding the measured effects of therapists' attitudes, whether reportedly biased or gender-fair, however, is mixed in nature and replete with methodological problems (Maffeo, 1979; Marachek & Johnson, 1980; Orlinsky & Howard, 1980; Smith, 1980; Whiteley, 1979); as is the evidence for effectiveness of therapy generally (Garfield, 1981). Some have argued that a counselor's values and expectations do not matter, as long as she or he is aware and does not impose them (Smith, 1980; Whiteley, 1979). It would seem equally probable, based on other evidence that choice of therapeutic goals and processes can be influenced by the therapist's expectations (Brovermans et al., 1970; Nickerson, 1978; O'Malley & Richardson, 1985).The crucial point is that in a sexist society (Such as the United States), it is improbable that anyone without special non-sexist, gender-fair training can adequately aid women in exercising their independence and selecting their goals. Hence, a format is presented for insuring the dream of gender-fair counseling through the inclusion of appropriate training experiences and materials.     

The use of ‘Circle of Friends’ strategy to improve social interactions and social acceptance: a case study of a child with Asperger's Syndrome and other associated needs

The study outlined here was an attempt to examine the use of ‘Circle of Friends’ as a single intervention approach in addressing the issue of inappropriate social interactions in a child with Asperger Syndrome. The child selected was in a mainstream setting, as the main feature of a circle of friends is peers supporting peers. The child was involved in the selection of peers for the development of the circle of friends and it was hoped the approach would challenge children's attitudes in relation to the child with Asperger Syndrome and also improve social understanding for the focus child. The results clearly indicated that the intervention had been successful in reducing the stigma around ‘difference’ for the focus child and it was clearly evident that the ‘circle of friends’ approach had provided a much needed network of social support in a mainstream school. The conclusion highlighted that the focus child was able to understand far more easily the ‘hidden curriculum’ that neuro‐typical children find so easy to decipher.     

The origin of the library approval plan

The approval plan is a widely used method of getting scholarly and scientific books into scholarly and research libraries immediately upon publication at minimal cost to the libraries. It was developed in the early 1960s by the former library book-selling firm of Richard Abel & Co., now Blackwell North America. It is a quite sophisticated and complex computer-based system which grew out of a radical, and hence risky, solution to a related set of long-term unresolved difficulties in the building and maintenance of scholarly library collections. The history of the evolution of the system within the context of resolving many of these problems is traced here.